Yahoo Sees End Of Year Revenue Slide

Mike Moore,
Microsoft. Marissa Mayer, Yahoo

Fall in advertising revenues contributes to fourth consecutive quarter of declining fortunes

Yahoo has released its end of year results for 2013, revealing a fourth consecutive quarter of falling revenue.

Fourth quarter revenues totalled $1.26 billion (£760.6 million), a six percent fall from the same quarter in 2012, with overall revenues for 2013 totalling $4.68 billion (£2.83 billion), again down six percent when compared to 2012 results.

The main cause of this decline was a fall in advertising revenues, as online advertisers spent more money with other rivals such as Google and Facebook.  Yahoo stated that prices for both online display and search advertisements declined in the fourth quarter, although the overall number of advertisements sold by the company actually increased by three percent compared to the fourth quarter of 2012.

marissa mayer yahoo ceo ces 2014Stability

“I’m encouraged by Yahoo’s performance in Q4 and 2013 overall. We saw continued stability in the business, and our investments allowed us to bring beautiful products to our users and establish a strong foundation for revenue growth,” Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer said of the results.

“In Q4, we launched the new Yahoo Mail, Yahoo Finance, and our new Flickr photo books, while quickening our pace of experimentation. We are extremely heartened by the year-over-year traffic increase we experienced in 2013, an early sign of return on our investments and the acquisitions we’ve made.”

The results also included information on the financial results of Alibaba, the Chinese e-commerce site which Yahoo owns a 24 stake in, showing that its revenue increased 51 percent year-over-year to $1.776 billion (£1.072 billion). Alibaba was expected to perform well for Yahoo following its acquisition, but recorded lower growth than in previous years, disappointing investors and analysts.

Reuters reported that Yahoo shares were down 3.7 percent at $36.82 in after-hours trading following the results.

The company has had a somewhat interesting last few months, culminating in it taking to the stage at CES for the very first time earlier this month, where a celebrity-filled keynote saw Mayer demonstrating a variety of new products and services. “We have been hard at work re-imagining Yahoo’s core businesses across search, communications, media and video,” she said.

Things can’t be all that good though. Mayer fired Yahoo’s COO, Henrique de Castro, just over a year after she poached him from her old boss Google, following disappointment over recent results and in the face of growing tensions between himself and Mayer

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