Yahoo reports second-quarter loss of $21.6 million

Shares were flat in after-hours trade. Profit, excluding costs such as adjustments for stock-based compensation, was 16 cents a share.

According to the report, Yahoo’s stock gains in the past three years werelargely due to investor’s growing enthusiasm for Alibaba, and Mayer has committed to bring the billions of dollars to shareholders by completing the spin-off process. Search revenues also rose 15 percent year-over-year, to $521 million on a GAAP basis, but so did revenue costs.

Previously, Yahoo managed to report adjusted EPS of $0.15, missing earnings estimates of $0.18. Thought leaders from the biggest brands and most disruptive companies will share winning growth strategies on the most pressing challenges marketing leaders face today.].

Yahoo missed Wall Street’s expectations last quarter, but Matt O’Brien wrote in April that CEO Marissa Mayer pointed to promising growth in revenue from search and mobile ads despite a decline in mobile-ad revenue in the first quarter. The company paid traffic acquisition costs of $200 million in the second quarter, compared to only $44 million the year before. Non-MaVeNS revenue dropped from $742 million to $725 million year over year. Analysts at SunTrust lowered their price target on shares of Yahoo! from $59.00 to $50.00 and set a “buy” rating on the stock in a research note on Wednesday, July 15th. The company’s strengths can be seen in multiple areas, such as its revenue growth, largely solid financial position with reasonable debt levels by most measures, notable return on equity, reasonable valuation levels and solid stock price performance.

Meanwhile, Yahoo’s mobile, video, native, and social business earned $399 million this quarter, up 10 percent from last quarter. Yahoo has about $7 billion in cash. Investors latch on to Yahoo primarily because it has owned a large stake in one of China’s hottest Internet companies, e-commerce specialist, Alibaba Group.