Yahoo Japan Corp. said Wednesday that group operating revenue and net profit rose to all-time highs in fiscal 2004 due to growth in advertising and the popularity of its Net auction business.

Revenue for the business year ended March 31 soared 55.4 percent to a record 117.78 billion yen, with net profit rising 47.1 percent to a record 36.52 billion yen, according to the Internet portal operator's earnings report.

Pretax profit rose 46.0 percent to 60.30 billion yen.

"The dissemination of broadband services helped industry-wide expenditures on Internet-based advertisements soar 53.3 percent in 2004 from the previous year to 181.4 billion yen, eclipsing those earned in the same period by radio broadcasters for the first time," Yahoo Japan said quoting a Dentsu Inc. statement.

Yahoo Japan's own revenue from Net-based advertising in the year surged 74.8 percent to a record 38.9 billion yen, the company said.

The average daily page-view via the Yahoo! Japan portal site has topped 1.03 billion, according to Yahoo Japan, which is 41.9 percent owned by Softbank Corp.

Revenue from the auction division accounted for 23.2 percent of overall revenue, while that from the listings division, which offers such services as a key word-based data searches, made up 24.9 percent, it said.

The advertising division accounted for 17.5 percent of overall revenue, and the Yahoo! BB broadband section made up 14.3 percent, it said.

Although the fiscal 2004 net profit surged 47.1 percent, per-share net profit dropped to nearly one-third of the corresponding figure the previous business year due to two rounds of 2-for-1 stock splits in 2004, it said.

Yahoo Japan said it will pay a dividend for the first time in its history with the per-share dividend for fiscal 2004 coming to 484 yen.