I don't know how unbiased I am. Since Tuesday, Yahoo is back to being one of my biggest positions.
I think it's best to think of Yahoo like AOL in 1993. AOL wasn't making money then, but it appreciated 30x before turning a profit. What longs are buying into here is the Internet land-grab.
Yahoo is the leading pure-Internet content aggregator, and it continues to gain share. All the supporting metrics (page views, page-view share, advertiser counts, advertising dollars budgeted by each advertiser, business users, etc) continue to grow at rapid rates, and Yahoo is only 20% sold out. There is plenty of potential.
In contrast to what Bill Wexler has been contending about advertising rates, I hear that CPM's ("cost-per-thousands", which is the standard measure of advertising cost) remain stable in the $20-25 range depending on which areas the advertising runs. For example, financial pages are more expensive.
Yahoo is also a global medium, and they have aggressively rolled out special interest areas for women and kids, plus localized sites, which enhance Yahoo's selling story to advertisers.
Advertising is really only half the story. If my memory serves me right, about 40% of Yahoo's revenues come from paid placement from the likes of Amazon, E*Trade, etc. For instance, E*Trade recently reported great success from its Yahoo deal, with tens of thousands of new accounts (with heavier trading activity, to boot) referred from Yahoo's quote pages.
If you visit Yahoo's employment page, you'll see where they're heading in the the areas of travel, etc.
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