We'll keep this brief since Yahoo!'s (YHOO) results are and will be widely reported by the media. We previously commented that we believe the company's online real estate is quite valuable and difficult to replicate, which is one of our key gauges of franchise quality.

Results were better than Wall Street expected and shares will likely trade higher tomorrow as analysts raise estimates and possibly jump back on the bandwagon with Buy ratings (now that the coast is seemingly clear, e.g. flat revenue Q/Q = stabilization; cost reductions = margin/EPS improvements -- of course, the latter should come as no surprise, in our view, given new management's initiatives).

We'll share two slides from Yahoo!'s management presentation that we like -- steady FCF generation:
And, a growing cash balance on the balance sheet:

We would like to also see increasing deferred revenue and faster page view growth, but we'll settle for the otherwise very strong balance sheet and other positives. For those that watch/listen to the Webcast (no video), you'll notice that the platform is not as user friendly or compelling as Sonic Foundry's (SOFO, $0.70) Mediasite.

Happy investing,

Jeffrey Walkenhorst
CommonStock$ense

Disclosure: long YHOO, SOFO.