YAHOO: Shares in Yahoo, the original Internet giant, fell $1.06, or 2.7 percent, to $38.32 after the company announced Verizon would buy its advertising, media and email businesses for $4.8 billion. These assets will continue to be held by Yahoo, which will change its name at closing and become a publicly traded investment company, the statement said.
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Disclosure: CNBC has a content-sharing partnership with Yahoo’s finance site. She would walk away with an approximately $55 million severance package if Yahoo’s sale to Verizon ousts her from her job.
The No. 1 USA wireless operator is betting that it can take data on more than 200 million unique monthly visitors to Yahoo sites, many of them on mobile devices, and combine it with data on 150 million or so unique monthly AOL users and data on its own user base of over 100 million wireless subscribers to offer a more targeted service for advertisers.
Until the deal is finalized, Yahoo will continue to operate as an independent company. “We have delivered the first half of the year with pride, achieving our goals”.
When Yahoo did make acquisitions, it overpaid.
A failed attempt to spin off the company’s Alibaba stake, now worth about $32 billion, hurt Mayer’s standing with investors.
Bob O’Donnell of the consultancy Technalysis Research agreed that Verizon will want to keep the Yahoo brand which is recognized worldwide, at least for the near term. Yahoo, Verizon, and AOL will cater to more than 1 billion customers globally after the joint operation takes off. This culminates a rigorous, thorough process over many months, and yields a great outcome for the company.
She added that the deal separates the core Yahoo business from its Asian asset equity stakes, and “is an important step in our plan to unlock shareholder value for Yahoo”.
This is a good moment to reflect on Yahoo’s journey to date.
Yahoo, once the darling of Silicon Valley and one of the most prominent names on the Internet, was founded in 1994.
“Seven West Media will have an opportunity, in the period between being formally notified of a transaction and final completion, to consider which options it selects or a combination as may be negotiated with the new owners of Yahoo, Inc that creates the most value for Seven West Media shareholders”.
Tumblr and Flickr have small but passionate user bases. We counteracted numerous tectonic shifts of declining legacy businesses, and built a Yahoo that is unequivocally stronger, nimbler, and more modern. We have a terrific, loyal, experienced and quality team, and I couldn’t be prouder of our achievements to date, including building our new lines of business to US$1.6 billion in GAAP revenue in 2015.
It’s because of that hard work and resilience, that Yahoo will realize unbelievable opportunities in its next chapter. That might be valuable to the advertiser, and Verizon could charge more.
“The strategy behind the deal is to really go after mobile and video and a lot of the global services – the services that AOL has and Yahoo has – at scale”, he told “Squawk Box”.
“For me personally, I am planning to stay”. I love Yahoo, and I believe in all of you.
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Until early 2017 when this deal is expected to finalise, a definitive yes.
