Yahoo’s new chief executive Scott Thompson promised urgent action to turn the company around on Tuesday after it reported another quarter and year of falling income and profits.
Thompson, named Yahoo CEO only on Jan. 4, said the Web giant needed to move quickly to exploit its huge bank of user data to regain market share, especially in display ads where it has lost ground.
The former PayPal chief stressed that Yahoo needed to become an agile and “disruptive” force technology-wise to claw back Internet turf and advertising dollars lost to competitors like Google and Facebook.
“Yahoo is fundamentally both a media company and a technology company. We need to be great at both,” he told analysts in a conference call.
“We will get speed back into the equation and move aggressively,” Thompson said.
Yahoo fourth-quarter net earnings declined 5.3 percent from a year earlier, as revenues dropped 13 percent.
Earnings from core operations increased a solid 10 percent during the quarter to US$242 million, the company said.
However, net income fell to US$296 million, down from US$312 million a year earlier, with adjusted earnings per share stable at US$0.24.
Revenues excluding traffic acquisition costs — the commissions Yahoo shares with partners in the search ads business — were 3 percent lower.
For the year the results were similar. Revenues after commissions were down 5 percent, partly blamed on the cut Microsoft takes from its shared search operations.
Operations income was up 3.5 percent for the year to US$800 million, but net earnings fell 14.6 percent to US$1.06 billion, and earnings per share for the year fell to US$0.82 from US$0.90.
According to eMarketer, Yahoo’s overall share of online ad revenues dropped last year to 11.0 percent from 13.3 percent in 2010, while market leader Google boosted its share to 40.8 percent from 38.5 percent.
Microsoft and Facebook also picked up ground at Yahoo’s expense.
The biggest shortfall was in lucrative display advertising, the company said, blaming poor performance in the all-important North American market.
Thompson declined to provide details on Yahoo’s talks with its Japanese and Chinese partners over the possible disposal of its valuable Asian assets.
For more than a year the company has been weighing selling off those assets to benefit shareholders frustrated by the company’s falling share price.
Some believe that the resignation from the Yahoo board earlier this month of company co-founder Jerry Yang (楊致遠) will open the way for such asset sales.
However, Thompson would only say that “we are in active discussion with our Asian partners.”
It was late morning and steam was rising from water tanks atop the colorful, but opaque-windowed, “soapland” sex parlors in a historic Tokyo red-light district. Walking through the narrow streets, camera in hand, was Beniko — a former sex worker who is trying to capture the spirit of the area once known as Yoshiwara through photography. “People often talk about this neighborhood having a ‘bad history,’” said Beniko, who goes by her nickname. “But the truth is that through the years people have lived here, made a life here, sometimes struggled to survive. I want to share that reality.” In its mid-17th to
‘MAKE OR BREAK’: Nvidia shares remain down more than 9 percent, but investors are hoping CEO Jensen Huang’s speech can stave off fears that the sales boom is peaking Shares in Nvidia Corp’s Taiwanese suppliers mostly closed higher yesterday on hopes that the US artificial intelligence (AI) chip designer would showcase next-generation technologies at its annual AI conference slated to open later in the day. The GPU Technology Conference (GTC) in California is to feature developers, engineers, researchers, inventors and information technology professionals, and would focus on AI, computer graphics, data science, machine learning and autonomous machines. The event comes at a make-or-break moment for the firm, as it heads into the next few quarters, with Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang’s (黃仁勳) keynote speech today seen as having the ability to
NEXT GENERATION: The company also showcased automated machines, including a nursing robot called Nurabot, which is to enter service at a Taichung hospital this year Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) expects server revenue to exceed its iPhone revenue within two years, with the possibility of achieving this goal as early as this year, chairman Young Liu (劉揚偉) said on Tuesday at Nvidia Corp’s annual technology conference in San Jose, California. AI would be the primary focus this year for the company, also known as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), as rapidly advancing AI applications are driving up demand for AI servers, Liu said. The production and shipment of Nvidia’s GB200 chips and the anticipated launch of GB300 chips in the second half of the year would propel
State-run CPC Corp, Taiwan (CPC, 台灣中油) yesterday signed a letter of intent with Alaska Gasline Development Corp (AGDC), expressing an interest to buy liquefied natural gas (LNG) and invest in the latter’s Alaska LNG project, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said in a statement. Under the agreement, CPC is to participate in the project’s upstream gas investment to secure stable energy resources for Taiwan, the ministry said. The Alaska LNG project is jointly promoted by AGDC and major developer Glenfarne Group LLC, as Alaska plans to export up to 20 million tonnes of LNG annually from 2031. It involves constructing an 1,290km
RSS