Shares of Yahoo! (Nasdaq: YHOO) are trading up nearly 0.32
percent Tuesday ahead of the release of its fourth-quarter results
after the closing bell.
The Wall Street quarterly consensus for Yahoo! is $0.24 per share
in earnings on $1.19 billion in sales. During the fourth quarter of
last year, the company reported earnings of $0.24 per share on
$1.21 billion in total sales.
For the full year 2011, analysts on the Street are currently
estimating $0.82 per share in earnings on $4.40 billion in total
sales.
The fourth quarter conference call is scheduled for 5:00 pm ET.
According to data from Bloomberg, shares of Yahoo! have ten Buy
ratings, twenty Hold ratings and one Sell ratings. The average
price target on shares of YHOO is $18 with a range from $13 to $22.
While all eyes will certainly be on earnings, investors are also
concerned about the progress on talks to sell its Asian assets and
other strategic moves. The earnings also come one week after
co-founder Jerry Yang stepped down from the board.
Analyst Comments
:
Deutsche Bank is extremely bearish on Yahoo for the quarter and for
the long term. For the quarter, the firm forecasts earnings of
$0.28 per share on a non-GAAP basis and sales totaling $1.166
billion. The weak estimates reflect the fact that Yahoo is losing
market share in its core business to its peers.
An analyst at Deutsche states, "Despite our expectations for weak
results, it may not matter for the shares. Investor attention will
focus on any updates with regards to the Asian asset sales as well
as any outline CEO Thompson can provide in terms of plans for the
use of funds. We hope Thompson shares his early views of the
organization and potentially long term vision for Yahoo!."
Going into the quarter;s results, Deutsche is reiterating its Hold
rating and $13 price target, the lowest price target among credible
financial firms.
JPMorgan is bearish ahead of the release of the quarterly results
with as they reaffirmed their Neutral rating and $17 price target.
The firm forecasts earnings of $0.23 per share on $1.19 billion in
total sales for the quarter. JPMorgan forecasts a 1.5 percent loss
in display revenues and a 8.2 percent loss in search revenues.
An analyst at JPMorgan comments, "We expect new Yahoo! CEO Scott
Thompson, former President of PayPal, to detail his plans to
turnaround the core business. Scott has a strong track record and
brings significant product and technology experience to Yahoo! We
believe Yahoo! may increase its focus on programmatic selling of
display and search campaigns using greater capabilities around
real-time bidding, data mining, and personalization."
BGC is bullish with its quarterly earnings and sales estimates of
$0.26 per share and $1.2 billion. The firm anticipates display
revenue will only be down 0.5 percent as growth remains under
pressure from peers such as Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) and Facebook. BGC
see a 0.4 percent decline in search revenue. The firm highlights
the company is not on tract to see double digit revenue growth in
2012 or 2013.
An analyst at BGC reports, "We also highlight there are no fast
fixes for the company. Any process to liquidate the Asian assets
could take a full year in our opinion and could need regulatory
approval in several regions on the world. Any attempts may to spin
assets using tax efficient methods may encounter stronger than
expected regulatory resistance give the size of the transaction and
the efforts to avoid triggering a taxable event in an election
year."
BGC is maintaining its Hold rating and $17 price target on the
company going into the release.