The net profit was USD 2.64 per share, up from USD 0.23 a year earlier thanks to a USD 2.8 billion gain on the sale of shares in Chinese affiliate Alibaba. A technology payment from Alibaba of USD 550 million helped free cash flow more than triple, to USD 920 million from USD 247 million in the year-earlier period. Yahoo finished September with total cash of USD 9.4 billion, up from USD 2.1 billion at the start of the year, and said it expected to pay tax of USD 2.5 billion on the Alibaba sale in Q4.
Media reports from the conference call on results said the new CEO stressed the need to step up Yahoo's efforts in mobile services. “While we’ve made progress, Yahoo hasn’t capitalised on the mobile opportunity,” she said. “We’ve underinvested in our mobile front-end development and we’ve splintered our brand. All of this needs to change.” The Financial Times cites the CEO as saying that Yahoo! will be a “predominantly mobile company” in the “not too distant future”. She said that the company's top priority will be "a focused, coherent mobile strategy”, as part of efforts to "go back to our roots as a consumer internet company focused on user experiences”.
