Investors are seeing double this morning. No, it's not just because Yahoo! (NASDAQ:YHOO) saw its June quarter earnings double. It's not because sales also nearly doubled to $609 million from a $321 million showing a year earlier. The real reason that shareholders are seeing double is that despite those healthy financial gains, the stock got rattled last night, taken down a few bucks in after-hours trading.
That's often one of the more nagging aspects of investing. You can buy the right company. You can buy in before the right news. The stock can still kick in with all the wrong moves.
Look at Motley Fool Stock Advisor newsletter recommendation Marvel Enterprises (NYSE:MVL). It seems unlikely that Spider-Man 2 could have fared any better at the box office, yet the stock has surrendered 16% of its value since the movie opened last week.
More often than not, assuming that the company's financial results are at least in line with the market's published expectations (as was the case with Yahoo!), it's what goes unpublished that matters.
No, I'm not talking about the dreadfully silly whisper numbers. However, if you notice that a stock you own starts to appreciate days, weeks, or even months before a tell-tale event, don't be surprised if anything south of Utopia has already been priced into the expectations.
I mean, Yahoo! isn't damaged. Not by a long shot. The same paid search wave that has helped out smaller players such as Ask Jeeves (NASDAQ:ASKJ) and FindWhat.com (NASDAQ:FWHT) has been a major contributor to Yahoo! given its Overture acquisition.
However, after the company kicked off the year with a spectacular first quarter, this June quarter proved to be simply mortal. While the company is now looking to produce between $2.46 to $2.54 billion in sales this year -- a tad better than the $2.4 billion and $2.5 billion range it had suggested back in April -- the market has every right to expect bigger strides. After all, the stock did start out the year at a split-adjusted price of $22.52 -- after nearly tripling in 2003.
So it's OK to see double. Patient investors already saw that -- and then some.
Did Yahoo! earn enough in the quarter? Were you hoping for more? How will the company figure into your plans once Google goes public? All this and more in the Yahoo! discussion board. Only on Fool.com.
Longtime Fool contributor Rick Munarriz doesn't like to whisper numbers -- or sweet nothings, for that matter. He does not own shares in any company mentioned in this story.
