Yahoo beats Street with help from Alibaba, mobile

Sunnyvale, Calif. –- Strong mobile revenue and proceeds from the sale of a portion of its stake in Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. helped Yahoo Inc. beat Wall Street estimates for earnings per share (EPS) and revenue in the third quarter of fiscal 2014. EPS totaled $0.52, up 62% from $0.32 the same quarter the prior fiscal year, and revenue grew 1% to $1.15 billion from $1.14 billion.



Yahoo reported mobile revenue of $200 million during the quarter. Search ad revenue rose while display ad revenue decreased. Other highlights included announcing Yahoo Recommends, which brings Yahoo’s content personalization technology and native ads to publishers across the Web, launching on publisher sites CBSi, VOX Media and Hearst, and the acquisition of mobile data analytics company Flurry. Yahoo expects to create better app user experiences and mobile advertising solutions through the Flurry acquisition.



“We achieved revenue growth through strong growth in our new areas of investment--mobile, social, native and video--despite industry headwinds in some of our large, legacy businesses,” said Marissa Mayer, CEO of Yahoo. “I am also pleased to report today that our revenue in mobile is now material. In Q3, we saw mobile revenues in excess of $200 million on a GAAP basis. Further, we estimate that our gross revenues in mobile will exceed $1.2 billion in revenue this year.”