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Technology Stocks : Altaba Inc. (formerly Yahoo) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Geoff Hatcher who wrote (12337)	7/9/1998 1:05:00 AM
From: Raiders	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 27307

Interesting comment from bullish analyst. PALO ALTO, Calif., July 8 (Reuters) - Yahoo! Inc. (YHOO - news) on Wednesday helped set off another rush to buy Internet stocks after it reported sharp increases in both second quarter income and traffic to its Web sites. The Santa Clara, Calif.-based company also announced a much-anticipated 2-for-1 stock split that will become effective in early August. Yahoo!, which is the largest of several Internet directories, posted operating income of $8.1 million, or 15 cents a share, compared with a $300,000, or 1 cent per share, operating loss in the year-ago second quarter. The earnings were well above the expectations of most analysts who had forecast operating income of around 9 cents a share, according to estimates published by First Call. In addition, Yahoo! said its popular Web sites, which enable users to have conversations, do research, and shop over the Internet, attracted millions of new viewers during the latest quarter. Traffic on Yahoo! grew to an average 115 million page views per day in June, up from 95 million in March. While Yahoo! stock has been a market leader for the past several months, the latest numbers seemed to provide new incentive for investors to put money into Yahoo and other companies that deliver online services. Yahoo stock, which ended Wednesday's Nasdaq session down $4.81 at $186.19 a share, jumped to around $202 in after-hours trade shortly after the report. Other Internet stocks including online bookseller Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN - news), and Internet directories like Excite Inc. (XCIT - news), Lycos Inc. (LCOS - news) and Netscape Communications Corp. (NSCP - news) were also up in after-hours trade, in apparent reaction to Yahoo! ''Among some circles Yahoo! is viewed as a bellwether,'' Yahoo! President Tim Koogle said in an interview. Asked whether he believed what was good for Yahoo! was good for other Internet businesses, he replied, ''that's what we've always felt.'' But some analysts issued a note of caution that these latest stock price gains may not be justified. ''If you didn't know what Yahoo!'s stock price was, it was a great quarter,'' said Keith Benjamin, an analyst with BancAmerica Robertson Stephens in San Francisco. But as he noted, Yahoo!'s stock has already risen very far very fast. Since its last earnings report in April, Yahoo!'s stock price has doubled. It is currently trading at more than 10 times the $19 a share at which it went public on May 31, 1996. Benjamin maintains a ''buy'' recommendation on the stock, but said the latest earnings were ''not that much of a positive surprise'' that further gains in its stock price would be justified. ''I will be shocked if it is up much more tomorrow. I will be relieved if it is flat to down,'' he said. Most of the interest in Internet stocks is based not on their current performance so much as on their outlook in the long term, as more and more people and businesses are expected to go online, re-defining traditional media. Although Yahoo! is one of the few Internet companies that has yet to turn a profit, it too had a net loss in the latest quarter, after factoring in $44.1 million of acquisition charges. Those charges related to the recent acquisition of the electronic commerce software company Viaweb Inc, and resulted in a net loss for Yahoo of $36 million, or 81 cents per share. Yahoo! last month agreed to buy Viaweb for $49 million, its largest acquisition to date which is intended to add thousands of online merchants to its Web sites. Koogle said Wednesday the company would continue to pursue new partnerships and acquistions with companies that could enhance the content it offers. But he stressed Yahoo! is not up for sale and is not looking for another company to buy a controlling interest in it. Yahoo! also announced on Wednesday that it had raised $250 million through a private placement of stock to Softbank Holdings Inc, a unit of the Japanese company Softbank Corp. (9984.T). The transaction increases Softbank's stake in Yahoo! to 31 percent from abut 29 percent. Although no reason was given for the transaction, a Yahoo! spokeswoman said the company wants to keep a strong cash position, in part to be flexible about future acquisitions. "We're talking to companies all the time," she said. ''We want to be flexible and be opportunistic in a variety of ways, including acquisitions.''