Live data from Hacker News

Yahoo to Say It's Exploring Strategic Alternatives

bloomberg.com

21–30 of 55 posts

Re: Yahoo to Say It's Exploring Strategic Alternatives

#23
post #16

The best video yahoo made, ever ! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E37-iqnvzZ4

The article is about strategic decisions Yahoo! faces as a business. And you're using a five year old anti-LGBT bullying video as a sarcastic joke? That's double insulting.

Re: Yahoo to Say It's Exploring Strategic Alternatives

#24
post #23
post #16

The best video yahoo made, ever ! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E37-iqnvzZ4

The article is about strategic decisions Yahoo! faces as a business. And you're using a five year old anti-LGBT bullying video as a sarcastic joke? That's double insulting.

Did you actually watch the video ?

It's exactly the opposite of an anti-LGBT video

Re: Yahoo to Say It's Exploring Strategic Alternatives

#25

It's interesting that the Alibaba holdings are more of a liability than an asset in this situation. YHOO is essentially a proxy for BABA, nothing Yahoo does affects the stock price in any meaningful way, and the value of the core business is effectively negative, if you subtract the post-tax value of Alibaba, Yahoo Japan, and cash on hand. But the value of a declining business with billions in revenue each year must…

You know how I know I'll never be a CEO of a huge company like this? Because I read what you just wrote and thought, "this doesn't sound like something that 1) I could ever solve 2) it just doesn't sound remotely fun to try and figure all this stuff out"

Re: Yahoo to Say It's Exploring Strategic Alternatives

#26
post #19

It's interesting that the Alibaba holdings are more of a liability than an asset in this situation. YHOO is essentially a proxy for BABA, nothing Yahoo does affects the stock price in any meaningful way, and the value of the core business is effectively negative, if you subtract the post-tax value of Alibaba, Yahoo Japan, and cash on hand. But the value of a declining business with billions in revenue each year must…

Why the assumption that BABA keeps declining in value? Shareholders probably have more faith in BABA than Yahoo core. Would make sense to sell core yahoo and keep Yahoo Japan and BABA under the Yahoo ticker. Reason being the tax from selling the latter two affects your PV more if you believe they will keep growing.

It won't stay at its peak, very normal for most companies after IPO. BABA will continue to do okay in China as the ecommerce market is huge. The challenge BABA faces is quality rather than quantity and I don't think Alibaba is addressing it well.

But I believe the real problem is Yahoo being a media/technology company, Yahoo must improve its core business in order to be sustainable in the long run. They can sell BABA now, walk away, and reorganize the entire company from scratch. I am not saying people are greedy, but when you really have the chance to start from scratch do it. But I don't think anyone has any idea where Yahoo should fit. Content? Search? Where does Yahoo stand? This is why the shareholders are not willing to sell anything because they themselves are clueless.

Re: Yahoo to Say It's Exploring Strategic Alternatives

#28

It's interesting that the Alibaba holdings are more of a liability than an asset in this situation. YHOO is essentially a proxy for BABA, nothing Yahoo does affects the stock price in any meaningful way, and the value of the core business is effectively negative, if you subtract the post-tax value of Alibaba, Yahoo Japan, and cash on hand. But the value of a declining business with billions in revenue each year must…

You know how I know I'll never be a CEO of a huge company like this? Because I read what you just wrote and thought, "this doesn't sound like something that 1) I could ever solve 2) it just doesn't sound remotely fun to try and figure all this stuff out"

I think some people would enjoy it simply because they like being in positions of power and feeling important.

Re: Yahoo to Say It's Exploring Strategic Alternatives

#29

It's interesting that the Alibaba holdings are more of a liability than an asset in this situation. YHOO is essentially a proxy for BABA, nothing Yahoo does affects the stock price in any meaningful way, and the value of the core business is effectively negative, if you subtract the post-tax value of Alibaba, Yahoo Japan, and cash on hand. But the value of a declining business with billions in revenue each year must…

> If Alibaba keeps going down in value, selling it now gives you more money than selling it tax-free in the future.

You can't possibly predict that, and thus, a tax free spin off is the only sane option. Also, you can't just dump 15% of BABA stock and expect to get the current market share price. Its value would probably decline by 30-40%.

If they succeed and Alibaba buys back that 15% stake (even at a discount) they will have returned an additional $5-7bn to shareholders by structuring it like this.

> But the value of a declining business with billions in revenue each year must be positive.

Sure, it is - it's worth a few billion. Their current market cap is $27bn and own they 15% of Alibaba (worth ~$24bn pretax).

Re: Yahoo to Say It's Exploring Strategic Alternatives

#30

It's interesting that the Alibaba holdings are more of a liability than an asset in this situation. YHOO is essentially a proxy for BABA, nothing Yahoo does affects the stock price in any meaningful way, and the value of the core business is effectively negative, if you subtract the post-tax value of Alibaba, Yahoo Japan, and cash on hand. But the value of a declining business with billions in revenue each year must…

You know how I know I'll never be a CEO of a huge company like this? Because I read what you just wrote and thought, "this doesn't sound like something that 1) I could ever solve 2) it just doesn't sound remotely fun to try and figure all this stuff out"

I can see how that could be fun if you like big picture thinking.
Post reply on HN