Verizon Sells AOL and Yahoo to Apollo for $5B • Hacker News Board

Re: Verizon Sells AOL and Yahoo to Apollo for $5B

#241

Post by berkes » Mon, May 03, 2021, 7:27 PM UTC

blihp wrote: post #222

kumarvvr wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The stockmarket is like a round robin thingy, putting it lightly. All those who hold shares in FB, combined, are holding paper that is worth 900B. However, if even 10% of those wanted to sell their holdings at a time, the price would fall and the total holdings would be worth less for all. Now, why are they holding the shares then? Two things come into play. Firstly, say 5 years down the line, the holders have confid…

In other words, the greater fool theory.

Not really. The crucial piece is the future profit.

Re: Verizon Sells AOL and Yahoo to Apollo for $5B

#242

Post by Someone1234 » Mon, May 03, 2021, 7:29 PM UTC

NationalPark wrote: post #174

StratusBen wrote: post #78

I'm really surprised that Yahoo Finance has not been spun out as an independent company at this point. I think as a stand-alone company it could easily be worth in the billions of dollars. Reportedly Yahoo Finance has revenue between $100M and $250M annually. With the increase in retail interest in investing it seems like a property that could have some growth potential behind it if they did things right and separate…

Is that revenue from ad impressions? They did $1.3bn in their last public quarter, and in that earnings report they lump it in with homepage and sports in the one place it's mentioned, so I don't think it's particularly important (to them). Also, what does it do that retail brokers don't offer better and for free now? News aggregation?

> Also, what does it do that retail brokers don't offer better and for free now? News aggregation?

A lot of it is about presentation.

Brokers may "have" the same info as Yahoo Finance or finviz, but if you have to dig through ten pages to get to it and or their charts look like a 1990s website, there's still room.

A lot of more serious investors find themselves paying out of pocket for trading tools like stockcharts/tradingview/finviz/Y!F Plus, because these tools help them be more productive because actual thought and care has gone into the products.

But this is the reason why Bloomberg Terminals are worth $20K/year/seat. On paper, you can find a lot of the same info online for free, but the interface itself is a huge value-add.

Re: Verizon Sells AOL and Yahoo to Apollo for $5B

#243

Post by sfblah » Mon, May 03, 2021, 7:31 PM UTC

kumarvvr wrote: post #184

utopcell wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yahoo is the 8th most visited property in the world [1] and still brings in billions in revenue. Pretty good for a "dead" entity. [1] https://www.visualcapitalist.com/the-50-most-visited-website...

As per your link, Yahoo has about 4 Billion monthly visitors. Average Click-Through-Rate for web ads is about 0.5%. That translates to about 20 million ad clicks per month. Average Cost-Per-Click is about 0.5 USD, meaning Yahoo earns about 10 Million dollars from ad clicks. Lets triple it, considering exclusive deals, ad deals, etc. So thats 30 M USD per month, or about 360 M USD per year. Still is it worth about 5 B…

Visitors visit more than one page per "monthly visit." Multiply your entire analysis by something like 5 or 10.

Re: Verizon Sells AOL and Yahoo to Apollo for $5B

#244

Post by enos_feedler » Mon, May 03, 2021, 7:31 PM UTC

dcolkitt wrote: post #144

enos_feedler wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm surprised Twitter hasn't been interested in Yahoo Finance and Yahoo sports apps. The onboarding into Twitter, integration with tweets would be worth billions. A lot of "regular people" use those apps, and Twitter investors are looking for the user growth. Also, if Twitter is going to become a platform for interests/topics, it would be good to have a couple of standalone apps on some core topics.

My off the wall suggestion would be for Coinbase to acquire them. They certainly have enough firepower to do a stock acquisition. The Yahoo Finance portal would run as a subsidized loss leader to on-ramp new customers into crypto investing. Setting up the portal to put crypto assets on the same footing as traditional assets would do a lot to appeal to older or more conservative investors who view crypto as "magic Int…

I am not sure Yahoo finance is the right place for this kind of integration. If they were to integrate buy/sell and portfolio it would be more of a plaid style where you can connect your existing broker. You would lose a bunch of users who don't want to switch to coinbase. This is why i was thinking a media company would make sense for the media asset. It should be something more neutral.

Re: Verizon Sells AOL and Yahoo to Apollo for $5B

#245

Post by 1270018080 » Mon, May 03, 2021, 7:31 PM UTC

dcolkitt wrote: post #144

enos_feedler wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm surprised Twitter hasn't been interested in Yahoo Finance and Yahoo sports apps. The onboarding into Twitter, integration with tweets would be worth billions. A lot of "regular people" use those apps, and Twitter investors are looking for the user growth. Also, if Twitter is going to become a platform for interests/topics, it would be good to have a couple of standalone apps on some core topics.

My off the wall suggestion would be for Coinbase to acquire them. They certainly have enough firepower to do a stock acquisition. The Yahoo Finance portal would run as a subsidized loss leader to on-ramp new customers into crypto investing. Setting up the portal to put crypto assets on the same footing as traditional assets would do a lot to appeal to older or more conservative investors who view crypto as "magic Int…

As an liberal investor, all crypto is a pump and dump scheme pushing magic internet money. But we've all seen this debate before.

Re: Verizon Sells AOL and Yahoo to Apollo for $5B

#246

Post by johnvanommen » Mon, May 03, 2021, 7:33 PM UTC

amoorthy wrote: post #156

the_local_host wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yahoo Finance is so good that when I'm trying to find information about a company, I'll type the company's name into Google, do a bit of reading, then... go over to Yahoo Finance and manually type it in again to look at their stock performance. It says something that someone as lazy as myself will actually hop out of Google's flow and perform a manual step to go Yahoo Finance.

Sigh. Remember when Google Finance was great with easily the best charting software and easy lookup of key stats for a company? Then they decided a couple years ago to destroy it for no reason. I wish I knew why they made this horrible decision.

Easily the best stock charting software. And they nuked it because _______?

Re: Verizon Sells AOL and Yahoo to Apollo for $5B

#247

Post by zaidf » Mon, May 03, 2021, 7:33 PM UTC

StratusBen wrote: post #78

I'm really surprised that Yahoo Finance has not been spun out as an independent company at this point. I think as a stand-alone company it could easily be worth in the billions of dollars. Reportedly Yahoo Finance has revenue between $100M and $250M annually. With the increase in retail interest in investing it seems like a property that could have some growth potential behind it if they did things right and separate…

I'm really surprised that Yahoo Finance has not been spun out as an independent company

I'm sure Apollo Management can't wait to do this.

Re: Verizon Sells AOL and Yahoo to Apollo for $5B

#248

Post by spullara » Mon, May 03, 2021, 7:36 PM UTC

dcolkitt wrote: post #144

enos_feedler wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm surprised Twitter hasn't been interested in Yahoo Finance and Yahoo sports apps. The onboarding into Twitter, integration with tweets would be worth billions. A lot of "regular people" use those apps, and Twitter investors are looking for the user growth. Also, if Twitter is going to become a platform for interests/topics, it would be good to have a couple of standalone apps on some core topics.

My off the wall suggestion would be for Coinbase to acquire them. They certainly have enough firepower to do a stock acquisition. The Yahoo Finance portal would run as a subsidized loss leader to on-ramp new customers into crypto investing. Setting up the portal to put crypto assets on the same footing as traditional assets would do a lot to appeal to older or more conservative investors who view crypto as "magic Int…

Yahoo Finance already tracks the cryptocurrencies. Has for ages. You can also integrate in exchanges to buy stocks, wouldn't be hard to add crypto to that. BTW, you can't buy DOGE-USD on Coinbase. Here it is in my wife's portfolio:

https://i.imgur.com/MZlE51m.png

Re: Verizon Sells AOL and Yahoo to Apollo for $5B

#249

Post by spullara » Mon, May 03, 2021, 7:38 PM UTC

slg wrote: post #167

enos_feedler wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm surprised Twitter hasn't been interested in Yahoo Finance and Yahoo sports apps. The onboarding into Twitter, integration with tweets would be worth billions. A lot of "regular people" use those apps, and Twitter investors are looking for the user growth. Also, if Twitter is going to become a platform for interests/topics, it would be good to have a couple of standalone apps on some core topics.

>Yahoo sports apps I believe the Yahoo's suite of fantasy sports apps is second only to DraftKings in terms of market size and DraftKings' market cap is $22b. No reason that couldn't be spun off as its own company and be worth a $5b itself with the right leadership.

I looked this up. The top 2 are DraftKings and FanDuel. They have 90% marketshare. Yahoo is tied for 3rd.

Re: Verizon Sells AOL and Yahoo to Apollo for $5B

#250

Post by spullara » Mon, May 03, 2021, 7:39 PM UTC

the_local_host wrote: post #100

StratusBen wrote: post #78

I'm really surprised that Yahoo Finance has not been spun out as an independent company at this point. I think as a stand-alone company it could easily be worth in the billions of dollars. Reportedly Yahoo Finance has revenue between $100M and $250M annually. With the increase in retail interest in investing it seems like a property that could have some growth potential behind it if they did things right and separate…

Yahoo Finance is so good that when I'm trying to find information about a company, I'll type the company's name into Google, do a bit of reading, then... go over to Yahoo Finance and manually type it in again to look at their stock performance. It says something that someone as lazy as myself will actually hop out of Google's flow and perform a manual step to go Yahoo Finance.

Yahoo Finance is and always has been the best finance site. Mostly because they license all the additional data you really need to investigate a company and Google was never into that sort of thing.