More people paying for Yahoo! online services helped it beat analysts' expectations and gave a fresh push to its financial recovery in the third quarter.
The company also announced last night it has renewed its contract with Google to power its search engine.
The company said it earned $28.9 million, or 5 cents per share, in the three months ended in September, reversing a loss of $24.1 million, or 4 cents per share, at the same time last year.
Yahoo!'s third-quarter revenue totaled $248.8 million, a 50 per cent improvement from last year. Excluding the boost that the company received from a job-listing site acquired earlier this year, Yahoo! said its third-quarter revenue rose 36 per cent.
One-third of Yahoo's third-quarter revenue came from subscriptions and listings on its help-wanted service, HotJobs, which was acquired for $439 million eight months ago.
The $83.1 million that Yahoo! collected from fees and listings during the third quarter more than doubled from a year ago.
Yahoo! signed up about 500,000 new subscribers in the third quarter, giving it more than 1.5 million dues-paying users.
Most of the subscribers pay for Yahoo's Internet access service, premium e-mail accounts and matchmaking service, said Ms Susan Decker, the company's chief financial officer.
