The day after the news was announced that Yahoo management is considering the sale of internet business, potential buyers have emerged. Many of them: from media to telecoms giants and private investment companies. According to the Wall Street Journal, which published the news that Yahoo would soon be on sale, among the interested companies are Verizon Communications and IAC / InterActive Corp. of Barry Diller. They are reportedly interested in the whole package, whereas others are interested in certain segments and among them News Corp. Rupert Murdoch and publisher Time Inc. The rumors are that AT & T, Comcast and Walt Disney are also potential candidates.
Despite the problems and poor mandate of director Marissa Mayer, Yahoo is one of the oldest and the most famous among the internet giants. The company has more than $ 7 billion in cash and short-term investments, property and equipment and only 1.2 a billion dollars of debt, market value after the closing of the Stock Exchange on Wednesday was $ 32 billion. It owns 15 percent of Alibaba, which is currently worth more than $ 30 billion, and still have several hundred million monthly active users, way less than Google, but not negligible. Buyers might be interested in a wide reach of Yahoo: in America it has 200 million monthly active users. Some investment companies would use this opportunity to delist from the stock market in order to implement drastic restructuring that Yahoo needs more than anything. Investors agree that Yahoo has a completely distorted investment strategy and too insufficient capitalization on its customer base. The value of any acquisition of Yahoo’s Internet business, which includes Yahoo Mail and News, analysts estimate at between 1.9 and 3.9 billion dollars. Yahoo’s shareholders, judging by the value of their stake in Alibaba and Yahoo Japan, currently value the business at-zero. That’s why they put pressure on management to sell all but Yahoo Japan. Management of Yahoo will discuss some of these exciting possibilities at meeting scheduled for this week. In addition to sales of basic business thinking about divesting stake of Alibaba into a separate investment company.
Buyer of Yahoo’s business will inherit some serious problems. Their longtime trump card – selling web ad large advertisers, has been decreasing. They were surpassed by Facebook and Google. Last year they had a 5.1% share of the US digital advertising market and this year it will barely reach 4.4 percent. During the mandate of Marissa Mayer, they have lost a total of 1.4 percent of global market share. Google holds 70.8 percent of the search market, and Yahoo 9.6 percent. But Yahoo still generates billions of dollars in advertising revenues per year and has a strong sales department. For traditional media companies like Disney and telecoms, Yahoo’s audience and access to information on consumers would be a great value.
Angela Djukic
Despite the problems and poor mandate of director Marissa Mayer, Yahoo is one of the oldest and the most famous among the internet giants. The company has more than $ 7 billion in cash and short-term investments, property and equipment and only 1.2 a billion dollars of debt, market value after the closing of the Stock Exchange on Wednesday was $ 32 billion. It owns 15 percent of Alibaba, which is currently worth more than $ 30 billion, and still have several hundred million monthly active users, way less than Google, but not negligible. Buyers might be interested in a wide reach of Yahoo: in America it has 200 million monthly active users. Some investment companies would use this opportunity to delist from the stock market in order to implement drastic restructuring that Yahoo needs more than anything. Investors agree that Yahoo has a completely distorted investment strategy and too insufficient capitalization on its customer base. The value of any acquisition of Yahoo’s Internet business, which includes Yahoo Mail and News, analysts estimate at between 1.9 and 3.9 billion dollars. Yahoo’s shareholders, judging by the value of their stake in Alibaba and Yahoo Japan, currently value the business at-zero. That’s why they put pressure on management to sell all but Yahoo Japan. Management of Yahoo will discuss some of these exciting possibilities at meeting scheduled for this week. In addition to sales of basic business thinking about divesting stake of Alibaba into a separate investment company.
Buyer of Yahoo’s business will inherit some serious problems. Their longtime trump card – selling web ad large advertisers, has been decreasing. They were surpassed by Facebook and Google. Last year they had a 5.1% share of the US digital advertising market and this year it will barely reach 4.4 percent. During the mandate of Marissa Mayer, they have lost a total of 1.4 percent of global market share. Google holds 70.8 percent of the search market, and Yahoo 9.6 percent. But Yahoo still generates billions of dollars in advertising revenues per year and has a strong sales department. For traditional media companies like Disney and telecoms, Yahoo’s audience and access to information on consumers would be a great value.
Angela Djukic