The board is expected to discuss its options in sessions beginning Wednesday and continuing through Friday, according to people familiar with the plans.
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Pivotal Research analyst Brian Wieser values core Yahoo at $1.9 billion, not including the $5.8 billion in cash on its balance sheet.
It is unclear what the board’s decision will mean for the future of Yahoo Chief Executive Marissa Mayer, who has pushed for the spin-off of the Alibaba stake but has not publicly commented on the possible sale of the core business.
Pressure is mounting on Mayer, a former Google executive, more than three years into a turnaround effort that has so far shown little progress. Should Yahoo decide to sell its core business, private equity firms are expected to gobble up the wide variety of web assets the company owns. “There’s a perception on Wall Street that Yahoo growth has stagnated and some investors are agitating for a sale”, Sterling said. The board is also discussing whether to sell off their web businesses, which have seen significant declines in recent years, even after the high-profile hiring of CEO Marissa Mayer.
This proposal, Starboard said, would leave the existing Yahoo corporate entity holding stakes in Alibaba and Yahoo Japan.
Several potential suitors are emerging for Yahoo!
Yahoo, once heralded as an Internet titan, now finds itself struggling to keep up in a digital field dominated by Google and Twitter and struggling to keep the doors open.
Yahoo was planning to complete the spinoff of its Alibaba stake, now worth more than $30bn, by next month, Ms Mayer said on the firm’s third-quarter conference call in October – later than a previous target of year’s end. From more than a year, a prominent activist investor, the hedge fund Starboard Value, has been trying to push Yahoo to take action to raise its stock price.
One potential barrier to a deal could be Yahoo’s 35% stake in Yahoo Japan and its 15% stake in China’s Alibaba Group. This is because Alibaba’s shares rose since the Chinese economy started to recover; they traded at $57 on September 28, the stock has surged up to $84 at present.
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Industry analysts point out that snapping up Yahoo’s internet operations would instantly make SoftBank a global player in the sector, notably widening its digital platform for entertainment and e-commerce outside of Japan.
