After a painful descent, things may finally be looking up for long-suffering Yahoo Inc.
Coming off its best quarterly performance since hiring Carol Bartz as its chief executive a year ago, Yahoo promised late on Tuesday to deliver even more meaningful progress this year.
For starters, the Internet company expects its revenue for the three months ending in March to rise 3 percent to US$1.63 billion, after five consecutive quarters of declining revenue.
Even if the company hits management’s target, Yahoo’s first-quarter revenue will still be nearly US$200 million below where it stood two years ago.
Yahoo’s fourth-quarter results released on Tuesday provided the latest evidence the Internet ad market is regaining its legs as the economy stabilizes. Google Inc, the Internet’s dominant advertising vehicle, closed out last year with its most robust growth of the year.
“Things seem to be returning to a more normal state in the online advertising business,” Bartz told analysts in a Tuesday conference call.
Yahoo earned US$153 million, or US$0.11 per share, during the final three months of last year, rebounding from a loss of US$303 million, or US$0.22 per share, in the prior year.
If not for charges for internal reshuffling and a proposed search partnership with Microsoft Corp, Yahoo said it would have made US$0.15 per share in the quarter. That topped the average estimate of US$0.11 per share among analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters.
Revenue slipped 4 percent to US$1.73 billion. In contrast, Google’s fourth-quarter revenue surged 17 percent. Yahoo still did better than the first nine months of last year, when the company’s revenue dropped 12 percent.
In a sign of Yahoo’s growing confidence, the company added 700 workers to its payroll in the fourth quarter to end last month with 13,900 employees. That’s still down from Yahoo’s recent peak employment of 15,200 in September 2008.
Yahoo intends to buy other companies this year, Bartz said, setting her sights on small deals.
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