Yahoo’s already crushed stock price has fallen further today – its down 8.36% since this morning, bringing it to a nearly five year low of $17.75. Yahoo has been as high as $34 in the last year (thanks to that Microsoft takeover bid), which means nearly $23 billion has been taken out of shareholder pockets in that period.
How long can Jerry weather this storm? Is he willing to drive the company into the ground to prove how much he hates Microsoft?
Plans must be in place at the board level to name a successor soon. In fact, I’m guessing some arrangement was made with Carl Icahn when he agreed to back off his proxy fight before the Yahoo shareholder meeting last month. If the stock price continues to fall, Yang will be forced to step down sooner (at least, any sane public company would remove him, Yahoo has not shown much sanity this year).
We’re still betting on Dan Rosensweig, who left Yahoo in December 2006, to come back. In June we named him as a possible successor should Yang bail out. Our guess is he’d take the job if asked.
Been saying it for months…
Note to Jerry Yang;
1) Recognize that you are not the one to lead / reposition YHOO. Stick to your knitting, you’re making a fool out of yourself.
2) Spin off all non-strategic assets IE Alibaba,Y Japan,etc (approximate value of $15 billion of its current $27 Billion market cap).
3) 15%-20% reduction in headcount.
4) Dutch auction/buyback of stock .
5) Stake and spin/off new stand alone initiatives.
6) Go Open Source, and let others build in an ecosystem.
Why would they buyback stock when they know it is sorely overvalued?? Just look at the forward P/E…Google is a bargain when you compare the two!
Heck, insiders won’t even buy at these “undervalued” prices.
I’m staying as far away as possible! Oh, $31, where are you now
damn, that is a low price. hopefully they will find and invest in the next killer “Location Engine Network” of tomorrow before its too late. it appears the game may be over soon.
I could see Yahoo being folded into the McClatchy Company quite comfortably. In fact I think that’s where they belong. I really think they would enjoy it at the home.
If the price of Yahoo keeps falling at this pace, Microsoft will be able to buy it for 1/2 price. Way to go Jerry!
Yahoo! is Jerry’s baby, but at this rate, he won’t be around long enough to see it recuperate.
He’ll be watching from his living room.
When it reaches 10$ I will buy some shares. I guess I should prepare my money.
I read this after I replied. You think $10 is good? I was thinking $6. I guess $10 would be ok.
What a great investment opportunity though. If it were at something like $6, I would buy and expect a recovery. $17 isn’t sweet enough of a deal.
I’m not defending any Yahoo execs, and I realize that the botched merger complicates matters, but I just checked Yahoo finance historical prices. The S&P500 is down roughly 15% Year-To-Date (from 12/31/07 to 9/4/08 it dropped from 1468.36 to 1237.07). YHOO was down about 24% (23.26 – 17.75) and GOOG was down about 35% (691.48 – 450.26).
YTD is a rather poor benchmark.
“YTD is a rather poor benchmark.”
Merl, I was simply attempting to compare the return of YHOO to the “market” (and to GOOG) in order to get a quick glimpse of it’s relative performance. A better measure might include risk adjustments to the returns and varying (longer?) time periods. Or, are you suggesting that a 1 day period is better than an 8 month period? Furthermore, let’s look at another statement – “Yahoo has been as high as $34 in the last year (thanks to that Microsoft takeover bid), which means nearly $23 billion has been taken out of shareholder pockets in that period.” Let’s restate that sentence using GOOG: Google has been as high as $ 747 over the past 52 weeks, which means that roughly $234 billion has been taken out of shareholder pockets in that period. (Again, I’m not attempting to defend Yahoo management — they may be very, very bad for all I know.)
hehe, maybe he’s planning on pulling a Steve Jobs ^^
How so – by also entering the mobile device industry?
Steve didn’t recover w/o an investment from Microsoft
http://news.cne...1_3-202143.html
Remember Macworld Boston 1997 ??
http://www.yout...h?v=WxOp5mBY9IY
Pink Sheet (and Pink Slip) territory ahead. MAKE BIG MONEY IN PENNY STOCKS>
shareholders should sue Yang for his shocking absence of judgement and self interested behaviour as a director of Yahoo.
Been wondering why that hasn’t happened. Seems like he’s not living up to his fiduciary responsibility.
As a shareholder I’ll echo what I’ve been saying for months now. Get Jerry the F out. He’s killing us.
Well, you’d have thought Yahoo! shareholders would have wanted to accept Microsoft’s original offer (I thought it was quite generous); but the truth is, they didn’t. You’ve have thought Yahoo! shareholders might have fired the Yahoo! Chairman and CEO when they had the chance; but they didn’t.
I think the only conclusion you can draw is that both Yahoo! management *and* Yahoo! shareholders were in this together – holding out to try to gauge Microsoft for a few extra billion. They blew it… but they blew it jointly.
Michael, you can take almost any tech stock that fell today, (Nasdaq is down over 3%), look at its YTD chart, and it won’t be pretty. There is tons of companies going through very rough times. Microsoft is at nearly the same place as Yahoo on the YTD chart. Expedia, trading separately, did much worse than Yahoo. Want to see a real trouble, how about Sandisk, down almost 60% for the year? Yet, no one is yelling telling their CEO to step down (or if someone is, not as load as all the noise about Jerry).
Let Yahoo figure it out on their own, I am sure they have ways to handle things right.
Visit http://www.startstock.com today!
Sandisk didn’t rush to escort the sweetest deal of the decade out the door either…
I sense a new marketing campaign:
Yahoo!: we’re not Sandisk
The fall of an empire is always tough to watch. Microsoft wasn’t ideal but it is much better than loosing 23 billion in value.
Sue and Jerry have to be on their way OUT. Sue Decker has failed imho. Jerry is not a CEO. Yahoo is close to their 5-year low right now. Wow!
First rule in journalism (even tendentious journalism): get your facts straight and report them honestly. At $17.75 YHOO is down 5.38%, not 8.36%. The highest position in the last year was $33.63 on Oct 26th 2007, which means just over $22 billion has been taken out of shareholder pockets in that period and not nearly $23 billion.
Here, let me try this too: Google’s already crushed stock price has fallen further today – its down 3.05% since this morning, bringing it to a nearly two year low of $450.26. Google has been as high as $741.79 in the last year (thanks to god-knows-what), which means nearly $92 billion has been taken out of shareholder pockets in that period. How long can Eric weather this storm?
I’m sure Yahoo can turn this around. I get the feeling that the company has it’s hands in too many pots. Just pick two or three assets you want to build on and sell off everything else.
They’ll bounce back but really need an image change. They hvae some excellen technologies and partnerships.
I personally think they need to move away from the whole web 1.0 portal look.
Now is the time! Buy! Buy! Buy!
I think oddly enough that Chrome might spell an opportunity for Yahoo.
If Mozilla is unhappy about the new competition, they should switch their default search engine to Yahoo and Yahoo could certainly use the traffic.
Now, if only Google didn’t just sign a deal with Mozilla for another couple years right before announcing Chrome.
Sneaky buggers.
Wow….Jerry fucked up really good…….
For me, Yahoo fails on every section of service that they currently give. I never use Yahoo service EVER in the past 3 months. Wait, i use their email service, but i only checked it once a month.
So google yourself a company, Yahoo, because without other companies, you’ll be in dead pool in the next 4 years.
Steve should be laughing his rear off from my e-mail to him. I said “Dude, why push, sit back and wait, you can then pick it up for about US$20 billion or roughly half of the initial offer. Wow. How much would Steve offer now? Would it be the same offer or half? or just a little above half to rub salt in the wound?
Of course I do not think Steve cared much about my dam e-mail or even read it, and did whatever he and his team thought was best. Just good guessing on my on part.
Jerry, feel it for you man. As a Yahoo man/user myself I must admit I feel it for you, but business is business. Do not worry I have great things waiting in the wings when Yahoo is no more. Of course if it still is around I still got great things that will come out and make you say Hmm, Dam, AHHH, WOW, so simple, that was not rocket science but it is worth its weight in Gold.
The headline should read “TechCrunch hates on Yahoo again. When will Arrington give up?”.
yeah, yeah, i’m not worried…remember when akamai was under a dollar?
LOL, and I remember when it was $300 too.
If someone offered to buy the place for $400, management turns it ever so quickly down, stock slips to $1 only to bounce back to $50 over the coming years….
Great choice.
Jerry Jerry Jerry whatever shall you do, a once great Yahoo is now who?
Ryan
Isnt that a japanese only company?
YAHOOOOOOOOPS!
YangHoo!
Having worked with Dan at Yahoo, he is an amazing talent and I know he would do a fantastic job…. go get ‘em Dan!!!
brian
jerry is the worst4 ceo in america. its astounding that he was able to take the half-dead company nearly gutted by semel and take 50% off of its share price. astounding.
dan rosensweig is a windbag, but i don’t see how he could possibly be worse than jerry
its questionable if a change at the top can even halt the decline now
jerry, “could have had $33″ will be etched on your tombstone
Forget Yahoo. Sun Microsystem’s stock is down 50% from it’s 52wk high. Jonathan schwartz has not blogged in ages. When will the board oust him?
I think the next offer from MS is gonna be $35 .. not per share but for the whole company
yahoo ain’t that bad… miracles happen and the circumstances are taking the right shape for that miracle to happen again…;)
I am in shock
time to buy?
The US government should buy Yahoo. They own a ton of good domain names and the brand alone is worth gazillions. Imagine YahooBurgers and Fries! Or Yahoo! Smoothies! YAHOOOOOOOOO!!!! (isn’t that what Goofy yelled when he fell off those high cliffs?)
Yeah who? John