Yahoo Japan Profit triples. I know things are just about dead here, but I thought I would post this, just for the record. Softbank closes up 20% for the day here in the US.:
quote.bloomberg.com
Yahoo Japan 3Q Profit Almost Triples; Online Ads Grow (Update2)
By Hiroshi Suzuki
Tokyo, Jan. 16 (Bloomberg) -- Yahoo Japan Corp. said third- quarter profit almost tripled as Japan's most-visited Internet directory sold more advertising to the growing list of Japanese companies marketing themselves on line.
Yahoo Japan reported parent pretax profit rose to 1.5 billion yen ($12.7 million) in the three months ended Dec. 31 from 584.4 million yen a year earlier, marking the tenth straight quarter of year-on-year gains. Sales more than doubled to 3.7 billion yen from 1.6 billion yen a year ago. About 95 percent of its sales came from advertising.
Yahoo Japan, a joint venture between Santa Clara, California- based Yahoo! Inc. and Japan's Softbank Corp., is benefiting from the growth in Internet-based marketing. Online advertising in Japan is expected to rise 15-fold to an annual 353 billion yen within five years, according to a research report from Morgan Stanley Dean Witter.
`` Yahoo! Japan is the best-branded, managed, and positioned company'' in Japan's online ad market, said Thomas Rodes, an analyst with Nikko Salomon Smith Barney Ltd., who estimated the Japanese online media market will reach 44 billion yen in fiscal 2000 and grow to 240 billion yen in fiscal 2003.
Yahoo Japan is the most popular destination for Japanese Web surfers looking for information on the Internet. The search engine is logging 142 million page views a day, more than 11 times the number of page views at rival Lycos Japan, the local unit of Lycos Inc.
For the three months, the average number of companies placing advertising on Yahoo Japan's web sites hit an all-time high of 906 a month, almost tripling from 334 the same period a year earlier, it said. Clients included NEC Corp., the world's No. 3 chipmaker, Toyota Motor Corp., the world's No. 3 automaker, and All Nippon Airways Co., Japan's No. 1 domestic carrier.
Yahoo Japan shares fell more than 70 percent last year as investors, concerned about the lack of profitability at Web-based companies, turned their backs on Internet-tinged stocks.
The shares soared 1 million yen, or 20 percent, to 6.1 million yen. Some 490 shares traded, almost four times the daily average the past six months. |
