

Yahoo Shares Top $31, The Price Microsoft Offered In 2008 - hknozcan
http://www.forbes.com/sites/roberthof/2013/09/19/jerry-yangs-revenge-yahoo-shares-top-31-the-price-microsoft-offered-in-2008/

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npalli
It should be noted that Yahoo owns 20% of Alibaba. With Alibaba announcing its
IPO plans earlier this year, yahoo's stake is worth between $13B to $18B. Most
of the share price increase is because of this. Not because Yahoo's core
business has gotten better. Yahoo is worth $31B today. So almost 1/3 to 1/2 of
Yahoo's valuation is its stake in Alibaba. In 2008, nobody knew how big
Alibaba would get.

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nashequilibrium
This is what should scare investors, look at the link below and you realize
that Yahoo is a leader in none of their business. Google leads search,
Facebook leads social, Twitter realtime news & events etc.
[http://everything.yahoo.com/](http://everything.yahoo.com/)

They have a big bowl of goo right now. I was impressed with Marissa's stats
during her Disrupt interview but a few days ago, i took a look at their
business and they just have a bunch of mediocre properties with lots of link
bait. This is how they getting so many views, a lot of gossip, lifestyle, tv
clips. Even in the gossip side, tmz & others beat them there. Dan Loeb is a
smart guy, he jumped out at the right time. I like Yahoo and hope they come up
with something that they dominate. They destroyed their research departments,
which were one of the best in the world and now when the market moves towards
more intelligent backends as devices get smaller, they are stuck fighting for
weather and gossip market space.

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wj
They might be the leader in fantasy sports. Obviously a small portion of
overall eyeballs but eyeballs that refresh the site many times a day.

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mikeryan
With inflation that number is around $33 bucks. But jeez what a silly metric,
who's happier that deal didn't happen - Yahoo or Microsoft?

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badave
Yahoo -- I think they were concerned about getting infected by M$'s culture.

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trafficlight
At least they'd have a culture then.

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badave
At the time they felt very strongly about it. The employees were adamant about
the fact that they had a certain way of doing things and they were concerned
that Microsoft would disrupt whatever it was they had.

I don't know if it was the right thing for either party, but that's what
happened.

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pdog
The S&P 500 index was at around 1,300 at the beginning of 2008.

It's at around 1,700 today -- actually, a record high.

Of course, it reached as low as 700 to 800 in March 2009.

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yapcguy
Quantitative easing is great... Mugabenomics forever!

"Priceline.com became the first company listed in the S&P 500 to trade at
$1,000 in the index’s 56-year history."

[http://blogs.wsj.com/moneybeat/2013/09/18/on-a-day-of-
record...](http://blogs.wsj.com/moneybeat/2013/09/18/on-a-day-of-records-for-
stocks-priceline-trades-above-1000/)

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seanmcdirmid
Inflation has more to do than with overt quantitative easing. Also, share
price has no direct correlation to overall valuation; you have to throw in the
number of shares and multiply.

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MichaelApproved
Quantitative easing = inflation.

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seanmcdirmid
Quantitative easing causes inflation.

Inflation does not require quantitative easing.

~~~
MichaelApproved
Using equals was incorrect. I should have said: Quantitative easing ->
inflation

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rread
Yay, let's celebrate the underperforming. I suspect many Yahoo investors would
rather have had their $31 5 years ago so they could have invested it in
something that would actually grow.

Though, at least they've had better results than the MSFT investors.

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cma
Did you account for MSFT dividends?

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epynonymous
bought yhoo at 26 usd, set a limit at 31, excellent!

i really believe in what melissa meyer's doing for the company, though i dont
see them in the same vein as google, more so an online media company, not in
terms of a true innovator which is fine because if you get that right, there's
plenty of money to be made, buy!

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robryan
One interesting bit of Yahoo news. Yahoo in Australia is partnering with
Adwords rather than Bing Ads. Wouldn't surprise me if all of Yahoo went that
way once their contract with Microsoft is up.

Despite all the effort it doesn't really feel like Bing Ads is on the map
compared to Adwords.

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hknozcan
Anybody know what Yang is doing following his resignation last year?

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mikeyouse
Crunchbase lists a bunch of angel investments and a board observer role, but I
can't imagine that's what's taking up the majority of his time.

[http://www.crunchbase.com/person/jerry-
yang](http://www.crunchbase.com/person/jerry-yang)

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mmgutz
Just wondering, how many people use Yahoo? It's supposed to be getting more
popular but at least with my peers I don't see that trend. Is it popular
outside of the USA?

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tesseractive
They were kind of the definitive site for general information in the 90s, so
many millions of people who started using the internet in the 90s got used to
going there for news, sports, finance, weather, and some of their other
verticals, as well as things like email.

A lot of those people haven't had any good reason to switch to anything else,
so that's what they use. This tracks with the way people choose offline brands
like toothpaste and such -- once people get used to buying a brand, most of
them tend to stick with it until they have a clear reason to change.

That's actually why the transition to mobile is so crucial for them -- those
people still want to keep up with sports and weather and everything else on
their phones, but they're more likely to use an app than a website. If Yahoo
loses their userbase in the transition to mobile, those users are probably
never coming back.

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throw231231244
+1

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mikeburrelljr
LOL at creating a throwaway account b/c you're ashamed to say you use Yahoo!

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beambot
Yes, and MSFT started 2008 at a share price of $34.38. It's closing price
today was $33.64.

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mikeyouse
Since the beginning of 2008, MSFT has paid ~$4/share in dividends as well, so
we can't ignore those.

[http://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/msft/dividend-
history](http://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/msft/dividend-history)

~~~
beambot
Fair enough... but we can't exactly hold up microsoft as the paragon of good
returns compared to it's cohorts (eg. AAPL, GOOG, etc).

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bsullivan01
AAPL, GOOG, etc will reach their plateau soon enough. Apple already has flat
or worse y/y earnings, Google is on steroids and is ruining their brand to
artificially increase their earnings by penalizing sites (advertise or no
traffic) and making it all ads in certain sectors. It will last maybe another
or two. What then?

The point I was making: large tech companies have different rules, they behave
more like Exxon and PG then a recently IPO-ed Google or Microsoft.

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jeswin
_penalizing sites (advertise or no traffic)_

Surprising, if true. I am interested in knowing more. Do you have some good
links?

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cookiecaper
There is no legitimate business-based excuse for Yahoo! to have turned down
Microsoft's offer. Yang et al had to fight tooth and nail to keep it from
being executed, and that opposition was obviously based purely on ideology:
not wanting to become part of the MS behemoth. I don't believe any informed
person seriously thought that Yahoo!'s choice to not only forgo but actively
prevent Microsoft's buyout had anything to do with anything else.

~~~
bsullivan01
_Yang et al had to fight tooth and nail to keep it from being executed, and
that opposition was obviously based purely on ideology: not wanting to become
part of the MS behemoth_

And not wanting to sorta admit defeat. That's why companies have boards, to do
what is best for shareholders not for founders still thinking they got it.
Yahoo's loss = Microsoft's gain.

The price goes back and forth, but right now I don't see yahoo leading
anything, maybe just online answers. So it's part Marissa euphoria and part
Alibaba stake.

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lightblade
If we factor in the inflation rate over 5 years, then Yahoo should still worth
less.

