PALO
ALTO, Calif., May 18 (Reuters) - Financial analysts who attended a
meeting with Yahoo! Inc.(YHOO.O) executives on Thursday said the company
highlighted several new ways it plans to grow revenue and expand into
new business areas.
They
said Yahoo! placed particular emphasis on its new wireless services, its
growing corporate services, and its already successful shopping
business, which it plans to transform into a bigger money-maker by
charging additional fees to participating merchants.
"They
reinforced that they are entering the second big phase of growth,"
said U.S. Bancorp Piper Jaffray analyst Safa Rashtchy, who attended the
meeting. "Up until now, they have been focused on building a
platform for Internet content. Now they will focus on really growing
revenues."
One
big potential revenue source for Yahoo is its shopping service, which
lists more than 10,000 merchants. Rashtchy said Yahoo! was for a long
time focused on building an extensive merchant base, and has just
recently begun charging many of those stores a commission on sales
completed online.
He
also said Yahoo! plans to enter more partnerships with large
corporations to help them build company portals on the Yahoo site. Many
companies have begun to favour portals for posting employee information,
over corporate intranets, finding it is more convenient for their
workers to go through a site like Yahoo! that they already visit in the
course of their work day.
Yahoo!
is also aggressively deploying its content over wireless devices like
cellphones and is reviewing ways to monetize that content, through
advertising and sponsorships tailored for the smaller screens.
Piper
Jaffray's Rashtchy predicts Yahoo! will be able to generate revenues
from the wireless content much faster than it did with its PC content.
