Yahoo rakes in profits as it prepares for Verizon deal

SAN FRANCISCO - Yahoo's quarterly profits shot up by more than double to $163 million even as it prepares for a takeover by Verizon.

"We remain very confident, not only in the value of our business, but also in the value Yahoo products bring to our users' lives," the company's chief executive Marissa Mayer said in the earnings release, which beat expectations despite only a slight rise in revenue.

Yahoo skipped its usual quarterly earnings call with analysts due to the pending takeover by the US telecommunication company, for which Mayer said Yahoo is busy preparing despite recent revelations about a major data breach that may affect the deal.

Shares were up 1.3 percent to $42.22 in after-market trades following the earnings report release, reflecting confidence the breach is not prompting a significant number of users to abandon Yahoo.

Revenue for the quarter that ended on Sept. 30 came to $1.3 billion, up from the $1.2 billion in the same period a year earlier.

Mobile revenue during the quarter reached $396 million, up from $271 million the previous year.

"We launched several new products and showed solid financial performance across the board," Mayer said.

The internet pioneer agreed in July to sell its core assets to Verizon for $4.8 billion, ending a 20-year run as an independent company.

The deal would separate the Yahoo internet assets from its more valuable stake in the Chinese online giant Alibaba.

However, Verizon said last week that a recently revealed hack affecting 500 million Yahoo customers worldwide could have a "material" effect on the $4.8 billion deal.

The comments from Verizon general counsel Craig Silliman suggest the telecom company could seek to reduce the purchase price or walk away from the deal.

Although the hack took place in late 2014, Yahoo announced it only last month, dealing the faded internet star a fresh blow.

The attack was probably "state sponsored," the company said, although some analysts have questioned the source.

"We're working hard to retain their trust," Mayer said of Yahoo's users, "and are heartened by their continued loyalty as seen in our user engagement trends."

The beleaguered company has made several attempts to refocus after falling behind Google and Facebook in key segments of online advertising.

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com

Yahoo board to weigh future of company, Marissa Mayer

SAN FRANCISCO/BENGALURU (Reuters) - The board of Yahoo Inc is weighing a sale of its core Internet business when it meets this week, a source familiar with the matter told Reuters.

The board's meeting comes amid a broader debate about the future of the company and that of high-profile Chief Executive Marissa Mayer.

The Wall Street Journal first reported the possible sale of the Internet business late on Tuesday. People familiar with the matter told the newspaper the board was expected to also discuss during meetings from Wednesday through Friday whether to proceed with a plan to spin off more than $30 billion in shares of Alibaba Holding Group Ltd. The company could also pursue both options, the paper said.

The company's shares were up more than 7 percent in extended trading.

Yahoo's core business, which includes popular services like Yahoo Mail and its news and sports sites, could attract private equity firms, media and telecom companies or firms like Softbank Group Corp, analysts have said in the past.

Yahoo declined to comment on the report.

The news comes as Mayer faces growing pressure over the company's performance. Mayer came to Yahoo after a long stint at Google.

Her arrival kicked off heightened expectations of a quick turnaround at Yahoo, which had struggled to grow its advertising business to compete with market leaders Google and Facebook.

Hopes of a comeback crumbled as Yahoo's plan to push mobile, video, native and social media ads - a strategy Mayer introduced in 2014 under the acronym Mavens - failed to increase revenues as desktop search ads continued to decline.

A $1.1 billion deal in 2013 to acquire social blogging site Tumblr also hit snags, with investors arguing that Mayer overpaid for an unprofitable product. The deal lifted Yahoo's user base to about 1 billion but did not bring in advertisers.

In September, Yahoo's plans for the spinoff of its stake in Alibaba hit a roadblock when the U.S. Internal Revenue Service denied a request to bless the transaction as a tax-free deal.

Yahoo said it planned to proceed with the spinoff despite the IRS announcement, but has not yet done so.

In November, activist investor Starboard Value LP asked Yahoo to drop plans to spin off its stake in Alibaba and urged the company to sell its core search and display advertising businesses instead.

During Mayer's 13-year tenure at Google, she led the Google Earth, Gmail and Google News teams and is credited with helping create the company's celebrated search page. (Reporting by Amrutha Penumudi in Bengaluru; Editing by Stephen R. Trousdale and Sandra Maler)

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com

Yahoo shuts down Philippine homepage

Yahoo Inc said it was shutting down a few of its services, including Yahoo Maps, as it realigns itself to focus on search and digital content.

Maps.yahoo.com will shut down by the end of this month, Amotz Maimon, Yahoo's chief architect, said in a blog post, as the service faces intense competition from Google Inc's Maps service.

Yahoo's search and other services including photo-sharing website Flickr will still support Yahoo Maps, Maimon said.

These steps follow efforts by Chief Executive Marissa Mayer to revive meaningful revenue growth with a string of acquisitions and product revamps.

Mayer has been under pressure to make quicker progress in strengthening the company's media and advertising business.

Yahoo is scaling back mail support on the built-in Mail app for older versions of Apple Inc's iPhone operating system, Maimon said on Thursday.

Yahoo said the Philippines homepage would be shuttered. It will also close Yahoo Music services in France and Canada and Yahoo Movies in Spain.

Media services such as Yahoo TV and Yahoo Autos will be stopped in the UK, France, Germany, Spain and Italy at the end of June.

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com

Yahoo buys video streaming startup RayV

SAN FRANCISCO - Yahoo announced Friday it has bought an Israel-based startup specializing in streaming high-quality video to computers and mobile devices.

Yahoo did not disclose financial terms of the deal to acquire RayV, which will become part of the California company's research and development team in Tel Aviv.

"The (RayV) team lives and breathes video, and have become industry pioneers," Yahoo said in a Tumblr post.

"This deal demonstrates our dedication to accelerating our video strategy and boosting our underlying technology infrastructure in the space."

Yahoo is focusing on ramping up its offerings for streaming video live or on demand.

News of Yahoo's latest acquisition came on the same day that it unveiled a lineup of free streaming concerts by music stars such as Usher, Michael Franti and The Dave Matthews Band.

A Live Nation Channel on Yahoo Screen promised to serve up a new live concert daily beginning on July 15, when The Dave Matthews Band performs two sets.

"In today's on-demand entertainment environment, live experiences are the only ones that we all share together, at the same time," Yahoo chief marketing officer Kathy Savitt said in a statement.

"Together with Live Nation, we are excited to bring millions of fans together to share these moments through the new Yahoo Live experience."

A glimpse of the schedule for the first month at yahoo.com/live promised performances by John Legend, Justin Timberlake, OneRepublic, Everclear, Airborne Toxic Event and other music stars.

"This channel will create a powerful new way for artists to continue to grow their global fan base," Live Nation chief executive Michael Rapino said.

Concerts can be streamed through Yahoo Screen on a wide array of Internet-linked devices including Roku, Xbox 360 consoles, AppleTV, desktop computers and mobile devices powered by Apple or Android software, according to the Sunnyvale, California-based technology firm.

Yahoo has been shedding its online search engine past in favor of a future as a venue for premier digital content and services, particularly aimed at smartphones and tablet computers.

It has also been investing in original programming.

The company has enlisted news, music and television stars for online magazines focused on technology, film and food.

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com

Yahoo dives deeper into media with online magazines

LAS VEGAS - Yahoo on Tuesday dove deeper into being an Internet Age media company, bringing in news, music and television stars for the launch of online magazines focused on technology and food.

The fresh online offerings were showcased by Yahoo chief executive Marissa Mayer during a Consumer Electronics Show (CES) keynote presentation at a packed theater here.

"Yahoo is about making the world's daily habits inspiring and entertaining, and there are few places as inspiring and entertaining as CES," Mayer said. "We have been hard at work re-imagining Yahoo's core businesses across search, communications, media and video - all powered by two powerful platforms, Flickr and Tumblr."

Late last year, Yahoo had more than 400 million mobile monthly users for the first time in the Internet pioneer's history, according to Mayer. About 800 million people use Yahoo monthly overall, the California-based company said.

The theatrical keynote production included appearances by newly-hired Yahoo Global Anchor Katie Couric and Yahoo Tech vice president David Pogue, a former New York Times reporter.

Cecily Strong and Keenan Thompson of beloved US comedy program Saturday Night Live appeared in a faux news report skit lampooning trendy technology companies and concepts. Targets included SnapChat, Bitcoin, and in-flight smartphone use.

Grammy award-winning musician John Legend entertained the audience with a set of songs.

Announcements woven into the stage show included the launches of a Yahoo News digest app design to deliver concise, personalized summaries of global happenings twice daily to smartphones.

"Yahoo News Digest, at its core, simplifieds news and solves the problem of information overload and TL;DR," said Yahoo product manager Nick D'Aloisio, referring to an acronym for 'Too Long; Didn't Read.'

Digital magazines Yahoo Food and Yahoo Tech were launched with fanfare.

"We found our inspiration in magazines," Mayer said. "They are elegant, beautiful and have a distinctive voice."

Yahoo Food is devoted to things culinary, while the Tech magazine team headed by Pogue has a stated mission of demystifying the world of geeky gadgets, services and trends.

"Everyone at CES is a gear-head, but the rest of the country is struggling," Pogue said.

"The first language we are going to speak is called English; it's called human."

Pogue said Yahoo Tech would be a "jargon-free, cool-looking" source of news and information presented in terms people not immersed in the industry can appreciate.

And instead of banner or display ads, Yahoo digital magazines will follow the lead of their glossy predecessors and weave clearly labeled advertising into content, according to Mayer.

Pogue said he will be reviewing projects seeking backing at crowd-source funding websites Kickstarter and Indiegogo, giving as an example a stand that keeps a single razor blade sharp for five years.

"It is brilliant, but it also costs $600," Pogue said of the razor system.

Mayer mentioned the acquisition of yet another firm, Aviate, which specializes in automatically organizing applications on smartphone home screens based on clues such as location or time of day and on people's habits.

Mayer took over as Yahoo chief in July of 2012, and her plan to revive the company includes being at the center of people's Internet habits, especially on mobile devices.

"We reach for our mobile devices as soon as we wake up to check the morning headlines," Couric said, telling the audience she was eager to get to work interviewing "anyone with an important or interesting story to tell."

Digital magazines were touted as part of Yahoo's longterm strategy.

"A common theme for us is simplifying our business and how people consume information," Mayer said.

Forrester analyst David Cooperstein saw it as a savvy move to differentiate Yahoo from Google, Facebook or other online venues by providing the professional content people are looking for instead of user-generated material they might find interesting.

"It is a more mainstream play, basically," Cooperstein said.

"By bringing in familiar faces from John Legend to SNL it indicates to me she is talking about more traditional content online, which is the only angle her competitors haven't taken. And every good keynote should have some theatrics in it."

Despite many investments, Yahoo last year lost its Number 2 position in the US digital ad market to social networking titan Facebook, according to industry-tracker eMarketer.

Yahoo's share of global digital ad revenue slid about a half percent to 2.87 percent last year, while Facebook and Google say their shares rise, eMarketer reported.

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com

Yahoo pushes further into news with 'global anchor'

SAN FRANCISCO - Yahoo made a fresh move Monday to expand as a media group, naming a star "global anchor" to be the face of its digital news brand.

The California Internet giant hired longtime newscaster and talk show star Katie Couric, well-known to American television viewers, having hosted programs on three top broadcast networks.

"Couric is joining the company as Global Anchor, as part of Yahoo's ongoing commitment to re-imagine how news and information is delivered and consumed," a Yahoo statement said.

Yahoo chief executive Marissa Mayer, hired last year to help revive the fortunes of the faded Internet pioneer, said Couric "will lead a growing team of correspondents at Yahoo News who will cover the world's most interesting stories and newsmakers."

"From pivotal coverage of natural disasters and historic elections to the Royal Wedding and the Olympic Games, groundbreaking interviews with heads of state and leading tastemakers, her experience is unmatched," Mayer said in a blog post.

Couric, 56, will continue to host her daytime television talk show "Katie" while being the "face" of Yahoo News and being part of features for the Internet pioneer's home page, according to Mayer.

Couric will begin with Yahoo News in early 2014 to help reshape coverage for the Internet giant, which hosts the biggest global news website and is gradually moving to control more of the content.

Couric told news website Capital New York the format for Yahoo's programming has not yet been defined.

"I don't think it is going to be a half-hour evening news broadcast or a two-hour morning show," she said.

"We are trying to be very open-minded. What I really am excited about in working with the team at Yahoo is that there are no rules right now, we are going to try things, we are going to see how they go, we are going to see what people are interested in, we can do everything from a town hall meeting to in-depth interviews to a breaking news story."

On Twitter, Couric tweeted: "Thrilled to join @YahooNews as Global Anchor! Great team there led by @MarissaMayer & an exciting future ahead!"

Couric joins a team of other respected journalists including Megan Liberman, David Pogue and Matt Bai, hired from the New York Times.

Yahoo last month named Pogue to head a grand expansion of consumer-focused technology news.

Liberman was hired in September to be editor in chief to "lead a major expansion of Yahoo News, bringing in new voices and defining features for the site."

Bai was hired this month to be a national political columnist.

The Couric recruitment comes as Yahoo continues a quest to redefine itself as an online venue for "premier digital content."

Couric joined the CBS "Evening News" in 2006 after 15 years presenting NBC's "Today" show. She left CBS in 2011 and since 2012 has had her own show with ABC, which has a news partnership with Yahoo.

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com

Yahoo to Google PH: Why just now?

MANILA, Philippines - "Why just now?" Arlene Amarante, country ambassador and sales director at Yahoo! Philippines, quipped when asked to comment on Google's entry in the domestic market.

But Amarante was quick to add the move was very much welcomed by Yahoo! because despite being head-to-head in grabbing the bigger online advertising market share, the executive said both companies have been partners for a long time.

"Yahoo! has been here for the past five years and we've been educating [and] evangelizing this market on the Internet and the role it plays in their lives," Amarante said on Thursday.

"So having Google here is a welcome change because it's not only going to be Yahoo! that will be doing it, Google's also going to be doing it," she continued.

Google in January announced it is set to open up a  Philippine unit to capitalize on the growing number of Filipinos on the Internet.

Amarante said the presence of tech giant Google will also help improve the landscape of Philippine IT.

"The industry's going to be a lot bigger, a lot better. So that's great," Amaranted said.

Yahoo! Philippines is set to launch a "new look," following an overhaul of parent company Yahoo! Inc. Amarante said Filipinos may expect this "new look" in a couple of months, as other Yahoo! pages around the world have already adopted it.

Yahoo! and Google, despite being rivals in capturing the bigger share of the online ad market, have struck partnerships for boosting Internet ad in the past.

Most recently, the two had a nonexclusive arrangement announced early February in which Yahoo! will be tapping Google's Internet ad network in a bid to accelerate the purple company's revenue growth.

source: abs-cbnnews.com

Yahoo! board to review CEO’s education records

Yahoo! Inc’s board of directors will review a discrepancy in the educational record of its chief executive, Scott Thompson, a spokesman told Reuters, after activist hedge fund Third Point accused Thompson of padding his academic credentials.

Yahoo! will also make an appropriate disclosure to shareholders when the review is complete, the spokesman said.

On Thursday, Third Point’s founder and chief executive, Dan Loeb, wrote in a letter to Yahoo!’s board that Thompson claims to hold a bachelor’s degree in accounting and computer science from Stonehill College near Boston, but said Thompson “embellished his academic credentials” because the CEO’s degree is in accounting only.

Third Point owns 5.81 percent of Yahoo’s shares and has been fighting to gain seats on the company’s board.

Early on Thursday, a Yahoo! spokesman called the discrepancy an “inadvertent error.”

“Scott Thompson received a bachelor of science degree in business administration with a major in accounting from Stonehill college,” the spokesman said in an emailed statement. “There was an inadvertent error that stated Mr. Thompson also holds a degree in computer science,” he added.

source: interaksyon.com

Yahoo replaces its CEO suddenly

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) – Yahoo Inc. fired Carol Bartz as CEO Tuesday after more than 2-years of financial lethargy that had convinced investors that she couldn't steer the Internet company to a long-promised turnaround.

To fill the void, Yahoo's board named Tim Morse, its chief financial officer, as interim CEO. Bartz lured Morse away from computer chip maker Altera Corp. two years ago to help her cuts costs. Yahoo, based in Sunnyvale, California, said it is looking for a permanent replacement.

Yahoo Chairman Roy Bostock, also a target of shareholder frustration, informed Bartz about the move over the phone, according to an email the outgoing CEO sent from her iPad that was obtained by the All Things D technology blog. The blog first reported Bartz's ouster.

A Yahoo spokesman didn't immediately respond to a request for comment late Tuesday.

Macquarie Securities analyst Ben Schachter called the handling of Bartz's departure "unseemly'' and interpreted it as a sign of even more drama to come at Yahoo.

In a research note late Tuesday, Schachter predicted there will be a wide range of conjecture about Yahoo's future, with the most likely speculation centering on Yahoo as a takeover target during a vulnerable time.

Alternatively, Yahoo could make a bold move itself by trying to buy the online video site Hulu.com, which is already talking to suitors, or trying to sell its 43 percent stake in the Alibaba Group, one of China's most prized Internet companies. Bartz's tense relationship with Alibaba CEO Jack Ma had fed investor dissatisfaction about her leadership.

In a Tuesday statement, Yahoo said it is undergoing a "comprehensive strategic review'' in its latest effort to give investors a reason to buy its stock but didn't offer details.

Bartz, 63, led an austerity campaign that helped boost Yahoo's earnings, but the company didn't increase its revenue even as the Internet ad market grew at a rapid clip.

The financial funk, along with recent setbacks in Yahoo's online search partnership with Microsoft Corp. and the Alibaba investment, proved to be Bartz's downfall. Her ouster comes with 16 months left on a four-year contract that she signed in January 2009.

That contract entitles her to severance payments that could be two to three times her annual salary and bonus, along with stock incentives she received during her tenure. Bartz received a $2.2 million bonus to supplement her $1 million salary last year.

Source: mb.com.ph