Yahoo Chief Financial Officer Ken Goldman said original video series “Community,” “Sin City Saints” and “Other Space” were the cause of a write-down of $42 million in the company’s third quarter.
“We thought long and hard about it,” Goldman said during a call with investors following the release of Yahoo’s Q3 earnings.
“What we concluded is certain of our original video content, we couldn’t see a way to make money over time. I’m thinking of ‘Community,’ I’m thinking of ‘Sin City Saints’ and so forth. So there, where we had spent money and had some assets on our balance sheet, we elected to write those off. That actually helps us going forward and we won’t have the expense to impact us going forward.
“In thinking through that, we thought of not only what is the cost, but what is the cost to market and create the streams you need to make them successful. So we’re not saying we’re not going to do these at all in the future, but what we’re saying is in three cases, at least, it didn’t work we had hoped it would work, and we decided to move on.”
Yahoo reported its earnings for the third quarter of 2015 on Tuesday, falling short of Wall Street expectations.
The digital media company reported earnings per share of $0.15, which is lower than Wall Street’s expectations of $0.17 EPS. The number is also lower than the $0.52 earnings for the same quarter a year ago.
Yahoo also reported revenue of $1.23 billion, which fell short of the projected $1.26 billion.