Yahoo is profitable, right? Am I missing something?
Yahoo lays off 1,700 and is up for sale
21–30 of 66 posts
Re: Yahoo lays off 1,700 and is up for sale
#22Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I see this as propaganda to push the concept that Yahoo has negative value How is it propaganda? YHOO has a current Market Cap of 27.7B with assets including a 25B stake in Alibaba, 8B Stake in Yahoo Japan and ~4B cash. If it wasn't for tax implications of selling their investments, Yahoo's core business clearly holds a negative value. Accounting for tax implications puts it around 0-2B. > There is more to a corpor…
> Share Holder value is its primary purpose No, it isn't. Corporations are given a public charter which declares its purpose. Increasing share-holder value is a nice side-effect at most.
"The Board's goals are generally to build long-term value for the Company's stockholders and to assure the vitality of the Company for its customers, employees and the other individuals and organizations that depend on the Company."
Source - Yahoo Corporate Governance Guidelines - https://investor.yahoo.net/documentdisplay.cfm?DocumentID=11...
Re: Yahoo lays off 1,700 and is up for sale
#23Yahoo is profitable, right? Am I missing something?
Yes, but it's not growing, therefore it is a complete failure and should be wiped off the face of the Earth, according to certain investor logic.
Re: Yahoo lays off 1,700 and is up for sale
#24I see this as propaganda to push the concept that Yahoo has negative value, which, I'm guessing would be beneficial for some group of shareholders to promote this view. Personally I don't give a crap what those shareholders want. There is more to a corporation that just shareholder value, and I don't particularly relish thousands of people losing their jobs so some people can make a quick buck.
> I see this as propaganda to push the concept that Yahoo has negative value How is it propaganda? YHOO has a current Market Cap of 27.7B with assets including a 25B stake in Alibaba, 8B Stake in Yahoo Japan and ~4B cash. If it wasn't for tax implications of selling their investments, Yahoo's core business clearly holds a negative value. Accounting for tax implications puts it around 0-2B. > There is more to a corpor…
Step 1: go find out who makes out those valuation numbers.
Step 2: see how people on step 1's answer make money.
Re: Yahoo lays off 1,700 and is up for sale
#25Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I see this as propaganda to push the concept that Yahoo has negative value How is it propaganda? YHOO has a current Market Cap of 27.7B with assets including a 25B stake in Alibaba, 8B Stake in Yahoo Japan and ~4B cash. If it wasn't for tax implications of selling their investments, Yahoo's core business clearly holds a negative value. Accounting for tax implications puts it around 0-2B. > There is more to a corpor…
> Share Holder value is its primary purpose No, it isn't. Corporations are given a public charter which declares its purpose. Increasing share-holder value is a nice side-effect at most.
Shareholder primacy is a recent development in capitalism , and a negative one in my opinion. [1]
Since we've chosen to give so much power to corporations over areas of our lives, they need to be good citizens more than ever.
It's quaint, but corporations are granted a charter by the state, and the people have delegated that power to the state.
So it's the people who decided what a corporation is and its rights and responsibilities.
Now of course we've been lulled into thinking it has to be the way it is now, and that the current state of affairs is 'natural', but it doesn't have to stay that way.
Maybe as more and more industries are disrupted and automated away and people lose jobs, we might be forced to rethink the current arrangement.
Re: Yahoo lays off 1,700 and is up for sale
#26Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I see this as propaganda to push the concept that Yahoo has negative value How is it propaganda? YHOO has a current Market Cap of 27.7B with assets including a 25B stake in Alibaba, 8B Stake in Yahoo Japan and ~4B cash. If it wasn't for tax implications of selling their investments, Yahoo's core business clearly holds a negative value. Accounting for tax implications puts it around 0-2B. > There is more to a corpor…
> Share Holder value is its primary purpose No, it isn't. Corporations are given a public charter which declares its purpose. Increasing share-holder value is a nice side-effect at most.
> Corporations are given a public charter which declares its purpose.
Which, for virtually (but not quite entirely) all corporations that aren't nonprofits, is basically "do anything legal", or "do anything legal to advance the interests of the shareholders."
E.g., for Yahoo!, its purpose is "to engage in any lawful act or activity for which corporations may be organized under the General Corporation Law of Delaware". [0]
If corporate law required purposes in charters/certificates of incorporation to be meaningful and specific, and charters/certificates were denied or revoked that failed to be, the purpose in a charter might actually be worth referring to.
[0] http://files.shareholder.com/downloads/YHOO/1450374771x0x285...
Re: Yahoo lays off 1,700 and is up for sale
#27This is linkbait. There's only one relevant sentence:
> in the same press release, the chairman of Yahoo's board announced that the board is going to "engage on qualified strategic proposals" — that is, consider offers to sell the company.
Yahoo is not up for sale. With the alarmist linkbait title and the URL "yahoo-marissa-mayer-fail", this is possibly a sting piece with motives other than journalism.
I have no political ties to Yahoo (nor Vox) but this is not good reporting.
Re: Yahoo lays off 1,700 and is up for sale
#28Listening to Marissa Myer this morning talk about the company she could not identify a core function within the company or a future.
She had a number of buzzwords laid out and did not give any idea of what they were going for. I need her to say things like:
1. We are working to create a cross-platform experience that outdoes Google and Apple within their app system. The best photo sharing program across app and web for me is Flickr and we are going to become the anti-facebook by guaranteeing your content privacy.
2. What is Yahoo? As it stands now, it is an amalgamation of multiple properties that bring in revenue streams. If this is the case, then if I were an investor, I would be trying to find a way to squeeze assets out.
Re: Yahoo lays off 1,700 and is up for sale
#29Yahoo is profitable, right? Am I missing something?
Yes, but it's not growing, therefore it is a complete failure and should be wiped off the face of the Earth, according to certain investor logic.
If its not growing, for from many investors, yes, that is a failure.
I have $1. I can do many things with it. Why would I give my $1 to someone in exchange for a piece of their business if that business is not growing when I could instead give that $1 to someone who is growing? I want my $1 to become worth more.
Yes, yes yes, I know companies that pay dividends or profit sharing, etc. However what's the return on those? It is higher than somewhere else?
Divorce yourself from thinking about what the company does or ever how much money it is making. For many investors, they are looking for opportunities to put in some money, get an asset, and then sell that asset for a profit. Growth is key to forecasting returns and thus comparing different investment opportunities.
Re: Yahoo lays off 1,700 and is up for sale
#30My thoughts: 1. Activist investment firms use Yakuza tactics. They buy a small share and the company bends over backwards so the 'investors" get an extra percentage point instead of focusing on long term strategies. 2. If Yahoo had expanded on their Pipes and Konfabulator products and capitalized on people's uproar after iGoogle was shut down they could have been great competitors to Google's App Engine, Azure or Ama…
While Pipes was a really cool product, I doubt it would have changed anything. Reminds me google wave, great appeal to engineers but hard to sell to the masses :/
Yahoo has indeed had a product problem for a while, but I think it's more of a consequence of its internal culture of technical mediocrity and IBM-like middle management.