Yahoo Japan Corp said fiscal third-quarter profit more than doubled, lifted by higher sales of services such as online auctions and high-speed Internet access.
Group net income at the operator of Japan's most-used Web search directory rose to Japanese Yen 3.55 billion (US$30 million), or Japanese Yen 7,546 a share, in the three months ended Dec. 31, from Japanese Yen 1.6 billion, or Japanese Yen 12,942, a year ago. Sales nearly doubled to Japanese Yen 16.3 billion, Yahoo Japan said in a Tokyo Stock Exchange statement.
Yahoo Japan has used auction services and broadband Internet services to offset flagging advertising revenue. In the third quarter, the company posted sales of Japanese Yen 6.2 billion at its Yahoo! BB Internet service and Japanese Yen 3.3 billion in sales from Internet-based auctions.
Yahoo! BB is operated by Softbank BB Corp, a fully-owned unit of Softbank Corp, which pays Yahoo Japan incentive payments to market the Internet access service.
Softbank BB pays the incentives in accordance with the number of Yahoo! BB subscribers who applied for the service through Yahoo Japan's Web sites.
The number of subscribers totaled 1.69 million as of the end of December, 67 percent higher than at the end of the second quarter, the company said.
Yahoo Japan is an affiliate of Yahoo! Inc of the US, which is its second-largest shareholder. Softbank owns the largest share in Yahoo Japan with a 50.4 percent stake, according to Bloomberg data.
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