The majestic days of one of the largest and renowned Internet giants are coming to an end very soon. Yahoo, the name every 90’s kid can associate with, is all set to merge its core operating assets with American telecom giant Verizon. But today, the company has today shared its quarterly earnings report for the first quarter ended March 2017.
In this quarter, Yahoo reported revenue of $1.33 billion on the back of earning of 18 cents per share. This is a remarkable turnaround for the company in its final lap, even though it was plagued with several significant hacks and discussions around its acquisition in the past couple of months.
The Internet giant managed to surpass all Wall Street expectations and posted a 22.1 percent uptick in revenue figure as compared to $1.09 billion in the same quarter last year. According to a survey by Thomson Reuters, Yahoo was estimated to post revenues of close to $1.23 billion coupled with earning of 14 cents per share.
Further, the press release mentions that Yahoo’s revenue from the Mavens category — the mobile, video, native and social advertising units witnessed a hefty 35.6 percent increase to reach $529 million in this quarter. This business is of significance to the company as it will now be one of the key emerging businesses under Verizon (or Oath, the new combined umbrella entity). The net income in the company continues to remain flat — $99.4 million, or 10 cents per share in the first quarter of 2017 as compared to $99.2 million, or 10 cents per share, a year earlier.
Commenting on the earnings, Marissa Mayer, CEO of Yahoo said:
Our Q1 performance reflects solid financial and operational execution in the new year, with more than $1.3 billion in GAAP revenue delivered. These results are the product of our teams’ tremendous focus and dedication to our users and advertisers.
As we enter our final quarter as an independent company, we are committed to finishing strong and planning for the best possible integration with Verizon. With the transaction anticipated to complete in June, I’ve never been more proud of the improvements we’ve made to the business and the value we’ve delivered to our shareholders.
This is definitely the final time we’ll be hearing of Yahoo’s financials — the core assets are being under Verizon’s control will soon be merged with AOL under one umbrella to form Oath. The remaining assets owned by Alibaba and Yahoo Japan will then continue to operate under a new Chinese name — Altaba, with Marissa Mayer stepping down from her chief executive position and a hefty golden $23 million paycheck.
For those unaware, Verizon agreed to acquire Yahoo for a whopping $4.83 billion early last year. But, it was also the same period of time when all hell broke loose for the internet giant. It revealed that their server had been breached and the personal info of over 1.5 billion user accounts has been stolen in two cyber attacks back in 2013 and 2014. This was coupled with reports of Yahoo colluding with intelligence agencies, allowing them to sift through everyone’s email data to trace terrorists.
Hence, this soured its acquisition deal with Verizon and the final acquisition amount was discounted by $350 million. The telecom giant is finally picking up Yahoo for $4.48 billion and the transaction is expected to close by second quarter or June later this year.
