Advertising sales push Yahoo revenues up

Yahoo last night posted steady profits and higher revenues on strong advertising sales, and moderately raised its revenue target…

Yahoo last night posted steady profits and higher revenues on strong advertising sales, and moderately raised its revenue target for the rest of 2005.

Third-quarter net income of $254 million, or 17 cents per diluted share, compared with a year-ago profit of $253 million, or 17 cents a share.

However, the year-ago results included a gain of 9 cents per share from the sale of a stake in rival Google acquired by Yahoo when the rival search firm was a start-up.

Excluding $27 million in investment gains, Yahoo's latest quarterly profit amounted to 15 cents a share.

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Yahoo estimated fourth-quarter net revenue of $1.03 billion to $1.08 billion. That is within the band of the $1.0 billion to $1.14 billion that Wall Street analysts were expecting for the fourth quarter.

"We feel like we will see a continuation of the trends of very strong and very balanced growth," Yahoo chief financial officer said in a phone interview after the report.

"It looks solid," agreed Troy Mastin, an analyst at William Blair & Co., adding that Yahoo's results were a "positive indicator" for the overall online advertising industry and in particular Google, which reports results tomorrow.

Ahead of the report, Yahoo shares closed down 46 cents at $33.70 in regular trading. Following the results, the shares edged up 5 cents in after-hours trade to $33.75.