Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ: YHOO) is out with its fourth quarter earnings report, and now Wall Street and main Street get one more chance to evaluate the Marissa Mayer turnaround. The company’s adjusted earnings came in at $0.46 per share and revenue on an ex-Traffic Acquisition Cost basis was down just over 1% to $1.2 billion. Thomson Reuters had estimates of $0.38 in earnings per share and $1.2 billion in revenue.
The content and search provider discussed year-over-year traffic increases seen in 2013, although that is so far not translating to revenue growth. The Number of ads sold (excluding Korea) rose by 3 percent year-over-year, but the price received per ad (excluding Korea) was actually down by about 7 percent compared to the fourth quarter of 2012.
Search revenue ex-TAC was $461 million for the fourth quarter of 2013, a gain of about 8 versus the $427 million reported for the fourth quarter of 2012. If you back out Korea, Paid Clicks were up by about 17 percent while the price per click was down about 3 percent. Yahoo! ended the quarter with roughly $5 billion in cash and investments, after using $231 million for buybacks and $60 million for acquisitions in the quarter.
Yahoo! is using its cash for buybacks handily. The company repurchased 129 million shares at an average cost of $25.95 per share for a total of $3.3 billion during the year of 2013. Shares are up more than $13 than its average purchase price.
Shares of Yahoo! closed up 4.2% at $38.22 on Tuesday, but shares were seen giving back about 5% to $36.20 as the initial reaction in the after-hours session.
Many may criticize the lack of revenue growth seen so far. That may be an issue, but the reality is that this stock is up huge and investors seem to have decided to take money off the table here for now.
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