Yahoo's quarterly earnings beat estimates

SAN FRANCISCO - Yahoo on Tuesday reported better-than-expected quarterly earnings, a day after the Internet company named a former Google executive as its new chief executive officer (CEO).

Yahoo said that in the second quarter, earnings per share excluding restructuring and other charges rose to 27 cents, an increase of 47 percent compared with the same period a year earlier.

Revenue excluding traffic acquisition costs paid to partners was $1.08 billion, flat compared to the second quarter of 2011.

According to Thomson Reuters, analysts had expected 23-cent per share earnings on revenue of $1.1 billion from Yahoo in the quarter.

Tuesday was the first day that Marissa Mayer took the helm of Yahoo's CEO, an appointment announced only on Monday.

Yahoo's appointment of Mayer, a former Google vice president, was unexpected and analysts were divided in their views on whether she is the right choice to revive Yahoo.

"Yahoo has made a good choice," Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt said in a statement after Yahoo's announcement, describing Mayer as "a great product person, very innovative and a real perfectionist who always wants the best for users".

However, analysts from some leading research firms doubted that Mayer is the leader that Yahoo now needs.

"I'm disappointed by this choice," wrote Shar VanBoskirk, an analyst at research firm Forrester, in a blog post titled "Marissa Mayer Doesn't Fit Yahoo's Needs".

"Yahoo needs a strategic visionary, not a product engineer. Yahoo's fundamental problem is that it has too many disparate products with no clear unifying thread that ties them all together, " VanBoskirk noted.