Yahoo yesterday announced a huge spike in quarterly profit but was red-faced over a performance by lap dancers at a Taiwan developers’ event.
Net income rose 244% year-on-year to $186 million and operating income was up 30%, despite a 12% fall in revenue, Yahoo said.
While CEO Carol Bartz said revenue was ahead of guidance, the biggest boost came from a 17.7% fall in operating costs for the quarter.
The result beat analysts’ forecasts. Yahoo’s stock rose 5.07% in after-hours trading to $18.04.
Bartz described it as “a solid third quarter that signals our major businesses have stabilized.”
However, the online ad giant has been forced into an apology for inviting lap dancers to its annual Taiwan “Hack Day” last weekend.
Photos and videos of the short-skirted “Hack Girls” appeared online early this week, prompting angry responses from developers and bloggers.
Chris Yeh, the head of the developers’ network, said he acknowledged that the Hack Girls were “not reflective of [the] spirit or purpose” of the event.
But posters to his blog pointed out that the dancers had been invited to the previous year’s developers’ event.
One critic was Flickr co-founder Caterina Fake, who sold the site to Yahoo. Fake Twittered that she was “frankly disgusted” by the incident.