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Cramer on BloggingStocks: Two guys stalled the Yahoo! deal

Jim Cramer — Tue, 06 May 2008 09:26:00 EST

Filed under: Deals, Microsoft (MSFT), Yahoo! (YHOO), Market Matters, Cramer on BloggingStocks

TheStreet.com's Jim Cramer says Filo and Yang own less than 10% of Yahoo! shares, so they can stall a deal but not stop it.

Two guys with less than 10% of the shares outstanding blocked this Yahoo! (NASDAQ: YHOO) (Cramer's Take) deal -- Jerry Yang and David Filo. I understand this logic. They are founders. They probably hate Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) (Cramer's Take). They feel tremendous pride. They think that surrendering to Microsoft would be like giving in to the Evil Empire.

But if they felt that, they should never have brought the company public. Once you are public you are for sale, either in pieces or all together, unless you have one of those travesty two-classes-of-stock configurations that I think shouldn't even be allowed and have almost always been disappointing.

So what happens? I think the stock acted very well yesterday. It should have been down more. I think what happened is that arbs looked at the holders and realized that if they bought up enough stock that was for sale they could force a sale or a new board of directors. Might take a year, but if you can buy something at $24 and sell it at $34 a year from now, well, let's just say that is a big win.

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Cramer on BloggingStocks: Two guys stalled the Yahoo! deal originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Tue, 06 May 2008 09:26:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Yahoo should take Microsoft's money and run

Jonathan Berr — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 16:58:00 EST

Filed under: Deals, Conventions and Conferences, Google (GOOG), Microsoft (MSFT), Yahoo! (YHOO)

Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ: YHOO) co-founders Jerry Yang, also the company's chief executive, and David Filo, the less visible of the two, should take Microsoft Corp.'s (NASDAQ: MSFT) $44.6 billion offer before the world's largest software company realizes how much it is overpaying for the company.

Better yet, Yang and Filo should "reject" Microsoft's initial offer because -- at least according to CNBC -- Microsoft may be willing to up its bid. That seems to be the market's expectation given that shares of Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Yahoo haven't hit the $31 offer level.

The Yahoo twosome need to get while the getting is good. As The Wall Street Journal notes, "If the deal goes through as presently constituted, Mr. Filo's stake would be worth more than $2.4 billion - not counting his options and other shares..Mr. Yang's stake would be worth more than $1.64 billion - again, not counting options and so forth."

During the height of the Internet bubble, both were worth more than $6 billion, the paper said.

The forays of Yahoo and Microsoft's MSN into original content already spooks content companies, so I bet if the deal through it will lead to a rash of mergers between old and new media companies. A combined company would likely do more original fare to attract advertisers and users.

This raises the question of whether Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) will start developing its own content given the likely merger and its recent disappointing results. Thoughts?

Yahoo should take Microsoft's money and run originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Fri, 01 Feb 2008 16:58:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Does anyone want to buy Yahoo?

Brian White — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 11:24:00 EST

Filed under: Rumors, Yahoo! (YHOO)

Another year, another round of Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ: YHOO) acquisition chatter. But would any company really want to acquire Yahoo? A market cap of over $33 billion should be enough to give any company pause, and with its growth rate and profitability teetering along at the age-old web giant, the price of admission is probably too high. Forget Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) -- that would be the worst mistake the software company could make. Anyone else? A show of hands please?

Jerry Yang, now the company's CEO, and David Filo desperately want a turnaround at the company they founded. Once the highest flier on the web scene, Yahoo! has been dragged down by the rapid ascension of Google (NASDAQ: GOOG).

Yahoo!, which still has a lot to offer, made a bad bet on its version of text advertising while Google walked off into the sunset with a formula that worked. Add that to former CEO Terry Semel's apparent incompetence in trying to balance paid services against comparable free services from the competition, and you get a company that is in a funk right now.

Most likely, Yahoo! will not be acquired by another company, although it will continue to ring up partnerships to enhance its bottom line. Still, the core functionality of the company is at stake here, and there's miles of work to be done in 2008 -- which will be a make or break year. Even at $10 billion, it's hard to fathom who would want to purchase Yahoo! That means the company is in it for the long haul, and the competition from Microsoft and Google will only get hotter from here.

Does anyone want to buy Yahoo? originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Thu, 03 Jan 2008 11:24:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Yahoo! vs. Google: Battle of the Brands

Brian White — Sun, 08 Apr 2007 09:10:00 EST

Filed under: Products and Services, Consumer Experience, Competitive Strategy, Google (GOOG), Yahoo! (YHOO), Marketing and Advertising, Battle of the Brands

This post is part of our Battle of the Brands feature. Let us know which brand you prefer, and watch out for more Battle of the Brands posts.

Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ: YHOO) was the shining star of the internet bubble in 2000, just before the dot-com crash, and has managed to keep a huge customer base (tens of millions, if not hundreds of millions based on how you calculate it). Yahoo! customers are loyal apparently, even though Google has trounced Yahoo! in recent years in terms of search popularity and overall brand awareness. Like Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG), Yahoo! was founded by Stanford grad students, Jerry Yang and David Filo, so that information on the web could be more easily found back when the web was in its infancy -- 1995.

From 1995 to 2001, Yahoo! grew at a rapid clip, and then saw a downward spiral as advertising fortunes started collapsing at the same time Google's "text ad" advertising model started growing by leaps and bounds. It's pretty obvious by now that Yahoo!'s "one ad for all" approach grew quite stale (and so did its revenues) at the same time Google's "customer relevant" and unobtrusive ad model grew an an inversely proportionate rate. Yahoo! has made great strides on the comeback trail under five-year CEO and Hollywood expert Terry Semel, who has modeled Yahoo! as a "relationship builder" to customers (and gotten them to pay for certain services).

This model is quite opposed to Google's "tool-based" customer model that can't touch Yahoo!'s model for creating and enhancing actual relationships with paying customers, beyond just providing easy internet tools for customers while keeping that "relationship" quite distant. Yahoo! shares spit almost three years ago, but have remained between $29 and $44 per share since that time. By contrast, Google's shares have skyrocketed from $85 in August 2004 to over $460 today. In terms of an investment over the past five years, it's hard to draw a conclusion since Google has been publicly traded for less than three years, while Yahoo! has been traded for quite a bit longer than that.

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Yahoo! vs. Google: Battle of the Brands originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Sun, 08 Apr 2007 09:10:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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