Yahoo Gets Stock Boost From “Outperform” Rating

Although this turned out to be a pretty "meh" day for the stock market as a whole - the Dow and S&P 500 slipped a little bit, while the Nasdaq didn't gain much - Yahoo investors should be feeling pleased.  Yahoo's stock rose by a significant amount as an analyst rated it "market outperform," up from "market perform."

Sameet Sinha of JMP Securities is the man who's responsible for making that change, and he attributed the move to Yahoo's relationship with Microsoft.  Sinha indicated that other experts will come to think better of the company, too, as additional financial models incorporate the deal.

Then here's another, more concrete, detail: Sinha set a price target of $21.  Since Yahoo's stock hasn't been that high since July of 2008, that would be a significant level.

As for the current price of Yahoo's stock, it's been very much on the move.  It rose 2.86 percent during the trading day, taking it from $16.06 to $16.52.

Again, then, this was a good day for Yahoo's shareholders.  Google's shareholders lost a small amount of money, meanwhile (its stock decreased 0.31 percent), and Microsoft's shareholders made an even smaller amount (its stock rose 0.15 percent).

Estimate Puts YouTube’s Gross Revenue At $945m

An important, if not surprising, item: Another Google/YouTube exec has voiced his opinion that YouTube will be profitable this year.  More interestingly, an outside analyst has done the same, and also forecast a gross revenue figure of almost $1 billion.

Let's start by talking about Citigroup's Mark Mahaney, who generated that estimate.  As Peter Kafka explained, Mahaney took MySpace's established revenue-to-page view ratio and applied it to YouTube's stats.  In this manner, he predicted that YouTube will earn $945 million and $614 million this year in gross and net revenue, respectively.

Next year, Mahaney thinks YouTube might earn $1.13 billion and $737 million in gross and net revenue.

As for the other man who believes YouTube will do more than break even, he's Patrick Walker, a director of video partnerships for Google and YouTube.  Walker thinks YouTube's ability to help sell CDs and DVDs will prove important, along with the introduction of long-form videos.  The site's established knack at getting lots of people to watch ads should be handy, too, of course.

Now there's just the matter of whether or not Google will see fit to inform us about YouTube's performance as time goes by, since the company's generally kept exact figures under wrap.

Google’s CFO: “It’s Been A Great Time For Us”

Patrick Pichette joined Google as its CFO on August 12, 2008, and since then, he's seen the company through both good times (a stock price of $620 per share) and bad (try $262).  So Google fans should find it comforting that Pichette, with his range of experience, has said the company's doing quite well again.

Pichette spoke during the Morgan Stanley Technology, Media and Telecom Conference, and according to John Letzing, stated, "[T]he mood at Google kind of continues to be electric," which is certainly a positive sign.  Not that he'd admit to low morale, but using the term "electric" says a lot.

The CFO then continued, "It's true there is a recession out there, but for the broad data world, everything that's the data space, there's really no recession.  It's been a great time for us in the last 12 months, 18 months."

Pichette also shrugged off the idea that Google's being anticompetitive, arguing that large companies are often scrutinized, and acknowledged that display ads, apps, and mobile have become increasingly important to the organization.

Here's the only catch: investors may or may not be impressed by all this, considering that Google's stock is down a little in after-hours trading at $532.30.

Facebook Investor To Put $1B Into Social Media

The Russian investment firm that's contributed hundreds of millions of dollars to Facebook's bank accounts is not even close to ending its involvement with social media.  According to Yuri Milner, who's the CEO and founding partner of Digital Sky Technologies, his organization is interested in doling out another $1 billion.

Obviously, that's a stunning amount, and perhaps all the more so since Facebook, which is one of the most successful social media sites in existence, doesn't yet seem to be making money hand over fist.

There's an aspect of DST's investment strategy that's arguably even more interesting, however, as it looks like all - or even most - of the $1 billion isn't headed for Facebook.  Milner told Olga Kharif, "We monitor close to 50 companies globally that can be potential investment opportunities."

So a significant Facebook backer must think it's possible for all sorts of other businesses built around social media to turn a profit.  Despite the facts that Twitter's had so much trouble landing on a revenue model and MySpace may be unable to extend its profitable search deal with Google.

It should be interesting to see how DST proceeds.  Kharif reported that at least one investment should be announced by the middle of this year.

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