Yahoo up on report of possible sale of Internet business

Mayer came to Yahoo after a 13-year tenure at Google, where she played leadership roles in the development of Google Earth, Gmail and Google News and is credited with helping create the company’s celebrated search page. Swisher also shot down reports that the company’s board was reconsidering its plans to spin off its valuable 15% stake in Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba. Though, Ms. Mayer has been known for stabilizing the condition of the company which was on steep decline before her rule, no advancement has been made by Yahoo during the three year leadership of Ms. Mayer. The WSJ report suggests that Yahoo itself is worth less than nothing. “Realising value is far from assured”, he said. In a research report in October, Cantor Fitzgerald analyst Youssef Squali valued Yahoo’s core business at $3.9 billion, not including cash.

It’s not clear who would be interested in Yahoo’s core holdings.

Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO)’s Chief Executive Officer, Marissa Mayer has been making efforts to attract users towards the company’s products including Yahoo Mail and search.

Board members will hash out whether it would be best to go ahead with a plan to spinoff its multibillion-dollar stake in Alibaba or shift gears and sell its core business. Yahoo’s third quarter revenue of $1.226 billion moved up at about a +7 percent rate.

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.

Much of the $31 billion value in market capitalization of Yahoo is tied up in two large assets in Asia – Alibaba and in Yahoo Japan. “Yahoo is the only Silicon Valley company we know that now has a stock price nearly entirely driven by the value of an entity outside of its control”, the letter reads. The company’s core Internet business which propelled Yahoo! to become a household name, has found it hard to keep up with other major corporations such as Google and Microsoft’s Bing.

Her arrival kicked off heightened expectations of a quick turnaround at Yahoo, which had struggled to grow its advertising business to compete with market leaders Google and Facebook.

KitGuru Says: Yahoo is a company that it’s always a surprise is still around, but it’s certainly kicking along ok, even if it’s profits are dipping year on year.