It also says private equity firm TPG Capital has looked at buying media properties within Yahoo.
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Yahoo is still to comment on the news.
Last month, Starboard Value’s Managing Member Jeffrey C. Smith said that Yahoo should explore a sale of its core business of search and display advertising rather than selling its shares in Alibaba. SoftBank, however, appears to have little interest in a bid, according to sources.
Alibaba will be interested in buying back its shares from Yahoo only at a steep discount, the WSJ said, citing the person.
Even as Mayer has been working on additional features to the smartphones and also unleashing new products in the marketing field to attract the marketers, the company is not doing too well. Yahoo Inc.is struggling to keep its head above the waters due to competition from rivals like Google and Facebook.
The company was planning the spinoff worth $30 billion to be completed this year and this had been announced by Mayer while releasing the 3Q15 results in October 2015.
Most of Yahoo’s $31.8 billion market capitalization is tied up in two large Asian assets, China’s reigning champion of e-commerce, Alibaba Holding Group Ltd (BABA – Analyst Report), and Yahoo Japan. Chief marketing officer Kathy Savitt left earlier this year.
The people add that private equity firms are expected to be among those who will be looking at Yahoo’s core business.
“Realizing value is far from assured, however”, Pivotal analyst Brian Wieser wrote in a note.
“And so are rumours that the board of the Silicon Valley internet giant is poised to sell off the entire core business”, she said. In over three years of her career as the Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO) seeks a buyer for its underperforming core Internet business. Keep in mind, there has been some complications surrounding the Alibaba stake. Squali gave each scenario an equal probability of occurring, and said it’s likely that one of them will occur by January.
Yahoo shareholders could end up paying billions in taxes if the U.S. Internal Revenue Service (IRS) deems the spinoff taxable.
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But Yahoo’s board may be considering a spin-off of the Chinese and Japanese investments, paving the way to a deal with SoftBank.
