Yahoo Cites Panama and Partnerships in Quarterly Earnings Report

Yahoo proudly touted its Panama advertising platform and new partnerships when it announced an increase in revenues yesterday for its first quarter earnings in 2007. The company stated revenues were $1,672 million in Q1, a seven percent increase over the same period in 2006.

However, net income for the first quarter was $142 million, or .10 cents per share, compared with $159.9 million, or .11 cents a share, a year earlier, which did not meet analyst predictions of a greater profit margin.

Despite financial analysts’ disappointment with the earnings, Yahoo executives were upbeat about the company’s future with the Panama search platform, and its many partnerships, including an extension of its newspaper consortium partnership, deals with the five major U.S. television broadcasting stations, the NBA, and others.

“Our vision for our global advertiser network is to revolutionize how advertisers connect with their target customers across the Internet,” said Terry Semel, Yahoo’s chairman and chief executive officer.

Semel acknowledged the lag in income may be attributed to the initial transfer of users to the Panama platform, but stressed it “is the first stop in a broader company priority to create next generation platforms. We have heard from our advertisers they are seeing meaningful improvements in their ad performance.”

The company also announced a new partnership with eBay’s PayPal service that will provide Yahoo Sponsored Search results with a blue shopping cart icon that will link to merchants that accept PayPal Express Checkout as a method of payment.

“We’re real excited about the new Yahoo PayPal Checkout deal. We’ll have 2,500 merchants with the icon starting today,” said CFO Susan Decker. “It offers for closed loop insight into transactions, which will be helpful for both companies.”