Yahoo’s earnings results for third quarter 2014 surpassed what analysts had predicted. The analysts were look for an average non-GAAP earnings per share of $0.30 on ex-TAC sales of $1.04 billion, what was realized were sales of $1.09 billion excluding traffic acquisition costs and non-GAAP earnings per share of $0.52.

A breakdown shows that display revenue was $447 million for the third quarter of 2014, which represents a drop of about 5 percent as compared to $470 million for the third quarter of 2013. However, search revenue for this quarter was $452 million, which is an increase of about 4 percent year-over-year. The number of ads sold significantly increased by about 24 percent, as compared to the third quarter of 2013. Price-per-Ad decreased by about the same amount compared to the third quarter of 2013.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Yahoo’s earnings could prove to be a crucial moment for the company. Its sources said that CEO Marissa Mayer will use the company’s earnings as a moment to set out her future strategy for the company. One important thing to keep in mind is Yahoo received $6.3 billion from selling part of its stake in Alibaba.

Alibaba is China’s and by some measures, the world’s biggest online commerce company. Its three main sites, which include Taobao, Tmall and Alibaba.com, have hundreds of millions of users and host millions of merchants and businesses. Alibaba handles more business than any other e-commerce company.

Yahoo’s CEO, Marissa Mayer, commented that “We had a good, solid third quarter. We delivered $1.094 billion in revenue ex-TAC and $1.148 billion in GAAP revenue. This represents one percent growth in revenue ex-TAC and one percent growth in GAAP revenue. We achieved this revenue growth through strong growth in our new areas of investment – mobile, social, native and video – despite industry headwinds in some of our large, legacy businesses. I am also pleased to report today that our revenue in mobile is now material. In Q3, we saw mobile revenues in excess of $200 million on a GAAP basis. Further, we estimate that our gross revenues in mobile will exceed $1.2 billion in revenue this year. We have invested deeply in mobile and we are seeing those investments pay off. Not only are our mobile products attracting praise and engagement from users and industry awards, they are generating meaningful revenue for Yahoo.”

As I mentioned above, Yahoo made a considerable profit for selling its Alibaba shares, it is important to note that the earnings per share figure includes the Alibaba cash. If we eliminate the Alibaba cash, the EPS figure would have been lower some say that it would have been a lackluster performance. On the other hand, the Alibaba capital means that Yahoo now has $12 billion in cash.

TechCrunch reports that “We have heard from sources that Yahoo has been in talks to acquire BrightRoll for around $700 million, which would make it the latest in a string of acquisitions and one of the biggest.” It looks like the Alibaba money is already being put to good use.