
Yahoo to Say It's Exploring Strategic Alternatives - Riod
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-02-02/yahoo-to-say-it-s-exploring-strategic-alternatives-person-says
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henrikschroder
It's interesting that the Alibaba holdings are more of a liability than an
asset in this situation.

YHOO is essentially a proxy for BABA, nothing Yahoo does affects the stock
price in any meaningful way, and the value of the core business is effectively
negative, if you subtract the post-tax value of Alibaba, Yahoo Japan, and cash
on hand. But the value of a declining business with billions in revenue each
year must be positive.

So selling off Alibaba and Yahoo Japan is the best bet, except you have
investors demanding that it be done tax-free, so you can't just sell them,
even though the decline of the value of Alibaba during the time it takes to do
this process might be larger than the taxes. If Alibaba keeps going down in
value, selling it now gives you more money than selling it tax-free in the
future. But that might still get you sued by the shareholders, which is
stupid.

A reverse spin-off, i.e. selling the core business, has some funny
implications as well. Many employees are on work visas, which are tied to a
specific employer at a specific address. If this changes, all of those visas
become invalid. Obviously, selling the assets and shrinking the market cap,
would make it much easier for someone to buy Yahoo.

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sharkweek
You know how I know I'll never be a CEO of a huge company like this? Because I
read what you just wrote and thought, "this doesn't sound like something that
1) I could ever solve 2) it just doesn't sound remotely fun to try and figure
all this stuff out"

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charlesdm
I can see how that could be fun if you like big picture thinking.

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lesdeuxmagots
It's only fun in theory. What's not fun is when you have to answer to
investors, which give no shits about you or your employees, and only dollars,
or what they perceive will increase their returns. Often, this is aligned with
what management wants to do and what the employees want to do, but in a
situation like this, the incentives can be heavily misaligned.

~~~
NotSammyHagar
I think like most people in leadership positions at big companies, they can
coast along on the success of the big company but they think it's all them.
See also nfl coaches. When I was at google, she was such an ass to people.
Many were glad to see her leave. I wish more leaders had humility about their
success. She's got her 300 million, she'll be okay, but I doubt she will get
an improved character out of this.

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dfar1
Dear Yahoo,

Remove the fake ads from your home page. Remove the misleading ads from your
home page.

Sponsored How To Pay Off Your Mortgage Homeowners are surprised and furious.
If you owe less than $625,000 on your home, you better read this.

Remove the ads from your already terrible email service. Remove the gossip
columns that you call news and burry them deep where no one can find it. Stop
trying to be good at everything, because right now you can't do one thing
well. Stop with the ads that take over the whole screen. Stop copying and
pasting or embedding content from other sites Stop using these crazy layouts
that change all the time. It's impossible to find what you are looking for and
it takes forever to load.

Promote content that matters. Assume your audience is intelligent Be creative
Be innovative

~~~
WalterBright
Yahoo's finance page is very good, better than anyone else's. With one click
URL I can get quotes on all the stocks I'm interested in, with a thumbnail
graph, and links to charts, news, etc.

Nobody else is even close.

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NotSammyHagar
google finance has all that.

~~~
WalterBright
I beg to differ.

1\. Google's is cookie based, meaning I can have only one portfolio. 2\.
Google doesn't have the thumbnail chart of the day's performance. 3\. Google
doesn't have the useful links.

Yahoo's is URL based, for example, here's a MSFT/AMZN/GOOG portfolio:

[https://finance.yahoo.com/quotes/MSFT,GOOG,AMZN/view/v1](https://finance.yahoo.com/quotes/MSFT,GOOG,AMZN/view/v1)

See for yourself!

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alttab
"We admit we have no vision for this company, or its purpose, outside of
maximizing shareholder value. Literally, we have no reason to exist other than
preserving capital."

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charlesdm
They should probably be returning capital at this point, instead of
preserving. Yahoo is way past its expiration date.

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Riod
This reads like a classic sale script. Cut costs(hence the 15% cuts), focus on
generating revenue (comments about focusing on core areas), then sell the
business. Should be interesting

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colmvp
It's strange to me that this article with such brevity is on the front page,
yet the NYTimes article about the difficulties of individuals to survive in
retirement age got bumped?

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kqr2
Reference to LA Times article and discussion:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11022097](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11022097)

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foltz
I fear for Flickr.

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profeta
bloomberg is limiting it's articles to 140 chars now?

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metaphorm
I had to check. 562. It would all fit in 5 tweets.

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profeta
details, details. :D

but, if you take out the part that is completely irrelevant about how they
reported something that did not happen about yahoo selling itself, then it is
probably less than 140.

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jvandonsel
Merge with AOL!

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acheron
Sure. AOL could bring back the Netscape brand, then after merging they could
move to Israel: Net 'n Yahoo.

~~~
mateo411
This is the best solution proposed so far.

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vidoc
The best video yahoo made, ever !

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E37-iqnvzZ4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E37-iqnvzZ4)

~~~
mtmail
The article is about strategic decisions Yahoo! faces as a business. And
you're using a five year old anti-LGBT bullying video as a sarcastic joke?
That's double insulting.

~~~
vidoc
Did you actually _watch_ the video ?

It's exactly the opposite of an anti-LGBT video

~~~
ante_annum

        five year old anti-LGBT bullying video
    

five year old anti LGBT-bullying video.

~~~
vidoc
you won

