Yahoo’s Marissa Mayer Gives Birth To Twins

And the focus no longer is on liberation, but on the possibility of selling off the core business.

The reasons for the change are technical and involve tax planning. The stock of the new company would be distributed pro rata, i.e., proportionate allocations, to Yahoo shareholders. The spinoff is expected to take a year or more to conclude.

The company will now aim to spin off its struggling Internet business – essentially, everything associated with the Yahoo brand name – into a new company.

“It’s achieving the same strategic benefits, but in a backward sense”, said James Angel, associate professor of finance at Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business.

Many of Yahoo’s 10,700 employees may also be fretting about their job security, with CEO Marissa Mayer promising to announce plans for a cost-cutting reorganization late next month and many analysts speculating that the company’s Internet business will be sold if the latest overhaul doesn’t bear fruit quickly. In that event, May values Yahoo at $32.

Mayer and Yahoo! chairman Maynard Webb insist that even though the core assets will now be spun-out as an independent entity, there are no plans to seek a buyer. Despite the rebuff, Yahoo emphasizes that the IRS didn’t rule out the possibility that the spinoff could still be completed without triggering taxes on the profits that the company has accumulated from its initial $1 billion investment in Alibaba.

The company officially offers 16 weeks of maternity leave.

After Wednesday’s announcement about the possibility of a spin-off of Yahoo’s core business – a move that many think could lead to a sale down the line – analysts were quick to say that Mayer has a year, at most, to restoke the fires in Sunnyvale, Calif.

Yahoo will weigh a spinoff of its core business, which includes its advertising, search technology, Yahoo Sports and the Tumblr blogging platform.

Yahoo executives said on a conference call they still believed the original spinoff would have been tax-free but the specter of a big tax bill had unnerved investors.

On Wednesday, Yahoo announced that it wouldn’t spin out Alibaba, and instead would spin out its internet businesses.

While Yahoo’s stock has more than doubled since Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer took over in mid-2012, Mayer has been unable to spark significant earnings and revenue growth at the company. But Yahoo has only showed modest signs of progress during her tenure, despite spending billions on acquisitions and product development.

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