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

To: Anthony Tsai who wrote (21434)	4/16/1999 5:34:00 AM
From: BomboochaBoy	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 27307

Yahoo Japan Profit Triples in FY98 on Higher Advertising Sales news.com Bloomberg News April 16, 1999, 12:35 a.m. PT Yahoo Japan Profit Triples in FY98 on Higher Advertising Sales Tokyo, April 16 (Bloomberg) -- Yahoo Japan Corp., Japan's most-visited Internet directory, said pretax profit tripled in its third full year of operation as more Japanese companies took their advertising online. Yahoo Japan, launched in January 1996 as joint venture between Santa Clara, California-based Yahoo! Inc. and Japan's Softbank Corp., posted a better-than-expected pretax profit of 391 million yen ($3.3 million) for the year ended March 31, up from 131 million yen the previous year. Sales grew 50 percent to 1.9 billion yen, nourished by advertising outlays from automakers, retailers and other Japanese companies turning to the worldwide computer network to promote their products. The Japanese version of the world's most popular Internet directory posted net profit of 184 million yen, or 27,068 yen per share, from 64 million yen the previous year. Yahoo Japan has finished in the black since the year ending March 1997 -- something its U.S. namesake didn't achieve until its fourth year of operation -- and analysts say its earnings prospects are excellent since there are still only around 14 million Internet users in Japan, a sixth as many as in the U.S. ''Growth is a scarce commodity in Japan, and this company certainly has growth which is sustainable,'' said Mahendra Negi, an analyst at Merrill Lynch Japan Inc. With Japanese companies spending around 5.5 trillion yen annually on advertising, Yahoo Japan's annual sales of around 2 billion yen are ''barely scratching the surface,'' Negi said. Internet expenditures by Japan's top advertising agencies were 11.4 billion yen in the year just ended, rising above 10 billion yen for the first time. Yahoo Japan's most recent forecast, issued March 8, called for pretax profit of 270 million yen on sales of 1.85 billion yen. Toyo Keizai Inc., a financial information service, had estimated pretax profit of 310 million on sales of 1.85 billion yen. Yahoo Japan didn't issue earnings projections for the year begun April 1. Financial Hot Links The company is positioned to profit from alliances with other localized versions of popular U.S. Internet services in which parent Softbank has invested, analysts say. Softbank, Japan's biggest software distributor which billionaire founder Masayoshi Son has in recent years built into one of the world's largest Internet financiers, has joint ventures with companies including E*Trade Group Inc., Onsale Inc. and Broadcast.com Inc. By integrating electronic-commerce and other services, Yahoo Japan may be able to widen its lead over competitors including Excite Japan Co. and Infoseek Japan Co. Traffic on Yahoo Japan's Web pages was 23 million page- views a day, up from 9 million page-views last year. A page- view is one page of electronic information displayed upon a user's request. U.S. Yahoo said earlier this month that its traffic has increased to around 235 million page-views. Overvalued? Yahoo Japan's stock has risen eleven-fold this year as investors are betting Japan's relatively underdeveloped Internet industry will duplicate the explosive growth seen in the U.S. Shares touched an all-time high of 60 million yen last Friday after U.S. Yahoo reported better-than-expected first-quarter earnings. That dizzying climb provoked warnings from some analysts. ''Yahoo Japan's stock price has become the object of speculation,'' said Yasuo Imanaka, an analyst at Commerz Securities (Japan) Co. ''No matter what estimates you use, there's no way to justify shares at 60 million yen.'' Even assuming the company's pretax earnings continue to double or triple over the next three years, the stock is expensive, Imanaka said. Yahoo Japan went public in November 1997, 21 months after being formed as a 60-40 joint venture between Softbank and Yahoo. Shares debuted on Japan's over-the-counter market at 2 million yen, and Softbank has accumulated gains of almost $3 billion on its initial investment in the online directory. Even that sum pales, however, in comparison to the $10 billion in unrealized profits that Softbank has recorded on its 28 percent stake in U.S. Yahoo. Yahoo Japan's shares today fell 4 million yen to 43 million. The results were released shortly before the market closed.