(Reuters)
Yahoo!’s new CEO, Marissa Mayer, has her hands full.
The 37-year-old engineer is now in charge of something with no real identity and a future very much up in the air.
No, we are not talking about the fact that she is six months pregnant and will lead a major corporate turnaround while becoming a first-time mom.
We’re talking the disaster that has been Yahoo! — the No. 1 US Web portal that doesn’t know if it’s mostly a media company or a tech titan.
Going through five CEOs in three years will do that to a company.
Mayer, hired Monday from Google, will have to dive right in at the Sunnyvale, Calif., company to stem the exodus of eyeballs and dollars.
Its share of the online advertising pie, shrinking for years, is expected to fall to 7.4 percent this year from 9.5 percent in 2011, according to a report yesterday from eMarketer.
That trails rivals Facebook and Google, Mayer’s former employer.
For the moment, at least, Yahoo! would seem to have slowed the bleeding.
Second-quarter profit came in ahead of Wall Street expectations.
Revenue was flat, but display advertising halted its two-quarter slide with a year- over-year increase. The company recorded $534.9 million in display revenue last quarter compared with $523.5 million the year before.
“The business didn’t fall apart like everyone thought it might when they didn’t pick [acting CEO] Ross [Levinsohn],” said analyst Colin Gillis with BGC Partners. “If it was a great quarter, you typically don’t hand the guy his head,” but in this case results likely didn’t play a factor in quarterly results.
The future of Levinsohn, who was not on the earnings call yesterday, could not be learned.
Also, Yahoo! assured shareholders that money from a $4 billion Alibaba Group stock sale would be returned to them.
“If you were worried about a screwy new venture, you don’t have to,” Gillis said.
Yahoo!, whose shares slipped 5 cents, regained 4 cents after hours.