Yahoo Earnings Call Highlights

Yahoo! YHOO released its fourth quarter earnings Tuesday after the closing bell. As of Wednesday morning, the stock was down about three percent in pre-market trading. Here are some highlights from the conference call.

CEO Marissa Meyer was the first to speak. She noted that the company saw a traffic increase in 2013 after years of decline.

In 14 months, the company added 150 million monthly mobile users to reach the milestone of 400 million each month and about half are on the Yahoo network overall. Other highlights include:

• The average mobile user is on their phone more than 150 times each day.

Search Division

• Eighth consecutive quarter of revenue growth the Search business.
• Q4 marks the highest quarterly Search revenue since 2009.
• Acquired Aviate to bolster its mobile search business.

Communications Division

• In October, Yahoo launched a new version of Yahoo! Mail.
• 150 percent increase in mail traffic since launching the Yahoo Mail mobile app earlier this year.
• Launched a new Yahoo Finance product in November that allows a user to sync their brokerage account for real-time performance data.

Related: Yahoo Looking To Purchase Business App Developer Tomfoolery for $16 million

Flickr

• Flickr now has 10 billion photos and powers the images on other Yahoo products like its Weather app and Yahoo Mail.

CFO Ken Goldman on financials

• Advertising revenue fell 2 percent in Q4 and flat for the full year versus 2012.
• Search revenue in Q4 showed the strongest year-over-year growth of 2013.
• Non-GAAP operating expenses were up four percent for the year versus the prior year.
• Capital spending was down 33 for the year compared to 2012 and down 43 percent from 2011.
• Realized a $304 million net gain from its Japanese yen hedge and generated strong free cash flow from operations.
• Free cash flow was $786 million for the year—a decline of 11 percent from the prior year with adjustments.
• Repurchased 129 million shares at an average cost of $25.95 for a total of $3.3 billion.
• Revenue of $1.2 billion in Q4 revenue came in at the midpoint of the guidance range.
• Search revenue up eight percent for the quarter.
• Adjusted EBITDA was $478 million in Q4.
• Paid clicks grew 17 percent year over year while the price-per-click fell three percent.
• Non-GAAP tax rate of 19 percent in Q4.

Disclosure: At the time of this writing, Tim Parker had no position in the company mentioned.