Yahoo! Q1 Earnings Miss Views

Yahoo! Inc. YHOO reported weaker-than-expected earnings for the first quarter on Tuesday. The Sunnyvale, California-based company posted a quarterly profit of $21.2 million, or $0.02 per share, versus a year-ago profit of $311.6 million, or $0.29 per share. Excluding certain items, Yahoo's earnings slipped to $0.15 per share from $0.38 per share. Its revenue climbed 8 percent to $1.23 billion, while revenue, excluding commissions paid to partner websites, declined to $1.04 billion from $1.09 billion. However, analysts were expecting earnings of $0.18 per share on revenue of $1.06 billion. GAAP search revenue rose 20 percent year-over-year to $532 million for the first quarter, while GAAP display revenue gained 2 percent to $464 million. Total operating expenses climbed 19 percent to $1.31 billion. As of March 31, 2015, the company had $6.9 billion in cash, cash equivalents, and marketable securities, versus $10.2 billion as of December 31, 2014. During the first quarter, the company repurchased around 4 million shares of its common stock for $204 million. The average estimate among 79 Estimize users was for earnings of $0.19 per share and revenue of $1.06 billion. "Yahoo is amidst a multi-year transformation to return an iconic company to greatness. This quarter, we saw encouraging revenue growth of 8%, with display revenue growing a modest 2% and search growing 20% on a GAAP basis. Our mobile GAAP revenue reached $234 million in Q1, growing 61% year-over-year," said Marissa Mayer, CEO of Yahoo. "We anticipated that we would grow GAAP revenue ahead of revenue ex-TAC and EBITDA, and that's precisely what we saw this quarter. For the next phase of the transformation, we will focus on accelerating our GAAP revenue growth while managing our margins and costs." Yahoo shares fell 1.71 percent to $43.73 in the after-hours trading session.