On a positive note contrasting the challenges facing her company, Yahoo’s Chief Executive Officer Marissa Mayer announced that she has given birth to identical twin girls.
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The girls – whose names have not been released – join the couple’s 3-year-old son Macallister. As many believe that most of Yahoo’s current market value comes from those Asian investments.
Yahoo! Inc.is planning to carve out its main Web business into a standalone company, part of a tax-saving “complex transaction” to separate its $31 billion stake in Alibaba Holding Group Ltd. But the Internal Revenue Service jeopardized the plan by refusing to guarantee the Alibaba spinoff would quality for a tax exemption. On the same call, Mayer said that separating the Alibaba investment from the rest of the company will provide more transparency into the value of the business. That’s the voice that they needed at core Yahoo.
Even though mobile advertising is driving much of the growth at Google, Facebook and Twitter, Yahoo’s share of the segment is shrinking, and projected to slide further in 2017, researcher EMarketer predicts.
The Yahoo board voted unanimously to suspend the Alibaba stake spin-off and to pursue a reverse spin, Yahoo chairman Maynard Webb said during the conference call.
Those remarks seemed to disappoint investors hoping that Yahoo’s latest change in course might be a precursor to a sale. The company has invested in acquiring content creators and backing original programming in recent years, but Yahoo has yet to see big growth in that area. That was enough to set the stage for what the company did at its board meeting last week. Also, Mayer will stay engaged with the company as needed with her CEO duties, the person said.
The two companies would each be publicly traded, Yahoo said.
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The handling of the Alibaba stake is crucial to Yahoo shareholders because of the money involved. Yahoo counts more than 1 billion users worldwide.
