With investors anticipating news on Yahoo's inevitable sale in the upcoming days, the company's performance this quarter didn't matter that much.
"Investor expectations are fundamentally very low for Yahoo," RBC Capital Markets analyst Mark Mahaney told CNBC. "I'd say fundamentals have been weak for a substantial period of time, i.e. no growth…. The play on the stock is much more focused on the mechanics of the sale."
The company reported on Monday that its revenue beat expectations, though its quarterly earnings were slightly lower than projected. Revenue for the quarter came in at $1.31 billion, higher than the Thompson Reuters consensus estimate of $1.08 billion. Second quarter earnings per share were at 9 cents, a penny off from what was projected.
Final bids for Yahoo were also due Monday, with offers between $3.5 billion to $5 billion. Though Verizon is considered to be the likely winner, CEO Marissa Mayer said during its earnings livestream that there would be no news regarding the sale today, as they are still evaluating offers and would update shareholders "as soon as is prudent."
Yahoo stock barely moved. Many analysts said investors had acknowledged the company is in downward trajectory, and were more interested in who would purchase Yahoo rather than the company's current revenue.
Mahaney expected it would be a couple of weeks before Yahoo's new owner would be announced. If bids fell with the projected range, he didn't expect the stock to move.
But today's announcement could affect Yahoo's valuation, Oppenheimer & Co. analyst Jason Helfstein said. (Oppenheimer & Co. make a market in the securities of Yahoo.) He said Yahoo would be smart to argue that its restructuring cut costs and helped them perform better than expected, perhaps driving up its sale price.
"If the tone is good and the process is moving, the stock will react positively," he said.
It's exactly what Mayer did. She said restructuring saving, retiring products and ad revenue from Yahoo's MaVeNs — mobile, video, native and social platforms — were some of reasons behind revenue growth. Mayer said the company sees MaVeNs as a key area of investment, and the category was helping negate some of the losses from legacy business declines, including desktop ad revenue.
"We took a hard honest look at where we were and where we want to be, and took necessary steps to get there," Mayer said.