“Yahoo investors are running out of patience with CEO Marissa Mayer’s latest spin,” Claire Atkinson reports for The New York Post.
“Shareholders are pressuring management to sell the core Internet business instead of attempting to spin it off into a separately traded company — a process that could take as long as a year,” Atkinson reports. “‘The better alternative from both a value and timing standpoint is for Yahoo to just sell the core business right now,’ one shareholder told The Post.”
“Analysts say the core business could fetch between $6 billion and $8 billion,” Atkinson reports. “Activist hedge fund Starboard Value — which has been pushing for drastic changes — has already informed Yahoo of its intent to wage a proxy battle and nominate its own slate to replace the board, sources said.”
“In December, Yahoo abandoned its original plan to spin off its stake in Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba, worth more than $30 billion, and said instead it would pursue splitting off the core business. The new move, dubbed a reverse spin, came after growing concerns that Yahoo risked getting hit with a huge tax bill over its initial proposal,” Atkinson reports. “‘Shareholders are rightly incensed with Yahoo’s lack of responsible planning,’ the investor added. As a consequence, shareholders are losing faith in both Mayer and in Chief Financial Officer Ken Goldman, and their ability to turn around the company.”
MacDailyNews Take: As we wrote last month, Mayer’s been hamstrung with the STUPID deal her predecessor Carol Bartz inked with Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer (two very confused former CEOs) to use Bing as the search component of Yahoo.
Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer (photo: Art Streiber)Yahoo needed to develop and promote its own technology. If they had their own search, Yahoo would be in a position today to make a serious play to replace Google as the default search engine on the world’s most coveted platform and reap multiple billions of dollars from such a deal. Alas, they are not and, as a result, Mayer has been forced to tinker around the edges while trying to extricate Yahoo from the straightjacket into which her predecessor shackled the company.
The Bing deal has since been amended under Mayer and, reportedly, either party can now terminate the deal at any point in time as of October 1, 2016. Mayer should be given some more time to fully execute her plans in which a deal with Apple should — if she has any hope to be a long-term CEO — be the centerpiece, the engine that drives Yahoo back to major prominence.
All Yahoo should be focusing on now is displacing Google as Apple’s default Safari search engine on iOS devices.
$6 to $8 billion for core Yahoo. Funny thing is, if you spin off Alibaba, the core business wouldn’t be worth more than $3 billion. So holding off the separation is actually a good thing. But the question is, who would by Yahoo?
How would growing up involve even more sexist images of female executives on your walls, not that I am against seeing them its just that I wouldn’t consider my self more grown up in so doing.
You know I have absolutely no idea what Yahoo actually does any more, it certainly has no place in my life now that messenger no longer works on the Mac as an App. I do have it as my default search engine on my Mac but thats to avoid Google not for any inherent quality in its own right but use DDG on my iPad. And as we see the search engine is really just a Bing clone anyway. What else does it do I have long stopped using its email service. Surely the only value is the Alibaba stake and as MDN says the possibility of an independent search link with Apple. Apart from that it just seems increasingly irrelevant and no one is going to turn that around barring a magical bit of luck and inspiration to change it into something completely different. Trouble is even its brand has little value in the modern World racing even MySpace to the bottom.
One thing about hard core investors: They belief in maximizing capital at all other costs, even dismantling a company. That’s what makes them acquisitive Capitalists. If you like Star Trek’s Ferengi with their 10 Laws of Acquisition, you like Capitalists. The hell with workers and the benefits of their production. Once again, the idle rich want to oppress while they care little that the industrious poor lose.
I guess Yahoo should have accepted the $44.6 billion that Monkey Boy was offering back in 2008.
$6 to $8 billion for core Yahoo. Funny thing is, if you spin off Alibaba, the core business wouldn’t be worth more than $3 billion. So holding off the separation is actually a good thing. But the question is, who would by Yahoo?
… So let’s gang up on Marissa Mayer while she’s out on maternity leave.
Cowards.
Meanwhile, Yahoo! has been in deep trouble for YEARS. So why is this news to their investors?
LOL NYP
Marissa Meyer is a failure at Yahoo because anyone would be a failure at Yahoo. Yahoo is a 20th cenutyr company with 20thj Century preoducts.
and no, the search engine could not have been improved with more development. That train left the station in 2003.
And grow up and start showing female Executives’ photos as if they were supposed to hang in your dorm room.
I don’t even understand your comments but…
I vote for we bring back the big red ball photo!
How would growing up involve even more sexist images of female executives on your walls, not that I am against seeing them its just that I wouldn’t consider my self more grown up in so doing.
You know I have absolutely no idea what Yahoo actually does any more, it certainly has no place in my life now that messenger no longer works on the Mac as an App. I do have it as my default search engine on my Mac but thats to avoid Google not for any inherent quality in its own right but use DDG on my iPad. And as we see the search engine is really just a Bing clone anyway. What else does it do I have long stopped using its email service. Surely the only value is the Alibaba stake and as MDN says the possibility of an independent search link with Apple. Apart from that it just seems increasingly irrelevant and no one is going to turn that around barring a magical bit of luck and inspiration to change it into something completely different. Trouble is even its brand has little value in the modern World racing even MySpace to the bottom.
One thing about hard core investors: They belief in maximizing capital at all other costs, even dismantling a company. That’s what makes them acquisitive Capitalists. If you like Star Trek’s Ferengi with their 10 Laws of Acquisition, you like Capitalists. The hell with workers and the benefits of their production. Once again, the idle rich want to oppress while they care little that the industrious poor lose.