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Yahoo beats Q4 earnings predictions and expectedly delays the closure of Verizon acquisition

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Beating Wall Street earnings expectations, Yahoo released its fourth quarter earnings results, generating $1.47 billion in revenue and earnings per share of $0.17. The analysts had expected the company to report $1.38 billion in revenue with earnings per share of $0.13.

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That's a 15 percent increase on revenue of $1.27 billion generated in Q4 last year.

Chief Executive Officer of Yahoo Marissa Mayer said, “What we have achieved reflects some of the most impressive teamwork, focus, and resilience I’ve seen throughout my career. We continued to build our mobile and native businesses — delivering nearly $1.5 billion in mobile revenue and over $750 million in native revenue — while operating the company at the lowest cost structure in a decade. With our 2016 and Q4 financial results ahead of plan, and the continued stability in our user engagement trends, the opportunities ahead with Verizon look bright.”

Amid the better-than-expected financial performance, Yahoo also announced that it expects to close the $4.8 billion acquisition by Verizon by Q2 2017. Initially, the deal was supposed to be closed by this quarter.

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"Given work required to meet closing conditions, the transaction is now expected to close in Q2 of 2017," Yahoo said.

In July last year, Verizon agreed to acquire Yahoo's core businesses to expand the scale of its AOL media offerings which was followed by two major hacking disclosures affecting more than one billion accounts.

Meanwhile, the Securities and Exchange Commission is also investigating why Yahoo failed to notify investors of the breaches.

Though Mayer did not directly confirm the investigation, she said in the earnings release, “In addition to integration planning, our top priority continues to be enhancing security for our users. With security protocols and password changes in place, approximately 90 percent of our daily active users have already taken or do not need to take remedial action to protect their accounts, and we’re aggressively continuing to drive this number up."

She further added, "Our commitment to our users is unwavering, and we continue to be encouraged by their loyalty to us and their ongoing patronage of our products.”

Despite facing many hitches last year, Yahoo launched several new initiatives including expanding access to Hulu TV show clips and creating new advertising features.

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