Warren Buffett and Dan Gilbert Unite in Bid to Acquire Yahoo • Hacker News Board

Re: Warren Buffett and Dan Gilbert Unite in Bid to Acquire Yahoo

#21

Post by 1024core » Mon, May 16, 2016, 5:54 PM UTC

mcmoose75 wrote: post #18

1024core wrote: post #13

As a shareholder, I welcome the competition. :) Also interestingly: Bain Capital is in the running. In the past, Yahoo has used Bain Capital as consultants to reorg, restructure, etc. It would almost seem like a conflict of interest, since they are acutely familiar with the innards of Yahoo. Edit: as /u/mcmoose75 mentions below, "Bain Capital" and "Bain Consulting" (the one I was thinking of) are two separate entitie…

You may be confusing Bain & Company (the consulting firm, a competitor to McKinsey) and Bain Capital. Bain Capital was started by some former Bain consultants, and is obviously similarly named, but is a totally independent organization.

You are probably right. Sorry for the confusion.

Re: Warren Buffett and Dan Gilbert Unite in Bid to Acquire Yahoo

#22

Post by chrisan » Mon, May 16, 2016, 5:56 PM UTC

This is the emotional Dan Gilbert who enjoys Comic Sans

http://deadspin.com/the-cavaliers-finally-took-down-dan-gilb...

Re: Warren Buffett and Dan Gilbert Unite in Bid to Acquire Yahoo

#23

Post by mathattack » Mon, May 16, 2016, 5:57 PM UTC

Kinnard wrote: post #15

geogra4 wrote: post #8

Wonder if he'll bring a chunk of Yahoo to Detroit?

I can't imagine he has any other plan. I'm a Detroiter. Too bad Yahoo isn't really a tech company: http://www.paulgraham.com/yahoo.html

What's the Detroit connection with Warren and Yahoo? I must have missed that in all the articles.

Re: Warren Buffett and Dan Gilbert Unite in Bid to Acquire Yahoo

#24

Post by eumoria » Mon, May 16, 2016, 5:57 PM UTC

chrisan wrote: post #22

This is the emotional Dan Gilbert who enjoys Comic Sans http://deadspin.com/the-cavaliers-finally-took-down-dan-gilb...

Yahoo and Comic Sans. Together, in relevance, stuck in the 20th century.

Re: Warren Buffett and Dan Gilbert Unite in Bid to Acquire Yahoo

#25

Post by JoshTriplett » Mon, May 16, 2016, 5:58 PM UTC

It's not obvious what the acquiring group mentioned in this article would do with Yahoo after they've bought it, to make it worth the price. They'd have the 5th most visited domain name on the Internet, but as Yahoo has demonstrated, visits don't automatically turn into money. (Twitter has a similar problem, and sits at #8, but they have a social aspect that Yahoo doesn't.)

Unless Alibaba comes with the purchase at a discount, or someone wants to acqui-hire whatever talent hasn't already fled, an acquisition doesn't seem even remotely sensible.

A few quick checks suggest that Yahoo's searches-per-day traffic is still decent, at 12.4% of the market (2.2 billion searches/month); perhaps redirecting that to some competing search engine might be worth it for a cheap enough price.

Re: Warren Buffett and Dan Gilbert Unite in Bid to Acquire Yahoo

#26

Post by maxerickson » Mon, May 16, 2016, 5:58 PM UTC

mathattack wrote: post #23

Kinnard wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't imagine he has any other plan. I'm a Detroiter. Too bad Yahoo isn't really a tech company: http://www.paulgraham.com/yahoo.html

What's the Detroit connection with Warren and Yahoo? I must have missed that in all the articles.

Gilbert.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_Gilbert_%28businessman%29#...

Re: Warren Buffett and Dan Gilbert Unite in Bid to Acquire Yahoo

#27

Post by rkrzr » Mon, May 16, 2016, 5:59 PM UTC

verganileonardo wrote: post #10

yalogin wrote: post #2

Doesn't Buffet famously stay away from Tech? What changed? He is buying Yahoo and has invested in Apple.

He is not buying equity in Yahoo, he is lending money to the actual buyer and will receive interest on that lending. (Which is much more secure)

Actually it sounds as if he would be buying convertible bonds according to the article. This means he will have the opportunity to convert his bonds into equity at some point in the future (at some share price in the future) if he chooses to exercise this right. Otherwise he will indeed just be collecting interest.

Re: Warren Buffett and Dan Gilbert Unite in Bid to Acquire Yahoo

#28

Post by billylindeman » Mon, May 16, 2016, 5:59 PM UTC

mathattack wrote: post #23

Kinnard wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't imagine he has any other plan. I'm a Detroiter. Too bad Yahoo isn't really a tech company: http://www.paulgraham.com/yahoo.html

What's the Detroit connection with Warren and Yahoo? I must have missed that in all the articles.

It's with Dan Gilbert and Detroit. He basically owns the city. My friends and I like to refer to the new downtown as Dantroit.

Re: Warren Buffett and Dan Gilbert Unite in Bid to Acquire Yahoo

#29

Post by tosseraccount » Mon, May 16, 2016, 6:02 PM UTC

hristov wrote: post #7

yalogin wrote: post #2

Doesn't Buffet famously stay away from Tech? What changed? He is buying Yahoo and has invested in Apple.

Probably valuations dropped low enough that yahoo can be valued as a classic media company instead of a tech company. What generally scares Buffet from tech is that the price of tech stocks is greatly inflated to reflect expectations of future growth. Buffet is very skeptical of inflated expectations of future growth. But I do not think there is any great expectations of future growth in yahoo. In fact many analysts…

The PE on S&P 500 is 18 : http://finance.yahoo.com/q?uhb=uh3_finance_vert&fr=&type=2bu...

The PE on Technology Select Sector SPDR ETF is 19 : http://finance.yahoo.com/q?uhb=uh3_finance_vert&fr=&type=2bu...

Based on this measure, tech and general market are priced similarly.

Re: Warren Buffett and Dan Gilbert Unite in Bid to Acquire Yahoo

#30

Post by ChuckMcM » Mon, May 16, 2016, 6:03 PM UTC

I find these things amusing "according to people who aren't authorized to speak publicly" except that they are talking to a reporter so that's kinda public. But really what they want to do is let potential other players know that "oh yeah, its real, we're bringing it and we're gone sell this thing, if you want a piece of this you better wake up and call us or your going to lose out." kind of vibe which attempts to incent other buyers to please make a bid and bring the price up. According to the Credite Suisse banker who helped with a transaction I participated in the ideal number of buyers is 3, and it helps if at least two of them both know each other and are competitive (think Benioff and Ellison for example).

I can see Microsoft's goal, add it the Bing group and give Bing the portal as well as it already has all the search traffic. Not so clearly on Berkshire though, breaking it up works if you can get it at the right price. I could also see IAC wanting to play, they could use a portal property to link all their front ends together.