Yahoo erases two years of traffic decline

Yahoo's Q3 sees blah numbers but massive traffic growth

In its current waiting-for-Alibaba-to-IPO limbo, Yahoo continues to truck along nicely. The company posted higher than expected earnings Tuesday, leading shares to pop slightly in after-hours trading.

Yahoo posted earnings of $0.34 per share on revenue of $1.08 billion, which slightly beat out analysts’ estimates of $0.33 per share on revenue of $1.08 billion. So, not too shabby. Both revenue and EPS were down from last year, however. In Q3 2012, Yahoo generated $0.39 a share on $1.089 billion in revenue.

While Yahoo’s numbers remain somewhat blah, user acquisition and traffic continues to grow. Yahoo’s properties and products have drawn a total of 800 million monthly users, which is up 20% over the past 15 months. Mobile usage is up 15% quarter-over-quarter to 390 million monthly mobile users. Since its mobile revamp, the Yahoo Mail app has seen 20% growth since Q2 2013.

CEO Marissa Mayer revealed during the earnings call that global traffic reached crossover with 2011 last month after two years of traffic decline. In other words, Yahoo is back on track and has effectively erased two years of spiraling traffic.

The company is keeping its focus on mobile.

“Yahoo’s future is mobile, and we’re committed to delivering great mobile ad formats,” said Mayer.

Specifically, Yahoo is focusing on native ads, which Mayer described as ads that are “part of the content,” and that add to the overall experience.

“There’s a big opportunity ahead to monetize mobile,” said Mayer, who pointed out that while display ads have shown to negatively affect conversions when carried over to mobile, native ads have been found to significantly increase conversions and generate more revenue.

Yahoo has proven itself to be a desirable place to work and more people than ever are submitting their resumes to the tech giant. Mayer said that resume submissions are up 8x in the last year, and in a single week in September, the company received over 17,000 resumes. Yahoo has hired nearly 1,000 engineers this year alone.

"I'm very pleased with our execution, especially as we've continued to invest in and strengthen our core business," said Mayer, in a statement. "In Q3, we launched new user experiences across many of our digital daily habits -- Yahoo Screen, My Yahoo,Fantasy Sports, and more.”

During the third quarter, Yahoo made eight acquisitions—some as talent acquisitions, and some for the tech—including Bignoggins, Qwiki, Xobni, Admovate, Ztelic, Lexity, Rockmelt and IQ Engines.

At this point, many on Wall Street are simply waiting for Alibaba’s IPO, which will result in a big cash windfall for Yahoo. Many analysts believe that Yahoo will use the cash to buy back shares. 

Shares were up 0.93% in after-hours trading to $33.69.