SAN FRANCISCO - Internet giant Yahoo posted a 37-percent slump in third-quarter profits on Tuesday and announced it would buy back up to three billion dollars of its stock.
The company said "unanticipated challenges" led to third-quarter net revenues of 159 million dollars, or 11 cents a share, as compared to 254 million in the same period a year earlier.
"While we are tremendously excited about many things happening at Yahoo, we are not satisfied with our third-quarter financial performance," chief executive Terry Semel said in a release.
After subtracting the share paid to search-advertising partners, Yahoo`s net revenue rose 20 percent from a year earlier to 1.12 billion dollars.
Analysts had expected the 11 cent per share profit, but on higher net revenue of 1.14 billion.
Yahoo disappointed analysts anew by forecasting that its fourth-quarter revenues would be in the range of 1.15 to 1.27 billion dollars instead of the 1.31 billion dollar goal set by Wall Street investors.
The company also said that it planned to repurchase up to three billion dollars` worth of its outstanding common stock over the next five years, depending on factors including market conditions and the share price.
10/17/2006 21:19 GMT