Yahoo reports flat growth on Mayer’s first day

Yahoo posted flat growth on Marissa Mayer’s first day on the job, underscoring the challenges the ex-Google executive faces as CEO.

The struggling web firm posted revenue of $1.08bn and income of $226m, both flat from the same quarter the year before – but that doesn’t include $129m in restructuring charges in the second quarter.

Yahoo’s revenue has “basically been flatlined for a while”, Macquarie Research analyst Ben Schachter told Reuters. “Flat is not where bulls want it to go, but it’s not falling off a cliff either.”

Flat is not where bulls want it to go, but it’s not falling off a cliff either

Visits to Yahoo websites were up 2% on-year, but searches fell 17%. The company said on a conference call that its search deal with Microsoft was performing “below expectations”.

“Both companies continue to work hard to materially improve the performance [on revenue per search], and we plan to provide an update on our joint efforts at our next earnings call,” said Yahoo chief financial officer Tim Morse.

Mayer didn’t take part in the results conference call, and the company didn’t issue an outlook statement, noting she only started work yesterday.

“Marissa’s a high-calibre, well-respected leader,” Morse said. Mayer’s technical background has led some to believe the firm is refocusing on web products rather than media content, but Morse said no decisions have been made yet.

“She does have strong tech and engineering and product expertise, as you noted. I mean, her resume really speaks for itself… and we’re just going to have to take a little bit of time to work through exactly what that means in terms of the direction,” he said. “But I think it’s safe to say we need to be really good at certain technologies and we need to be great at content. And both of those are imperative to our success.”