Yahoo Will Never Recover • Hacker News Board

Re: Yahoo Will Never Recover

#11

Post by encoderer » Tue, Jun 23, 2009, 2:56 PM UTC

TweedHeads wrote: post #10

How to detect propaganda: - Powerful words for those who just skim front page headlines - Referencing stocks at lowest $9 when right now they are in a healthy $15. - Words like mistakes, doomed, failure, layoffs I know I will lose some karma here, but this kind of FUD shouldn't be tolerated here in HN. We should know better how to detect it and how to eradicate this pest from news sites.

$15 is healthy compared to $9 but not when compared to the $30-40 range that I, as a Yahoo shareholder, would've been paid a year ago.

Re: Yahoo Will Never Recover

#12

Post by encoderer » Tue, Jun 23, 2009, 3:01 PM UTC

graemep wrote: post #7

lionhearted wrote: post #5

Interesting piece - reads correct, but I wouldn't count out a company with 3 billion in liquid reserves. Wow. Also, this set my Small Sample Size Alarm off some: > Bing is off to a remarkably good start. Microsoft has historically had 8% to 9% of the US search market compared to Yahoo!’s 20% and Google’s 65%. Early results show Bing’s share surging as high as 13% of 14% in the three weeks after its introduction . [em…

I was surprised by the amount of cash they have too. Other than that, it is an entirely incompetent piece: 1) He appears to think that acquisitions can only be paid for with cash. 2) He does not explain why he thinks search is Yahoo's critical business: Carol Bartz does not seem to think it is. She may well be wrong, but he needs to explain why he thinks so. 3) MS may be willing to invest heavily in search, but throw…

You can't buy a company with stock as weak as Yahoo's lately without paying a disgusting premium.

I have no idea if the guy is right or wrong on his premise, but his analysis of their business isn't too far off from how I see it.

Re: Yahoo Will Never Recover

#13

Post by TweedHeads » Tue, Jun 23, 2009, 3:22 PM UTC

encoderer wrote: post #11

TweedHeads wrote: post #10

How to detect propaganda: - Powerful words for those who just skim front page headlines - Referencing stocks at lowest $9 when right now they are in a healthy $15. - Words like mistakes, doomed, failure, layoffs I know I will lose some karma here, but this kind of FUD shouldn't be tolerated here in HN. We should know better how to detect it and how to eradicate this pest from news sites.

$15 is healthy compared to $9 but not when compared to the $30-40 range that I, as a Yahoo shareholder, would've been paid a year ago.

Yahoo stock was over $100 in the year 2000. Did shareholders ask to sell the company then?

The DOW was above 12K last year.

The DOW right now is around 8K.

Nobody foresaw the economic recession.

If your opinion can be so easily manipulated by throwing numbers out of context then I can not be of any help.

As a shareholder you should know that.

Re: Yahoo Will Never Recover

#14

Post by jobu » Tue, Jun 23, 2009, 4:10 PM UTC

pierrefar wrote: post #2

Summary: Yahoo! doesn't have the profit margins nor the cash to be able to make aggressive maneuvers. Google and MS on the otherhand can. Makes sense, but I won't go as far as saying Yahoo! will never recover, but it's certainly very difficult.

This article is at least 5 years late. It's been ages since Yahoo! was on the top of anything. They appear to be following in the steps of Alta Vista.

Re: Yahoo Will Never Recover

#15

Post by encoderer » Tue, Jun 23, 2009, 9:07 PM UTC

TweedHeads wrote: post #13

encoderer wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$15 is healthy compared to $9 but not when compared to the $30-40 range that I, as a Yahoo shareholder, would've been paid a year ago.

Yahoo stock was over $100 in the year 2000. Did shareholders ask to sell the company then? The DOW was above 12K last year. The DOW right now is around 8K. Nobody foresaw the economic recession. If your opinion can be so easily manipulated by throwing numbers out of context then I can not be of any help. As a shareholder you should know that.

I didn't own YHOO in 2000. But you're quoting a stock price from the apex of the tech bubble.

Either way.. none of that matters. Where the dow was or is doesn't matter.

What matters is shareholder equity. The ONLY job of Yahoo is to make value for its shareholders. They rejected a very fair offer from Microsoft. I don't care one way or the other of Yahoo sells to Microsoft as long as Yahoo management can lay out a clear plan for creating more value for shareholders than the Microsoft deal would've.

It looked to me, and loads of other YHOO investors (including Icahn) that they made a decision based on some silly anti-Redmond attitude.

More importantly... your post seems to betray a sense of how this world works... Shareholders don't "ask" to sell a company. In some cases a board will shop for a buyer (essentially putting a for-sale sign out) but most often that's done only if the board feels they can't protect shareholder value without finding a suitor.

It's not about some burning desire to cash-out Yahoo stock. It's about the idea of turning away a made-offer, turning away cash, a premium on what the market currently values the company. If you're going to turn away cash in hand, you better have a reason. You better have a plan. NOTHING that has happened since Yang turned-down Microsoft has suggested that they have a plan.

Re: Yahoo Will Never Recover

#16

Post by encoderer » Tue, Jun 23, 2009, 9:11 PM UTC

jobu wrote: post #14

pierrefar wrote: post #2

Summary: Yahoo! doesn't have the profit margins nor the cash to be able to make aggressive maneuvers. Google and MS on the otherhand can. Makes sense, but I won't go as far as saying Yahoo! will never recover, but it's certainly very difficult.

This article is at least 5 years late. It's been ages since Yahoo! was on the top of anything. They appear to be following in the steps of Alta Vista.

They're still on the top of the list of most trafficked websites...

Re: Yahoo Will Never Recover

#17

Post by stse » Tue, Jun 23, 2009, 9:48 PM UTC

I think one of the cooler things coming out of yahoo was the "Yslow" best practices. But the guy in charge of that left for google around late 2007, early 2008. From what I've read they seem to have "lost" a lot of other people too.