Yahoo! Falls Flat

Updated from 5 p.m.

The news keeps getting worse at Yahoo! (YHOO Quote).

Shares of the Net giant plunged late Tuesday after the company disappointed Wall Street on multiple fronts.

First Yahoo! reported second-quarter revenue that fell short of expectations. Then it offered guidance that failed to impress investors. And in a postclose conference call, Yahoo! pushed back by a quarter the rollout of new technology that was supposed to close the gap with search leader Google (GOOG Quote).

"We think it's prudent to add extra time," CEO Terry Semel said on the conference call. "We believe that this is the right decision in terms of assuring the most successful commerical launch possible."

It was the wrong decision in terms of the hammering the company's stock took. After earlier being down in the high single digits percentagewise, Yahoo! sank as much as 13% as Semel spoke on the call.

Semel says Yahoo!'s new search technology will be up and running in the fourth quarter, rather than in the third as previously expected.

Yahoo!'s technology delay only adds to the pain in Sunnyvale, Calif. For its quarter ended June 30, the company made $164 million, or 11 cents a share. That compares with an investment-gain padded $755 million, or 51 cents a share, a year ago. Net revenue, excluding the money Yahoo! shares with search-advertising partners, rose 28% from a year earlier to $1.12 billion.

Analysts surveyed by Thomson Financial were looking for an 11-cent profit on sales of $1.14 billion.

"You could say that expectations were a little bit ahead of themselves," says Martin Pyykkonen, an analyst with Crown Global Capital who rates the shares overweight with a $40 price target. "It's not a major shortfall. It's more on the margins."

Revenue rose 32% from a year ago internationally but only 23% in the U.S., Yahoo! said. U.S. segment operating income before depreciation, amortization and stock-based compensation expense rose 17%, compared with a 51% gain internationally. This may indicate that competition with Google and smaller niche Web sites may be hurting Yahoo!.

"We continued to execute on our plan in the second quarter -- delivering strong revenue growth, profitability, and returns on our significant free cash flow -- while also investing in our business to position the company for future growth," said finance chief Susan Decker. "We believe these investments will expand our unique collection of online services to best meet the objectives of our customers and users, generating maximum value for our network."

Excluding stock-based compensation and other items, latest-quarter earnings rose to $237 million, or 16 cents a share, from the year-ago $209 million, or 14 cents a share.

So-called traffic acquisition costs, fees that Yahoo! pays to its partners, jumped 20% to $453.2 million in the quarter. Total operating expenses soared 43% to $700.5 million.

For the third quarter, Yahoo! expects to post revenue of $1.12 billion to $1.23 billion, where analysts were looking for $1.20 billion. For the year, the company is guiding to revenue of $4.6 billion to $4.85 billion, where analysts see $4.78 billion.

The news comes as Yahoo! struggles to win back investors discouraged by the company's search-market share losses at the hands of Google. Yahoo! shares were down 18% for the year heading into Tuesday's report, while the Nasdaq was down 8% and Google was off 1%.

Shares of Yahoo! rose 40 cents ahead of Tuesday's postclose report to close at $32.24. But Yahoo! fell $4.27 in late action to $27.97 and Google sagged $12.74 to $390.31.