Yahoo Inc.’s fourth-quarter earnings more than doubled, but the Internet company’s sagging revenue showed that it’s still lagging in the high-stakes race for online advertising.
The results announced Tuesday illuminated why many investors are wondering if Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz is the right person for the job as she enters the second half of a four-year contract she signed in January 2009. Those doubts have undermined Yahoo’s stock price, fanning speculation that the company may attract a takeover bid from buyout firms that prey on troubled companies.
Yahoo shares fell 38 cents, or 2.4 percent, to $15.64 in extended trading Tuesday after the results were released. In regular trading earlier, shares dipped 7 cents to $16.02.
Although Bartz has boosted Yahoo’s earnings through layoffs and other cost-cutting measures, the company’s revenue has fallen since her arrival.
With less money coming into the company, Yahoo has laid off more than 700 workers in the past two months. The latest cutbacks came Tuesday, with Yahoo laying off 100 to 150 employees, roughly 1 percent from a work force that totaled 13,600 people at the end of December. Bartz told analysts in a conference call that the company still intends to hire more people this year while finding other ways to ensure its expenses don’t rise.
“We are on the right path,” Tim Morse, Yahoo’s chief financial officer, said in an interview. “We are transitioning into a different company, and that is going to take some time.”
Signaling the financial funk will persist into this year, Yahoo predicted its net revenue during the first quarter will decline by 4 percent to 10 percent from last year. The net revenue figure strips out commissions that Yahoo pays its advertising partners. The company, based in Sunnyvale, didn’t provide a full-year outlook.
Yahoo earned $312 million, or 24 cents per share, in the…