In an effort to bolster stocks and refocus on new areas for development, Yahoo! Chief Executive and co-founder Jerry Yang announced that about 1,000 jobs will have to be slashed from its existing workforce of about 14,300. The cuts represent 7% of the total Yahoo! manpower and will be executed by mid-February.
I earlier mentioned that I have known a few new friends from Yahoo! Hong Kong through BarCamp Hong Kong and business partnerships in Yahoo! Search Marketing. I continue to wish them well amid these uncertain times. As these friends belong to an income generating business unit, which I believe Yahoo! will continue to support, I am positive their jobs are not at risk.
This news comes as an added pain in the neck for the Sunnyvale-based company, whose 4th Quarter profits fell once more and its Captcha, a security feature on many of its properties has been hacked and fears of massive spam activity will take place.
Yahoo said it earned 15 cents per share in its final fiscal quarter of 2007 as compared with 19 cents per share, or 269 million dollars, in the same period a year earlier.
Financial analysts had predicted Yahoo! would earn approximately 11 cents per share.
Yahoo reported its revenues for 2007 climbed eight percent to 1.8 billion dollars as compared to revenues in the prior year.
However, Yahoo’s net income for 2007 was 660 million dollars, or 47 cents per share, as compared to 751 million, or 52 cents per share, in 2006.
The firm last cut jobs while surviving the dot-com bust of 2000 and is consistently ranked among the most visited online properties on the planet.
Last year Yang replaced Yahoo chief executive Terry Semel, a former Warner Brothers studio executive criticized by analysts for blurring Yahoo’s focus on search.
A good news for Yahoo! behind these spate of negative views is that a new deal enables Yahoo! to reach 70 million AT&T mobile users in a new deal.
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