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Alibaba Raises $21.8B in Initial Public Offering

nytimes.com

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Re: Alibaba Raises $21.8B in Initial Public Offering

#81

Post by isfd3oi43 »

grinich wrote: post #59
downandout wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No need to fire everyone. Yahoo made $38M net profit on operations last quarter. All they would have to do is maintain their current assets and employees and the owners get $160m/year in free cash. Then, using their effectively unlimited supply of capital in the form of Alibaba stock, they could make some very smart acquisitions (think for example of buying an instagram for $1b cash and growing it to what it is today…

Why don't you think Marisa is up to the task? She seems more than capable to me, and has done a remarkable job leading Yahoo so far.

Like what ? Firing 1000 people , removing WFH option , buying companies of no value ? Amount of shill-ing-ness I smell is just ridiculous. Also be polite next time.

Re: Alibaba Raises $21.8B in Initial Public Offering

#82

Post by isfd3oi43 »

downandout wrote: post #61
grinich wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why don't you think Marisa is up to the task? She seems more than capable to me, and has done a remarkable job leading Yahoo so far.

From an IQ perspective, I think she is probably among the top 5 executives in the Valley - likely smarter than Sergey Brin or Larry Page, her former co-workers at Google. She's brilliant. I'm only going by her performance thus far - for whatever reason, most of her acquisitions have been blunders. There are valuable start-ups all around - it doesn't make sense to me that Yahoo can't find them. I realize that there is…

a. You don't have to get immediately defensive when someone question it. Learn to stand your opinion. He could be just another shill and can't do anything. b. "likely smarter than Sergey Brin or Larry Page" -- This make think either you are high or some mumbo jumbo junior.

Re: Alibaba Raises $21.8B in Initial Public Offering

#83

Post by [deleted] »

mafribe wrote: post #73
downandout wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From an IQ perspective, I think she is probably among the top 5 executives in the Valley - likely smarter than Sergey Brin or Larry Page, her former co-workers at Google. She's brilliant. I'm only going by her performance thus far - for whatever reason, most of her acquisitions have been blunders. There are valuable start-ups all around - it doesn't make sense to me that Yahoo can't find them. I realize that there is…

On the basis of what evidence do you make such grand claims about her intellectual abilities?

[deleted]

Re: Alibaba Raises $21.8B in Initial Public Offering

#84

Post by discardorama »

dragonwriter wrote: post #13
skuhn wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True, this is very naive and presumes you can sell everything for their accounting values without moving the market price or people realizing what you're doing. However, $17bn is a pretty big window of error, and this isn't even taking into account the crazy notion that you could keep running the actual business. It has revenues of $1bn a quarter, nothing to sneeze at.

> However, $17bn is a pretty big window of error Is it? Sell everything else at accounting value and realize a little under half price on the combined Y! Japan and Alibaba stock, and suddenly you are merely breaking even. > and this isn't even taking into account the crazy notion that you could keep running the actual business. It has revenues of $1bn a quarter, nothing to sneeze at. Revenues aren't profits. And Yaho…

> $3.95B in 2012

That year they sold some $BABA, that's why the revenue was higher.

Re: Alibaba Raises $21.8B in Initial Public Offering

#85

Post by wodenokoto »

GigabyteCoin wrote: post #55
skuhn wrote: post #5

Alibaba going for a higher selling price just makes the continued undervaluing of Yahoo itself increasingly hilarious. At some point, I would think someone will want to buy them for all of this free money they have sitting around. YHOO market cap : 42.3bn + liabilities : 3.7bn = 46bn (to own outright) Meanwhile: Cash on hand = 1.1bn + Other assets = 15.3bn + Cash from Alibaba sale = 8.3bn + Value of remaining Alibaba…

But how much would the Yahoo Japan stock really be worth if the world knew somebody was liquidating the entire Yahoo company? I think that's your $9B profit right there.

Why would they change? Except for sharing the name and some cross stock holding, they are separate companies. Last I checked, Softbank was the majority stockholder, but I'm guessing that has changed since Yahoo Mobile launched.

Re: Alibaba Raises $21.8B in Initial Public Offering

#86

Post by wodenokoto »

w1ntermute wrote: post #50
bane wrote: post #4

Gosh....that's barely more than WhatsApp. Woulda done better selling it to Facebook. More seriously, the Economist put a valuation at $55-$120b. This puts it at $168b. Or 9 WhatsApps. The IPO was expected to raise $20b, so this is really good. It took 3 years after founding in 1998 to reach profitability. It defies most conventional notions of a startup, despite having started in somebody's apartment. It's unbelievab…

> It's unbelievably unfocused, it does pretty much every kind of business you can do on the Internet. This is standard in China, as well as other Asian nations, which have high-context cultures[0]. People in high-context cultures value familiarity more than people in low-context cultures. What we see as a lack of focus is seen by Chinese consumers as part of Alibaba's value proposition. 0: http://en.wikipedia.org/wik…

There is no such thing as high and low context cultures. ALL culture is high context.

Re: Alibaba Raises $21.8B in Initial Public Offering

#87

Post by malchow »

harryh wrote: post #32
imaginenore wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stock is not cash. You can't sell it at the current value price. You can't even sell 0.1% of it without driving the price to zero. The liquidity is just not that large.

Alibaba sold a hell of a lot more than 0.1% of itself today. About 125 times that number. And the price wasn't driven to zero. There's a lot more depth in US equities markets than you think.

"There's a lot more depth in US equities markets than you think."

That's a keeper!

Liquidity is a high-velocity component to markets. There's more depth that the sub-OP credits the market with at the present instant. But it really can disappear fast. I think there's actually a lot less depth to US equities than most people think, over the long run.

Re: Alibaba Raises $21.8B in Initial Public Offering

#88

Post by arbuge »

skuhn wrote: post #5

Alibaba going for a higher selling price just makes the continued undervaluing of Yahoo itself increasingly hilarious. At some point, I would think someone will want to buy them for all of this free money they have sitting around. YHOO market cap : 42.3bn + liabilities : 3.7bn = 46bn (to own outright) Meanwhile: Cash on hand = 1.1bn + Other assets = 15.3bn + Cash from Alibaba sale = 8.3bn + Value of remaining Alibaba…

The big issue seems to be whether you can trust management not to burn away the cash from Alibaba on unwise acquisitions, initiatives, and so forth.

It's a common problem in the stock market when you find stocks selling for less than your analysis of liquidation value. You may be right that at this snapshot in time, that's actually the case. But since you're a minority investor without control, you can't force a liquidation or breakup of the company at your convenience.

Re: Alibaba Raises $21.8B in Initial Public Offering

#89

Post by samolang »

skuhn wrote: post #5

Alibaba going for a higher selling price just makes the continued undervaluing of Yahoo itself increasingly hilarious. At some point, I would think someone will want to buy them for all of this free money they have sitting around. YHOO market cap : 42.3bn + liabilities : 3.7bn = 46bn (to own outright) Meanwhile: Cash on hand = 1.1bn + Other assets = 15.3bn + Cash from Alibaba sale = 8.3bn + Value of remaining Alibaba…

If you include a 35% tax on the sale of Alibaba shares, then the values drops to $45.1B.

http://online.wsj.com/articles/alibaba-ipo-to-give-yahoo-win... http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2014/07/21/how-yahoo-could-skirt...

Re: Alibaba Raises $21.8B in Initial Public Offering

#90

Post by cylinder »

BukhariH wrote: post #77
subdane wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They should buy Buzzfeed

This a pretty solid recommendation. Mayer has pivoted yahoo strongly towards content and BuzzFeed is pretty much the most solid content start up out there right now. It sounds like an obvious purchase.

You judge a merger by how the combination will unlock new value. Just because the business models are similar doesn't necessarily mean it's a good acquisition. I don't see how BuzzFeed can benefit with Yahoo other than perhaps accessing its ad sales network?
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