Like its ubiquitous yodeler, Yahoo!
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
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.