Shareholders uncertain about Yahoo's Q1, shares dip

Yahoo shares dipped 4% in after-hours trading Tuesday night after the company posted mixed results

Yahoo shares were down 0.3% to $27.73 Wednesday morning after the company reported mixed results for the first quarter of 2013. That's after shares sank 4% in after-hours trading Tuesday evening. 

Yahoo’s Q1 2013 earnings report revealed higher than expected earnings per share, but a slight drop in revenue. Specifically, the company generated $1.07 billion in revenue excluding traffic acquisition costs (ex-TAC), while analysts were expecting $1.1 billion ex-TAC.

Additionally, non-GAAP income from operations was down to $224 million in Q1 2013, compared to $231 million in Q1 2012.

But on the plus side, EPS beat analysts’ expectations at 38 cents per share, while many were expecting 27 cents per share.

“I’ve said before that getting the company growing at the rate I’d like to see would take several years,” said CEO Marissa Mayer in the earnings call. “Our long-term success will be gained in a series of sprints.”

Altogether, Yahoo took home an income of $420 million in the first quarter, an increase of 26% over the same quarter last year.

So it’s a mixed bag, but J.P. Morgan’s Doug Anmuth notes that Yahoo’s engagement rates are higher than ever, particularly among mobile users. The Yahoo.com property saw 9.6 million unique visitors in February 2013, up from 5,500 in January and 5,700 in December 2012. Time spent on Yahoo.com was also up significantly, with users spending over 60 minutes on the site in February, compared to 24 minutes in January and 17 minutes in December.

Some other business highlights in Q1: Mayer said that daily active users were up 50% since Yahoo released its new Yahoo mail app for iOS. And since updating Flickr, photo uploads increased 50% quarter-over-quarter.

Interestingly, Marissa Mayer touched on the topic of employee satisfaction and happiness. As you might recall, in Q1, Mayer sent out a call to all remote employees to haul their cookies back to the office. This caused a big stir among—like, the entire Internet—and rumors of employee discontent ran rampant.

Not so, says Mayer. Attrition has been cut in half and the company is even seeing a steady rise in what it calls “boomerangs”—former employees who left and now want to come back. Mayer said that 14% of all hires in Q1 were “boomerangs.” Altogether, the number of resumes Yahoo received over the quarter tripled.

"We are encouraged by some of the early metrics around Yahoo!’s product updates, especially Yahoo.com which is seeing an increase in session engagement per user and a 25% increase in interactions," said Doug Anmuth in a research note Wednesday morning. "We think the new Yahoo.com is a better, more personalized product, but the company needs to market it better."

Image source: businessinsider.com