Wednesday, April 18, 2007

Calls of Note Part 2

- Piper Jaffray comments on Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) in light on Yahoo's Q1 results saying that due to the opinions of SEMs and the positive results coming from Comscore, they believed that Yahoo's Panama search monetization engine would drive upside in Q1. They were wrong, and now are slightly more cautious coming into Google's quarter. Assuming Comscore is at least directionally and relatively accurate (a potentially dangerous assumption), the Yahoo results may indicate that Comscore was simply overestimating paid click growth q/q, a scenario which is troublesome given Google's relatively low q/q growth of 5% according to Comscore. Yahoo's performance, however, has not correlated with Google's in the past. Combined with Google's announced reduction in ad coverage, these results make them at least incrementally more cautious coming in to Q1 results.

Int'l monetization and usage is growing much faster than the more mature U.S. market, and the firm believes Google has continued to gain share internationally, particularly in Europe. Strong international results may be enough to counter any weakness in the U.S. due to reduced ad coverage to allow Google to show the 12% sequential revenue growth consensus is expecting.

Although they believe Panama did well with large advertisers, some of whom may have slightly reduced Google spend in February due to a sudden flood of clicks from Yahoo, they believe Yahoo's new search monetization system hurt many smaller advertisers. It seems reasonable to assume these smaller advertisers may have shifted budgets toward Google.

Notablecalls: Not actionable but good to know category.

No comments: