Yahoo had reported a net profit of $331 million for the quarter ending May 30, 2013, up 46% from $226 million profit in the same quarter last year. Here are some notes from Yahoo’s Investor conference call:
Shift from people to product development: Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer said that Yahoo is currently in second sprint which is all about execution, improving products and increasing traffic. Its first sprint, according to her, was getting people to believe in Yahoo and making the company a great place to work.
Yahoo weather app: During the quarter, Yahoo launched a standalone weather app and Mayer noted that since its launch daily users have increased by 150%. Note that Yahoo’s weather app takes image background from Yahoo’s photo sharing app Flickr.
3x more uploads on Flickr: Coming to Yahoo’s photo sharing app Flickr, Yahoo launched a new version of Flickr web allowing users with 1TB of space for free. Mayer informs that since its launch, Yahoo has seen daily photo uploads increased three times (and occasionally seven times) across Flickr desktop and mobile.
Other apps: In June 2013, Yahoo launched a new version of its Yahoo Sports app with more content and new design. The app has, since then, seen 50% growth in daily users from Q1 to Q2. Note that Yahoo has not disclosed the number of daily users it receives on the app. It also launched Yahoo Mail for mobile and tablets with magazine like reading experience which Yahoo claims has driven 120% increase in daily active users across mobile mail application. Yahoo has also released email addresses that have been inactive for 12 months. It also redesigned its Yahoo app for iOS and Android following which it noticed 55% increase in daily active users and 60% increase in time spent using the application. Mayer also noted that Yahoo launched a new product every week.
Acquisitions: In Q2, Yahoo closed a number of acquisitions including Summly, Astrid, Go Poll Go, Milewise, Loki Studios, Rondee, Ghostbird Software, PlayerScale, and Tumblr. Since the deal, Yahoo claims that Tumblr has seen 0.25 million new blogs being setup each day.
Yahoo notes that it spent $1 billion in cash in acquisitions. Mayer also said that the acquisitions Yahoo has made over the quarter were for talent acquisition and about making an investment in mobile. She also noted that Yahoo will continue to acquire small companies in search for talent. Yahoo now has 340 million monthly mobile users, up from 300 million monthly mobile users it had reported in last quarter.
Besides acquisitions, since last fall Yahoo has also shut down over 30 underutilized products and features. In April 2013, Yahoo shut down six services including Upcoming, Yahoo SMS Alerts and Yahoo Mail & Messenger apps J2ME apps among others. Last month, it also shut down Yahoo Stars India and 11 other services including AltaVista, Yahoo Axis, Yahoo RSS alerts and Yahoo Local API among others. The company claims that this will allow them to utilize resources on more important products.
Partnerships: This quarter, Yahoo partnered with Twitter and integrated tweets on their homepage newsfeed. It also extended its partnerships with news entertainment brands like ABC News, CNBC, and Condi Nast to its partner content. Yahoo also partnered with NBC Entertainment and Broadway Video to bring 38 years of Saturday Night Live archives to its digital content catalog.
Reduced Attrition: In Q2, Yahoo claims that it noticed 595 decrease in attrition YoY. It also noted that 10% of its hires in Q2 were ex-Yahoo employees. Yahoo ended the quarter with approximately 11,500 employees which is down 9% from Q2, 2012 but up slightly from Q1 as this now includes a 170 employees from Tumblr.
APAC Revenues: Yahoo has reported Asia Pacific revenues excluding traffic acquisition costs (Revenue ex-TAC) of $193.5 million for the quarter, down 8.29% from $211 million in the same quarter last year. The total revenue was at $209.3 million for the quarter, down 21.87% from $267.9 million in Q2 2012. APAC region accounted for 19% of Yahoo’s total revenues for the quarter. Yahoo CFO, Ken Goldmen, said that FX negatively impacted revenue in APAC by approximately 8 million in 2Q on a year-over-year basis and that excluding the impact of Korea again revenue ex-TAC was flat year-over-year.
Concall Transcript: Seekingalpha | Video webcast
