Yahoo! sees the third quarter as looking soft

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Yahoo! sent Internet stocks into free fall Tuesday when it warned that its third quarter is looking soft. The news comes just two months after Yahoo! disappointed Wall Street with a soft second-quarter report and delays in a project aimed at bolstering its search technology. Shares in the company are down 35% this year, as Yahoo! struggles to win back investors discouraged by the company’s search-market share losses at the hands of Google.

Finance chief Sue Decker told investors at the Goldman Sachs Communacopia conference late Tuesday morning that the company expects third-quarter numbers to be in the bottom half of the range Yahoo! provided last quarter. The company cited weakness in financial and auto advertising — areas to which it is particularly exposed, observers say. Back in July, Yahoo! forecast third-quarter revenue of $1.12 billion to $1.23 billion. That projection was itself a disappointment to investors, who sold the stock heavily the next day. The Thomson Financial revenue consensus estimate has fallen to $1.18 billion from $1.20 billion in the intervening two months.

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