Yahoo ad sales chief dismisses shakeup talk
Sales chief downplays earlier leaked memo that calls for company overhaul.
December 5 2006: 5:20 PM EST
NEW YORK (Reuters) -- Speculation over an internal shakeup at Yahoo Inc. exaggerated what is probably part of the normal evolution of a high-growth company, Yahoo's advertising sales chief said Tuesday.
An internal company memo made available to reporters last month detailed criticism by a Yahoo executive who called for a dramatic company overhaul and job cuts of up to 20 percent of its work force.
"It was pretty silly in terms of the noise that was made of it," Yahoo Chief Sales Officer Wenda Harris Millard said at a UBS global media conference here. "You could take Yahoo's name off that and put the name of any company you ever worked for on it."
"I found it annoying," she said.
The memo, dubbed "The Peanut Butter Manifesto" because it argued that Yahoo's investment strategy is spread too thin, followed disclosures by the company that parts of its advertising business were slowing. Yahoo also faces greater competition from Google Inc .
Yahoo shares closed up 2 percent Tuesday, or 54 cents, at $27.43 on Nasdaq, partly on investor hopes that the company was close to putting some of the missteps of the past year behind it, said Scott Devitt, an analyst at Stifel Nicolaus.
Devitt rates Google as "buy" and Yahoo as "hold." He cautioned that despite Yahoo's stock rise Tuesday, "I still think there is more bad news" to report.
Devitt was reluctant to comment on the "Peanut Butter" memo and the speculation it generated, but said Yahoo was a strong enough company not to require "drastic" management changes.
Millard said Yahoo continued to grow across its different advertiser categories, even if the rate of that growth was slower in some areas.
Yahoo, based in Sunnyvale, California, has nearly 10,000 employees worldwide.
Other companies vying for online ad dollars include msn.com (owned by Microsoft and Aol.com (owned by CNNMoney.com's owner TimeWarner.
Yahoo shares have lost nearly 30 percent since the start of the year, compared with a 17 percent rise for Google and a 13 percent gain for the Standard & Poor's 500 Index.
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