Yahoo! Inc, which has seen its share price rally strongly this week on the back of some large licensing deals, yesterday kept up its rich vein of form by posting higher-than expected results for the third quarter in a row. The poster boy among search engine companies reported second quarter net profits of $678,000, or $0.02, against losses of $1.4m last year, on revenues up to $13.5m, up from $3.3m last time. First Call’s average estimate was losses of $0.01 per share, but with internet start-ups such as Yahoo!, bottom lines can be very difficult to predict because the company is only in the black because of the interest on its substantial cash pile: $98.9m at the end of the quarter. Therefore whether or not the company is profitable depends entirely on its cash flow, which is difficult to determine from outside the company. Net profits for the six months were $820,000, or $0.03, against $1.3m losses last time on revenues that were up to $23.0m, from $5.0m previously. The company averaged 38 million page hits in June, up from 30m in March. Yahoo! added its stock quote service during the quarter, and launched Netscape Guide by Yahoo!, which resides in the Netscape website, and began managing several of Netscape’s other pages. Yahoo!’s shares closed up $4.25 at a 52-week high of $44 exactly yesterday.
