Yahoo!'s Your Daddy

Like its ubiquitous yodeler, Yahoo! (Nasdaq: YHOO  ) always draws a crowd -- and great expectations. That's why the market let out a collective groan last night when the leading online portal reported second-quarter profits merely in line with Wall Street expectations.

There were positives to be sure. The quarter was the company's fifth consecutive showing of profit, something that seemed unfathomable once the ad market dried up and left Yahoo! chasing eyeballs for sport. Even more impressive, Yahoo! rode its new services, fees and listings business model to this quarter's double-digit revenue gains.

Make no mistake, Yahoo! is a dot-com survivor. And, yes, earnings more than doubled to $0.08 per share on $321 million in revenues for the June quarter -- and that may have been in line with public expectations -- but let's cut to the chase, shall we? Yahoo! had more than tripled off its single-digit lows since September.

The stock isn't exactly cheap. Remember when Disney (NYSE: DIS  ) was mulling a buyout? Disney thought the company overpriced then -- at less than half yesterday's close. Honestly, isn't paying more than 75 times trailing free cash flow, even if it is $261.5 million, a dicey proposition?

Going forward, $250 million in operating profits (on $1.285 billion in revenues) puts you in the middle of the company's range for the full year. Impressive. Still, paying more than 15 times revenue on a younger, nimbler Yahoo! may have felt like a good idea in the golden, bubble days, but not now. Yahoo! may well be a better company today, but a better investment? Not likely.

Is Yahoo! overpriced or do the improving fundamentals justify the stock's present price? Is the company depending too heavily on sponsored listings to bring home the bacon? Hey, what's up with the Google IPO? All this and more -- in the Yahoo! discussion board . Only on Fool.com.