Yahoo shares jump as report says it may sell internet business

This is potentially an intriguing move for the Internet-based company.

The report also noted that Private-equity firm TPG Capital has looked at buying media properties within Yahoo.

Yahoo executives are considering a sale of the company’s Internet businesses in a series of meetings ongoing this week, according to a The Wall Street Journal report citing sources close to the action.

Starboard asked Yahoo in November to drop plans to spin off its stake in Alibaba due to the tax concerns, and urged the company to sell its core search and display advertising businesses instead. But the search business generates about $2 billion a year in revenue, accounting for roughly 40% of Yahoo’s total business.

Pivotal Research analyst Brian Wieser values core Yahoo at $1.9 billion, not including the $5.8 billion in cash on its balance sheet.

It is unclear what the board’s decision will mean for the future of Yahoo Chief Executive Marissa Mayer, who has pushed for the spin-off of the Alibaba stake but has not publicly commented on the possible sale of the core business.

Mavens revenue in the third quarter jumped 43 percent year over year to $422 million, and Yahoo’s overall revenue climbed to $1.23 billion.

And Recode’s Kara Swisher downplays the original WSJ report and writes that the Yahoo board is actually going to be backing the embattled Mayer and focusing on the company’s planned Alibaba spinoff. Stakes in the e-commerce behemoth are now valued at more than $30 billion.

SoftBank also owns 32% of Alibaba and 43% of Yahoo Japan and CEO Masayoshi Son has indicated he would prefer to remain a minority shareholder in both. Yahoo only lags Google Inc. and Facebook Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO) seeks a buyer for its underperforming core Internet business.

Yahoo’s board is understood to be mulling demands made by a n activist shareholder for Yahoo to offload its core services as an alternative to spinning off its lucrative 33 billion USA dollar (£22 billion) stake in Chinese ecommerce group Alibaba, which could land it with a tax bill of more than 10 billion U.S. dollars (£6.7 billion).

That’s a reversal from earlier this year, when Starboard led the charge for Yahoo to spin off its Alibaba holdings. The Company is engaged in providing Internet search, communication and digital content. The Company manages its business geographically: the Americas; Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA), and Asia Pacific.