NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - Yahoo!, which is actually an acronym for Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle, may in fact stand for something else these days: Yet Another Highly Overpriced Offering.

The stock hit a new 52-week high on Monday and shares are up 116 percent this year. Yahoo! is trading at nearly 100 times 2003 earnings estimates.

The Internet giant is set to report quarterly results on Wednesday, and expectations are sky-high. Analysts are predicting earnings of 8 cents a share, 167 percent growth from a year ago. Forecasts call for 40 percent sales growth.

The company almost certainly will hit those numbers, and probably will beat by a bit too. But at this point, Yahoo! needs to do more to hold on to its frothy valuation.

When push comes to shove, Yahoo! is a media company that is highly dependent on advertising. It may be a more rapidly growing media firm than say, E.W. Scripps or Gannett, but it's still a media company.

That is why Frank Gristina, an analyst with Avondale Partners, thinks Yahoo!'s valuation should be compared to newspaper stocks and online content companies like TheStreet.com and CNET.

And according to Gristina, Yahoo! is trading at nearly 3 times the valuation of similarly sized media companies that he follows, a premium that is too high given some concerns still facing the company.

Here are some.

How is HotJobs, which Yahoo! bought last year, faring? Unemployment is at a nine-year high and according to the most recent Help-Wanted Advertising Index released by the Conference Board, help-wanted advertising has declined in eight of the nine U.S. regions during the past three months.

That could have a negative effect on HotJobs, which is a small but not insignificant part of Yahoo!'s overall revenue stream. In the first quarter, listings revenue (which includes the HotJobs business) accounted for 10 percent of Yahoo!'s overall sales.

What about the fee-based services? Yahoo! has been somewhat tight-lipped about the specifics of its non-advertising businesses, such as games, personals, premium e-mail and a partnership to offer Internet access with SBC Communications. Analysts are hoping to get more detail about how these individual offerings have done.

Fees and subscriptions are supposed to be the wave of the future for Yahoo!, a way to lessen the company's reliance on Internet advertising. While fees in the first quarter did increase 61 percent from a year ago, some analysts were disappointed that revenues weren't higher.

What's more, fees accounted for only 22.5 percent of Yahoo!'s overall sales in the first quarter. Unless that percentage starts heading higher, Yahoo! will remain a highly cyclical company and cyclical companies typically don't deserve such lavish premiums to the overall market.

Acquisitions? The company raised $732 million from a sale of convertible notes in April. Is Yahoo! getting ready to make some deals? Investors should hope so because Yahoo! has in large part fueled its growth through deals.

Recently in Tech Biz Winners in the war on file swapping Don't let history repeat No fun for bears

Web community service Geocities, streaming media technology provider Broadcast.com, online music firm Launch Media, HotJobs, and most recently search engine infrastructure company Inktomi are all key components of Yahoo!'s overall service that the company bought, instead of building.

It's safe to say that the pressure is on Yahoo! to keep finding attractive Internet properties in order to continue growing at the heady pace that the market expects from it.

Now don't get me wrong. Yahoo! has clearly done a fantastic job over the past few years and most tech companies would kill for its earnings and sales growth. But the stock is ahead of itself.

In that sense, Yahoo! is a good proxy for all of tech right now as earnings season gets ready to kick off in earnest.

Unless the second quarter results are so outstanding and companies have more encouraging news about the overall economy that would cause estimates for this year and next to move substantially higher, then it is time for Yahoo! and the rest of tech to pull back a bit.

Sign up to receive the Tech Biz column by e-mail.

Plus, see more tech commentary and get the latest tech news.