Though the companies that are attempting to purchase Yahoo! are many, there is one that seems to be the most dominant so far.
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Bloomberg reported last week that Verizon meant to bid for Yahoo’s web business in a round of negotiations scheduled to begin last Monday. However, a new contender has emerged, and it might very well put a dent in Verizon’s possibly dominant offer for the once-prominent internet firm.
To make Mayer’s enormous buyout package somewhat more palatable for a new owner, Yahoo also changed the way it would pay her and other executives.
CNN reports that interested parties have until April 18 to make their offers. Back in 2008, according to the report, Microsoft tried to buy Yahoo out for $45 billion but Yahoo backed out on that one for some reason. As are the dynamics of a stretched out M&A procedure, Yahoo has told potential suitors that the company’s revenue has taken a massive hit from a year ago, dropping to $4.4 billion, from $5 billion in 2015. It will be interesting to see what information will be provided by CEO Mayer about developments in selling these assets. AOL is like a mini version of Yahoo, with a sizable digital advertising and online content business. Yahoo bidders are split into three groups: tech companies interested in the patent portfolio or some technological assets like search, mail, etc.; media companies interested in Yahoo’s content business, like Yahoo Sports, News, Finance, etc; or private equity firms that believe they could re-sell the company for a higher price in the future.
Yahoo! has announced that it is giving prospective buyers until April 18 to submit their final offers for the company’s acquisition. When you combine that with the data Yahoo! is able to collect on its 1 billion monthly active visitors across its sites, Verizon could likely monetize Yahoo! visitors on mobile better than Yahoo! could alone. On Thursday, though, its market capitalization was $35 billion, compared to Disney’s $162 billion and Comcast’s $150 billion.
SoftBank owns a 43 percent stake in Yahoo Japan and a majority stake in Sprint. As a result, Mayer’s days at Yahoo are nearly certainly numbered, though rumors abound that she will still be in line for a “golden parachute” bonus worth anything up to US$37 million.
Mayer has led the fight to keep Yahoo on its current path, butting heads with Starboard and other investors pushing for a sale.
At its peak in early 2000, Yahoo was worth $255 billion. In other words, the stock market is valuing Yahoo’s core Internet business as completely worthless. Google and Yahoo survived, but while Google thrived, Yahoo never truly recovered.
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Yahoo!, one of the internet’s great pioneers, is attractive again. Yahoo is now valued at $34 billion which is roughly the value of its Asian holdings.
