Internet portal Yahoo! is suffering from the same weak advertising revenues
that has caused scores of dotcom companies to close their virtual doors.
Yahoo!'s once coveted stock has dropped nearly two-thirds in value this year
from $250 to around $85 a share.
Yahoo!'s first-quarter sales are projected to be around $280 million. Any
downturn in advertising sales has a disproportionate effect on Yahoo's fiscal
results as the company relies heavily on ad revenues. Yahoo! is still
outperforming most in the dotcom space as the company has been under pressure to
grow sales and earnings ever since it became one of the first dotcoms to go
public. The subsequent wave of Internet companies that went public were
well-funded with venture capital and spent lavishly to gain name recognition.
But once the access to capital eroded, operating expenses quickly spelled an
early demise.