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Sunday, November 8, 
3:04 pm

Yahoo! net income drops 78%; Bartz wants company to "kick ass"

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Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO) after market close Tuesday reported first quarter revenue of $1.58 billion, a 13% decline from the year-earlier quarter. Net income dropped 78% to $118 million on a GAAP basis compared to the first quarter of 2008.

The company said it expected GAAP revenue in the second quarter to be in the range of $1.425 billion to $1.625 billion.

In a conference call, new Yahoo! CEO Carol Bartz described her first three months at the helm of the company as "amazing and busy." The call couldn't end without Bartz issuing a now-expected folksy turn of phrase. The best way to move Yahoo! forward despite a difficult economy is "creating kick-ass experiences for our users," Bartz said.

She said she has spent much of her time doing "deep dives" with Yahoo!'s product and strategy teams, and has found that the best candidates for focused investment include the company's home, sports, news, entertainment and finance pages and its search and mobile offerings, she added.

"Getting these products right is imperative," she said.

The overriding three strategic goals Bartz outlined: Globalize the Yahoo! platforms so "we can innovate more quickly in every corner of the world;" build products on top of those global platforms; and better monetize the company's existing user base.

Yahoo! also announced a 5% workforce cut, and said affected employees will be notified within the next two weeks. This marks the first new downsizing under Bartz, who took the reins of the company from former CEO and co-founder Jerry Yang earlier in January.

"It is a natural outgrowth of the work we are doing to streamline our structure, globalize  products, slim down our portfolio and eliminate duplication of efforts," she said.

True to her pledge not to negotiate in public, Bartz declined to talk about reports that Yahoo! is in active discussions with Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ:MSFT) to strike a search partnership.

"Search is a very valuable business for Yahoo!, but that's all we're going to say about search today." -- Olaf de Senerpont Domis


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