Financial and Investment News

According to a news report today from the AFP network,
the internet giant known as the Yahoo Corporation has reported that their 3rd quarter profits have slipped despite an increase in revenues and an almost finishes corporate structure reorganization.
Their income for the quarter was 151 million dollars, or some eleven cents per share, as compared to 159 million dollars in the same period in 2006.
Interestingly enouph, some stock market analysts had predicted that the firm would post income of twelve cents per share.
Revenue had risen to 1.77 billion from 1.58 billion in the corresponding quarter in 2006.
Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang, who took over as CEO earlier in the year and started several months ago on a one hundred day plan to reorganize the firm into a more profitable entity, remained optimistic in general.
Yang stated that his firm has made  certain decisions to increase the size of it’s user base as well as the website publishers who use their services.
All in all, their lackluster 3rd Qtr. results came about as it faced some big questions from the United States Congress.
For example, the United States House Committee on Foreign Affairs stated today that it desires the firm’s executives to testify at a hearing concerning their role in a human rights case in China which resulted in a journalist being imprisoned for about ten years.
The Committee chairman Tom Lantos had requested that Yang appear at a hearing next month to discuss the firm’s disclosure of damning data to the Chinese authorities regarding the case of Shi Tao.
“We want to clarify how that happened, and to hold the company to account for its actions. And we want to examine what steps the company has taken since then to protect the privacy rights of its users in China.”
The committee has stated that it has data which seems to indicate that Yahoo had known more regarding the Chinese investigation than was admitted during testimony. Well I personally predict that they will make a strong rebound in the near future.
They are still the most popular portal site on the internet and they just have too many users not to sustain their profits, particularly with the pending reorganization, in my humble opinion.

According to a report in the highly respected Bloomber Financial News network website,
the Time Warner Corp., which is the globe’s single largest media firm,
will cut about two thousand positions or so over at the America Online web division. This is around twenty percent of their total
workforce so this is obviously a severe reduction in general.This is all sort of unfortunate from my perspective because America Online were Internet pioneer’s created back in 1985. This child of the 80’s who came on the scene when ‘Breakfast at tiffany’s’ ‘St. Elmo’s fire’
and Madonna were hot is now attemting to catch up to more modern and streamlined competitors such as the Yahoo Corporation with free e-mail and other internet services.
On a more optimistic note, however, expense reductions will permit them to invest in their own network network for web advertising revenue, CEO Randy Falco stated recently.
 Falco, who was initially brought on by Time warner head Richard Parsons the previous year,
 is leading a shift to free electronic mail and related services supported by advertisers following the lost subscribers.
This is one of the reasons they recently announced that they would be moving their main base to New York from Virginia, so as to be closer to their advertisers.
In fact that move, which is supposed to occur in 2007,  should be the last step in their plan to become an advertising-based firm. They also bought Tacoda, which places advertisements based on consumers’ online behavior,
 and likewise Advertising.com, an advertisement-buying service, three years ago. So they have been looking ahead for some time now, apparently.
The firm will start notifying workers of the job cuts on October 16, America Online spokeswoman Bentley stated.
Let us hope that there is not another round of cuts like this in store in the near future. That could certainly impact negatively
on the economy as a whole. Hopefully i will have some better economic news to report next time.