Yahoo sales plummet despite traffic boom

Yahoo has managed to carve out a small operating profit, before restructuring costs, but its revenues have crashed by around a third thanks to the collapse in online advertising spend.

The firm's small pro-forma profit beat analysts' expectations of it breaking even. But once job cuts and acquisition costs were taken into account, the group posted a net loss of $48.5m for the three months to the end of June 2001, against net profits of $53.3m for the same period last year.

Revenues were down sharply as dotcom advertising continued to evaporate and traditional companies, troubled by the slowdown in the US economy, slashed advertising budgets.

In all, sales of $182.2m for the three months to the end of June were down a third on the $273m generated for the same period in 2000.

However, traffic figures indicate that the portal is still hugely popular with users. Page views across the network increased to an average of 1.2 billion per day in June 2001, with 100 per cent growth in Europe.

Yahoo also finally revealed who will fill some of the gaps in its senior management team created by a flood of resignations earlier this year.

Mark Opzoomer [pictured above] has been appointed managing director and regional vice president of Yahoo Europe, while Allan Kwan has joined as regional vice president of its north Asia operations, excluding Japan.

SI Lee is to head Yahoo's Korean operations.

The company now claims 200 million unique visitors per month across its network, up from 156 million in 2000, of which 38 million are in western Europe.

But Yahoo warned that, despite its improved traffic metrics, revenues are likely to remain flat or fall further for the rest of the year as the firm builds up its non-advertising revenues from premium and business services. The portal does not expect these revenues to pick up until at least mid-2002.

Chairman and chief executive Terry Semel said: "There is a huge financial and strategic opportunity represented by our enormous base of consumers, but there is no single event that will transform this company. Rather, it will be a series of events starting this quarter that will demonstrate Yahoo's momentum and progress.

"In order to strengthen and grow the business, we will pursue partnerships and joint ventures with major corporations, make acquisitions and continue to innovate and develop new services."

Analysts said that Yahoo's emphasis on the need to increase the share of non-advertising revenues from premium and business services as a proportion of the total was sensible, but that it had yet to detail how this would be achieved.