Yahoo! Inc, the poster-boy among search engine companies, yesterday beat the Street’s estimates in style by turning in a modest first quarter profit when the consensus among analysts supposedly in the know was for net losses totaling almost $1m. The Santa Clara, California company turned in first quarter net profits up 159% on the year ago quarter – its last before going public – at $210,000, or $0.01 per share, on revenues that rose to $9.5m, from $1.7m a year before.. The First Call consensus was for losses per share of $0.03. But the analysts can be forgiven slightly, because trying to guess which side of red or black internet start-up companies are going to fall is a question of judging cash flow: Yahoo! is only in the black from the interest on its cash pile, and made operating losses in the quarter of $1.4m. Yahoo! also turned analysts’ estimates in their heads with fourth quarter results, announced in January for the same reason. during the quarter Yahoo upped its average page views per day to 30 million, including a 2 million a day from newly formed Yahoo! Japan, up from 20 million the previous quarter. Its main deals during the three months were the one signed with IBM Corp to carry IBM adverts worldwide through the year-end, and one with Netscape Communications Corp, whereby Yahoo! takes over distribution of Netscape’s Destinations button on its browser, renaming it Netscape Guide by Yahoo! and launching this quarter (CI No 3,124). Cash and equivalents stood at $94.9m on March 31.
