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Yahoo to Spin Off Its Core Businesses

nytimes.com

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Re: Yahoo to Spin Off Its Core Businesses

#251

Post by jonknee »

profeta wrote: post #155
jonknee wrote: post #115

Marissa Mayer and Maynard Webb were on CNBC this morning talking about the spin: Part 1: https://amp.twimg.com/v/76b8a5e2-9a6c-40c3-9c1b-e2c8bcf91159 Part 2: https://amp.twimg.com/v/ce42d263-7b9c-4716-8d06-b320ed243606 Mayer seems completely bored by the whole thing and keeps passing stuff off to Webb as "board level consideration". Doesn't make me excited for Yahoo whatsoever.

OTOH if the CEO is excited about a tax shenanigan i will not be excited by the company.

Yahoo's stake in Alibaba is by far the most valuable part of Yahoo. The "tax shenanigan" itself is worth more than Yahoo's core business! If she can't get excited about the majority of shareholder value she needs to step down ASAP.

Re: Yahoo to Spin Off Its Core Businesses

#252

Post by andrewfarah »

jackgavigan wrote: post #184
charlesdm wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

She's throwing the company away she is currently CEO of. The BABA stake had to be separated from Yahoo, but this is literally the worst possible way, aside from selling the shares + paying taxes, to achieve this.

What's so bad about it? The end result is the same as the original plan - one company with a stake in Alibaba, and another company with Yahoo's core businesses and the Yahoo Japan stake.

Maybe they rename Yahoo "Aabaco" and the spin-off, Yahoo.

Re: Yahoo to Spin Off Its Core Businesses

#253

Post by jonknee »

rchaud wrote: post #236
jonknee wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> daily fantasy startups like Draft Kings is currently bathing in VC cash and media coverage. They're currently bathing in legal battles and will probably be out of business in very short order. It's a liability for Yahoo, not an asset to brag about.

That depends. I thought the same thing would happen to Uber, but they've used their rapid growth and VC money to fund lobbying efforts to change the laws around taxi regulation. As I understand it, these FF startups are attempting to exploit similar loopholes in Internet gambling laws as a short-term fix while they lobby to change the law in their favor.

Uber was never declared illegal gambling by multiple US attorney generals. They fight corrupt local politics, not well tested gambling laws. The only reason the execs aren't in jail already is because they have very well connected investors (which helps Uber as well!).

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/11/sports/football/draftkings...

Re: Yahoo to Spin Off Its Core Businesses

#254

Post by toomuchtodo »

ghaff wrote: post #228
pmlnr wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been running my own site for displaying images; for backup, I have a dedicated server + synthing. It's the archives I'd really, really miss, from people who more or less stopped taking photos. If Flickr was to offer what Smugmug and 500px does for pros ( like direct upload from Lightroom, eyecandy portfolios, etc. ) instead of focusing on an app that uploads every picture it finds by default, I believe they'd se…

>It's the archives I'd really, really miss, from people who more or less stopped taking photos. That's fair. The greatest loss if flickr were to go away at some point would be that a lot of content would be permanently removed from the Web. And flickr's scale is such that I can't really imagine something like the archive team being able to copy flickr content and archive it in a useful searchable way. I may be wrong…

It might be time for Archive Team to start archiving Flickr.

Re: Yahoo to Spin Off Its Core Businesses

#255

Post by mahranch »

chollida1 wrote: post #17

Yahoo had to do this. They had been hanging onto the belief that the IRS wouldn't tax their Alibaba spin out, a belief that they and their tax accountants alone believed. Most telling is that Yahoo was up after the markets closed on this news. Heck Bloomberg just sent me a note saying the sentiment of the news on Yahoo was very positive, even the machines like this news:) Sadly this probably means 3 things are going…

> then look for Alibaba to seek to acquire the rest of Yahoo Japan.

Yahoo! Inc doesn't own the majority of Yahoo! Japan (believe it or not), Softbank does. Yahoo! is only a minor shareholder of Yahoo! Japan.

Re: Yahoo to Spin Off Its Core Businesses

#256

Post by marssaxman »

kaizendad wrote: post #131
chollida1 wrote: post #17

Yahoo had to do this. They had been hanging onto the belief that the IRS wouldn't tax their Alibaba spin out, a belief that they and their tax accountants alone believed. Most telling is that Yahoo was up after the markets closed on this news. Heck Bloomberg just sent me a note saying the sentiment of the news on Yahoo was very positive, even the machines like this news:) Sadly this probably means 3 things are going…

This is cleverer than people are giving them credit for. It delivers immediate value to shareholders; it delivers opportunities for long term growth to shareholders; it creates one valuable Asian property that can acquire other properties and continue to deliver shareholder value; it creates a US company that is easier to acquire than it used to be, without the Alibaba share, and thus could be bought by a big media c…

What core assets are those? Yahoo seems like Real Networks: a former big name that continues to exist (and get press) for no reason beyond inertia. It's not clear to me that it actually does anything worth paying for at this point.

Re: Yahoo to Spin Off Its Core Businesses

#257

Post by [deleted] »

wahsd wrote: post #204
chollida1 wrote: post #17

Yahoo had to do this. They had been hanging onto the belief that the IRS wouldn't tax their Alibaba spin out, a belief that they and their tax accountants alone believed. Most telling is that Yahoo was up after the markets closed on this news. Heck Bloomberg just sent me a note saying the sentiment of the news on Yahoo was very positive, even the machines like this news:) Sadly this probably means 3 things are going…

Marissa Mayer is basically an ex-CEO walking at this point. As "bad" as it sounds, the only thing that has kept her around recently is her pregnancy. No board would want to step into the mess of letting a woman CEO go during pregnant or immediately following pregnancy and maternity, no matter horrible her performance. You are right, I give it about 6 months before there's an announcement of her departure for whatever…

[deleted]

Re: Yahoo to Spin Off Its Core Businesses

#258

Post by shawn-furyan »

gaius wrote: post #201
chollida1 wrote: post #17

Yahoo had to do this. They had been hanging onto the belief that the IRS wouldn't tax their Alibaba spin out, a belief that they and their tax accountants alone believed. Most telling is that Yahoo was up after the markets closed on this news. Heck Bloomberg just sent me a note saying the sentiment of the news on Yahoo was very positive, even the machines like this news:) Sadly this probably means 3 things are going…

The past 4 years couldn't have been easy on her. Isn't that why CEOs are paid the big bucks? I mean, a Yahoo whose sole purpose is to be a tax-efficient vehicle for holding shares in Alibaba is not the endgame anyone envisioned, and let's be honest, doesn't really need a CEO either... Not that she ever has to work again.

CEOs get the big bucks because they are better than everyone else at taking credit for business success irrespective of how much control they actually had over the factors contributing most to those successes[1]. They've also been the most effective group at raising the baseline replacement cost of their position. This limits the amount that can be saved by booting a CEO for a cheaper option. So there's a feedback loop at play, when the business succeeds, the CEO gets a raise, and when it falters, market forces prevent the CEO from getting a pay cut (and often still seem to necessitate, or at least "justify", a raise in the face of declining business).

[1] I'm not saying that their impact is never high, but CEOs are paid as if it is always high, and that's essentially been demonstrated by economists not to be the case, particularly with large complex organizations.

Re: Yahoo to Spin Off Its Core Businesses

#259

Post by eva1984 »

mkagenius wrote: post #205
guelo wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're looking for a buyer of the Yahoo spinoff, it's not going to stay independent. It will probably to be bought by vulture capital firms. Yahoo is basically dead.

> They're looking for a buyer of the Yahoo Board feels Yahoo's core business is undervalued. The spin off will help clear the picture of how much Yahoo's core business independently value. They are not looking for buyers (unless someone has a offer they can't refuse).

Too early to say that. They are not looking buyers, until the core business spin-off get priced reasonably, by the market.

Re: Yahoo to Spin Off Its Core Businesses

#260

Post by jleader »

T-A wrote: post #70
strictnein wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wish I could find the article I read this in (googling around has failed me), but I believe around 2010 they also started bringing in execs and business people from Hollywood/MSM and there was a big clash of cultures.

The first Hollywood connection surfaced by my quick googling is the Semel arc, 2001-2007: http://www.cnet.com/news/yahoos-ceo-reaches-out-to-hollywood... http://www.cnet.com/news/google-vs-yahoo-clash-of-cultures-1... http://www.wired.com/2007/02/yahoo-3/ http://metue.com/06-18-2007/yahoo-ceo/ The Wired article looks particularly painful. If memory serves, Yahoo first declined to buy proto-Google for one million. The…

Pretty much everyone with a million dollars laying around declined to spend it on acquiring Google back then, it's not like Yahoo was the only company they approached.
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