Investing in Yahoo stock (YHOO)
Yahoo (NASDAQ: YHOO) is the most popular site on the internet. For its users, which are international in composition, it provides owned and operated online properties and services. Many of Yahoo!'s services are free to its users. For advertisers, it provides online marketing solutions. It generates revenue by providing marketing services to businesses across the majority of its properties and by establishing paying relationships with users of its premium offerings. The online advertising space is one that has been dominated by Google, but significant growth in this space is to come and there is a large opportunity for Yahoo to add shareholder value from this revenue stream.
Yahoo intends to capitalize on the burgeoning online advertising market through the use of text ads next to search results like Google. The implementation of this idea cam after 2 years and tens of millions of dollars spent on what was dubbed: The Panama Project. Although Yahoo has been unable to gain market share from Google in searched performed, its integrated, feature-rich platform may help leverage Panama in different ways. Yahoo has worked diligently to compete against Google for human capital, the type of mathematics, economics, and engineering talent to develop sophisticated algorithms to maximize revenue for the company.
YHOO Earnings History:
Q1 2007: down 70.0%
Q2 2007: down 45.5%
Q3 2007: even
Q4 2007: down 6.7%
Q1 2008: down 9.1%
Q2 2008: down 18%
Yahoo! next earnings report:
Q2 2008: $0.08 E
Yahoo! has been active in acquisitions and outside investments. It current holds a 10% stake in Korean eBay site gMarket. In 2007 it acquired Rivals.com and finished an acquisition of RightMedia after initially investing in the company in 2006. In 2005 YHOO acquired Flickr, Pixoria, and formed its strategic partnership with Alibaba. The company has been quite active since its first acquisition of Four11 in October 2007.