I've been out of town for a week (no computer) and I see that we closed up on the US market to $530 only to have the Tokyo market slide down the limit to $441. Frankfurt opened at about the same level as Tokyo so we continue to see a pretty large difference between the US and the Tokyo prices. Is anyone trying to sell into the US market and buy in Japan?
This was posted on Nikkei Net. Appparently Yahoo Japan is still looking good:
Tuesday, April 18, 2000
Yahoo Japan Pretax Profit Rockets 420%
TOKYO (Nikkei)--Yahoo Japan Corp. (4689) saw pretax profit for the year ended March 31 leap by 420% to 2.03 billion yen, the company announced Tuesday. Sales tripled to 5.7 billion yen.
The sharp increase in pretax profit was attributed to major growth in advertisement revenue amid expansion of the Internet ad market.
Yahoo's Web site last month totaled 2.12 billion page views, up 280% on the year. The company started online shopping and auctions in September, in addition to its search engine service. The large portal site operator chooses online shops very carefully, and, to attract users, does not take commissions from sellers using its auction site.
Yahoo Japan, a subsidiary of Softbank Corp. (9984), also absorbed GeoCities, which offers space for home pages and e-mail addresses for free, on March 1, helping to increase its page view total.
As a result of the rise in page views, advertising revenue rose 260% to 5.14 billion yen. Pretax profit grew faster than sales because spending on sales and administration only rose 50%, despite a 70% rise in personnel costs resulting from a sharp increase in the payroll.
Yahoo plans to start an information service for cellular phone users by the end of next March. The company will target specific socioeconomic and other population profiles in providing information such as news and stock prices. Rival search engine companies have already started similar services.
Yahoo Japan expects pretax profit to grow by 160% in the current business year to 5.2 billion yen on sales of 12.5 billion yen, up 120%, on the back of the growing Internet ad market and its new service for cellular phone subscribers. The total Internet ad market in Japan is expected to expand by 53% this year to 37 billion yen.
(The Nihon Keizai Shimbun Wednesday morning edition)
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Corporate Profiles:
YAHOO JAPAN(4689)
SOFTBANK(9984)
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