Thursday May 18, 8:30 pm Eastern Time
Yahoo! highlights new revenue streams
PALO ALTO, Calif., May 18 (Reuters) - Financial analysts who attended a meeting with Yahoo!
Inc.(NasdaqNM:YHOO - news) executives on Thursday said the company highlighted several new ways it plans
to grow revenue and expand into new business areas.
They said Yahoo! placed particular emphasis on its new wireless services, its growing corporate services, and its already successful shopping business,
which it plans to transform into a bigger money-maker by charging additional fees to participating merchants.
``They reinforced that they are entering the second big phase of growth,'' said U.S. Bancorp Piper Jaffray analyst Safa Rashtchy, who attended the
meeting. ``Up until now, they have been focused on building a platform for Internet content. Now they will focus on really growing revenues.''
One big potential revenue source for Yahoo is its shopping service, which lists more than 10,000 merchants. Rashtchy said Yahoo! was for a long time
focused on building an extensive merchant base, and has just recently begun charging many of those stores a commission on sales completed online.
He also said Yahoo! plans to enter more partnerships with large corporations to help them build company portals on the Yahoo site. Many companies
have begun to favour portals for posting employee information, over corporate intranets, finding it is more convenient for their workers to go through a
site like Yahoo! that they already visit in the course of their work day.
Yahoo! is also aggressively deploying its content over wireless devices like cellphones and is reviewing ways to monetize that content, through
advertising and sponsorships tailored for the smaller screens.
Piper Jaffray's Rashtchy predicts Yahoo! will be able to generate revenues from the wireless content much faster than it did with its PC content. |
