On the eve of her second anniversary as CEO of
Falling short even of Wall Street analyst's pessimistic expectations, Yahoo reported $1.08 billion in revenues, down 4% from the same quarter last year. Display revenue, the focus of Mayer's turnaround strategy, was down 8%.
In a statement accompanying the numbers, Mayer acknowledged the obvious. "Our top priority is revenue growth and by that measure, we are not satisfied with our Q2 results....[D]isplay remains an area of investment and transition. In Q2, we saw display revenue decline, further highlighting the fact that we need to work faster to ameliorate the negative trends. I believe we can and will do better moving forward."
It was so bad, the top achievement listed under the "Business Highlights" heading was an agreement Yahoo reached with Alibaba letting the former sell fewer shares in the latter's upcoming IPO than was originally contracted. Yahoo's 22% stake in the Chinese e-commerce company has been single-handedly propping up its share price for the last two years, providing Mayer the capital to make acquisitions, like the $1.1 billion purchase of Tumblr, meant to put the company on the road to revenue growth.
Mayer and CFO Ken Goldman will take analyst's questions on a conference call that starts at 2 p.m. PST. Here's guessing they get some tough ones. I'll be updating this post with news from the call.
"If you step back and look at where we were two years ago and where we are today, and, more importantly, how we got here, I'm very impressed with our achievements," Mayer declared at one point. "In all the growing areas of our industry, we are growing at the pace of the industry if not faster," she said at another.
The latter assertion is not true, at least not if you include "digital advertising" as part of "all the growing areas of our industry." And you should: Digital ad spending worldwide is projected to jump 16.7% in 2014, according to eMarketer.
Mayer also talked up how much time she's been spending meeting with advertisers, claiming she had personal face time with more than 500 people representing more than 350 brands during the quarter. Presumably she's picking up for the slack created when she fired Henrique de Castro, her handpicked chief salesman, in January.
One might question whether meeting with five or six media buyers a day is the best use of a CEO's time. At any rate, she seems to find it exhausting work.
Earlier today: eMarketer forecasts Microsoft will surpass Yahoo to become the No. 3 digital ad seller worldwide in 2014.
