This is it. Yahoo’s final week to negotiate with Microsoft, or find a better bid, before the proxy battle begins. The company has until Saturday to respond to Microsoft’s offer. A lot can still happen before then.
Yahoo announces earnings tomorrow, and the conference call should be a lively one. Yahoo will certainly be asked about its test with running Google ads on its search results, and about any counteroffers from Time Warner/AOL. We will be liveblogging the call here, starting at 2PM PT.
Meanwhile, the posturing has already begun. Rupert Murdoch, Yahoo’s white-knight-that-wasn’t, is still hinting that he might throw his weight behind a Microsoft bid. On Monday, at a speech he gave, he said, “I certainly can’t afford to bid against Microsoft (for Yahoo).” And when asked directly if he would join Microsoft in its bid for Yahoo, he didn’t rule out the possibility.
Will Yahoo finally pull the trigger on a deal, or will it let someone else do the shooting?
Update: The buzz is that Yahoo will pull out all the stops this quarter and beat the consensus earnings estimates of $0.09 a share (which, of course, has been revised down from $0.11 a share a month ago) and consensus revenue estimates of $1.32 billion. If it does have an unusually good quarter, that could also strengthen its negotiating position with Microsoft, even though Steve Ballmer is trying to play down that possibility.
I don’t think the alternative to a deal is to “die”. Microsoft is mighty but it’s losing steam and Google, who clearly hates the the idea of this deal, should not be discounted from this game of power.
Is there some sort of online streaming service or is this a private media and investor event? Will there be some sort of .mp3 of the phone conference eventually available?
Tomorrow will be a very interesting day for Yahoo and others alike
Yahoo should expand to developing Internet economies (where major Internet growth is) through acquisitions, instead
I’d bank on an MSFT acq. Yahoo’s boring. Who goes there?
If Rupert Murdoch buys Yahoo I will have to kill myself.
Microsoft has a billion dollar R&D budget and what do they have to show for it? There must be something more than Vista? Perhaps it’s just me, but all they do is copy Apple and Google. Oh, and the odd hostile take over…
Only time will tell…
Don: http://yhoo.cli...com/results.cfm
It looks like a do AND die…without a clear strategic plan to carve out a distinct identity on the web, Yahoo as a brand name might not exist for long (at least not in a big way), with or without a M$ acquisition
I don’t believe it is a do or die for Yahoo! either. They have a massive user base, several great brands and they are playing even more aggressively since the Microsoft offer.
Sure, they bought Flickr and Delicious and a host of other web darlings, but aren’t solid mergers a part of any successful technology company? If you look at what they are doing with new/relaunched properties like Yahoo! Buzz, Yahoo! Shine, Yahoo! Sports and Yahoo! Health, it looks like they are finally putting the pieces together.
A lot of what Yahoo! turns out doesn’t create the buzz of Google or the small start-ups, but they still turn out quality products that people use on a daily basis.
I agree with Matt Dewey. And why does Microsoft need Rupert to support them? Are they short on cash?
Even if Yahoo disappoints (and who could help but be disappointed if they don’t show more than $0.11, since that’s what they originally said they’d hit this quarter…and that was after they totally flubbed Q4 2007), all that has to happen for the bid to be sweeter for Yahoo is for Microsoft to nail it’s quarter and for Microsoft’s stock to rise.
govt should protect yahoo fromm big thiefs
I wonder if Microsoft’s bid is the reason that Yahoo stock price is in the high 20s. It was clearly heading south until the bid was announced, and has since not climb much (if any) above that range.
If a great earnings announcement does not raise it much (if any), then, what does that say?