Yahoo Inc. said yesterday that its revenue for the fourth quarter and the full year 2001 were substantially lower than a year ago.
Also, Jeff Mallett, Yahoo’s president and chief operating officer, announced his resignation. He plans to leave the company in April to “pursue more personal flexibility.” Her did not provide further details.
The portal reported net revenue for 2001 of $717.4 million, down from $1.1 billion in 2000. For the fourth quarter, Yahoo said, its net revenue fell to $188.9 million, from $310.9 million in the same quarter a year earlier.
Yahoo also posted a loss for the fourth quarter and full year. For the full year 2001, the loss was $92.8 million, or 16 cents per share, compared with income of $70.8 million, or 12 cents per share, a year earlier. However, in the fourth quarter Yahoo’s net loss declined to $8.6 million, or 2 cents per share, from a loss of $97.8 million, or 17 cents per share, in the fourth quarter of 2000.
The company said it expects first-quarter 2002 revenue of $160 million to $180 million. For the full year, Yahoo expects revenue of $750 million to $800 million.
Yahoo noted that in the fourth quarter of 2001, its global audience grew to 219 million unique users, up from 180 million a year earlier. In December, the portal’s traffic increased to 1.32 billion page views per day, up from 900 million in December 2000. The company said the average U.S. user spends 2 hours and 15 minutes a month on the site.
It also said it enabled nearly $1.5 billion in commerce transactions in the fourth quarter and served 3,795 advertisers and merchants. The company’s communications platform, including Yahoo Messenger, Yahoo Mail and Yahoo Groups, delivered 19.1 billion messages in December, up 30 percent from the third quarter.
