Its user numbers may be enviable, but sales don't reflect that in the latest quarterly results.
Flat seems to be the operative word -- as in traffic (700 million global visits a month) and quarterly revenue ($1.13 billion) for Yahoo.
"All the usage figures are up, but the revenue isn't," says Jan Dawson, chief analyst at Jackdaw Research. "For Yahoo to do that, it needs to improve search and video revenue -- which (CEO) Marissa Mayer is pursuing."
Despite Mayer's considerable star power and boatload of flashy business moves, the Silicon Valley company continues to struggle to jack up ad revenue amid intensified competition from Google and Facebook.
Yahoo's cut of the $120 billion worldwide digital ad market declined to 2.9% in 2013 from 3.4% in 2012, while Facebook and Google increased, according to eMarketer. Yahoo's share will decrease even further in 2014, eMarketer estimates.
At the same time, Yahoo last year lost its No. 2 spot as digital ad seller in the U.S. to Facebook for the first time, eMarketer says.
Yahoo's share of search advertising revenues is also declining.
Mayer has vowed Yahoo will focus on its ad business this year.
Wall Street, meanwhile, is fixated on Alibaba, the Chinese e-commerce giant that is expected to raise $15 billion in a titanic IPO this year. Yahoo owns 24% of the company. (Based on anticipation of Alibaba's imminent IPO, Yahoo shares were up 11%, to $37.05, in after-hours trading today.)
Alibaba showed signs of a slowdown in growth in its last quarter, when it raked in $1.8 billion in revenue, up 51% from the year-ago quarter. That's lower than the 61% surge in revenue from the previous quarter.
Perhaps Yahoo sees advertising nirvana in the TV-programming business. The Wall Street Journal reported Yahoo is on the verge of ordering four original video series, joining Netflix, Amazon.com and other companies that have dipped into original programming.
At this point, no idea is too radical for Yahoo to rev up revenue.
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