SUNNYVALE, Calif. – Yahoo Inc. CEO Carol Bartz says she hopes investors growing impatient for her to turn around the slumping Internet company remember how long it took for Steve Jobs to revive Apple Inc.
In a Tuesday meeting to celebrate Yahoo’s 15th anniversary, Bartz reminded reporters that Apple still struggled after Jobs became CEO in 1997. That marked his return to a company that he had co-founded two decades earlier.
It wasn’t until Jobs unveiled the iPod in late 2001 that Apple’s profits and stock price began to soar again. Apple has become even more prosperous in the past few years as the company developed ever-sleeker computers and trendy gadgets, such as the iPhone and the iPad, a computer tablet scheduled to hit the market this month.
Jobs “knew the DNA (at Apple) better than anyone, and it took him four years,” Bartz said. “I know people want to see magic things happen (at Yahoo). The magic things happening are deep inside our little system here.”
Yahoo shareholders will probably be happy if Bartz can push Yahoo’s stock price above $33. That’s what Microsoft Corp. said it would pay to buy Yahoo in its entirety in May 2008, only to withdraw the bid after Yahoo balked at the offer.
Bartz, 61, is working under a four-year contract that expires in early 2013.
The challenges facing Bartz have been compounded by the worst U.S. recession in 70 years. The economic uncertainty has depressed online advertising, the main source of Yahoo’s income.
Yahoo’s quarterly revenue has declined in five consecutive quarters. Bartz expects the downturn to end with a modest revenue gain during the current quarter ending March 31.
To help sell more advertising, Bartz has been trying to persuade Web surfers to spend more time on Yahoo’s services instead of dwelling at increasingly popular hangouts such as Facebook.
Toward that end, Yahoo has renovated its front page and committed to spending more than $100 million on a marketing campaign that started last fall.
Bartz said Tuesday she has been disappointed with the marketing campaign’s performance so far in the United States, but she likes what she has seen in other markets, particularly in the United Kingdom and France. She said Yahoo is tweaking its commercial messages in the United States.
