Time to Put That Exclamation Point in Storage?

Yahoo has managed a détente with billionaire backseat driver Carl Icahn. So the question now is this: Can Yahoo manage one with the rest of its shareholders? We’ll find out this afternoon when the company reports second-quarter earnings. Analysts surveyed by FactSet Research expect Yahoo (YHOO) to post earnings of 10 cents a share, and $1.38 billion in net revenue. And that’s not really expecting all that much. So if Yahoo is able to best those estimates, it could go a long way toward convincing investors that the company is in a turnaround and not in decline. It may even convince them that Yahoo’s virtually unattainable three-year growth plans are, perhaps, not quite so unattainable.

That said, Yahoo’s second quarter is more likely to prove soft than not. Certainly, rival and benefactor Google’s own second-quarter results, reported last Thursday, don’t bode well for the company. Google (GOOG) posted profit and sales gains, but its results nonetheless fell short of Wall Street analysts’ estimates, sending shares lower in late trading. Yahoo, of course, isn’t in nearly as good health as Google. If Google fails to impress the street with a respectable quarter, how can the besieged and beleaguered Yahoo do so?

[Image Credit: Byzantin3]