Carl Icahn, the famous activist investor, resigned from the Yahoo! (NASDAQ: YHOO) board of directors Friday.

This comes just over a year after he scored the position, following the seemingly endless talks the company had with Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) over the possibility of a takeover. Icahn told Yahoo that he was resigning effective immediately because Yahoo! didn't need an activist investor on the board at this time.

Continue reading Icahn bails from Yahoo! board of directors

Icahn bails from Yahoo! board of directors originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Sat, 24 Oct 2009 12:20:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Yahoo! (NASDAQ: YHOO), a web portal whose colleagues include Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) and Time Warner's (NYSE: TWX) AOL, reported Q1 numbers after the bell on Tuesday. According to an earnings preview done by colleague Mark Fightmaster, Wall Street was counting on something along the lines of 8 cents per share. Well, on a non-GAAP basis, Yahoo! earned 15 cents per share. Not bad.

Unfortunately, Yahoo! made three pennies more on the same adjusted basis in last year's similar quarter. Furthermore, revenues, adjusted for currency effects, dropped 8%. Oh, and one more thing. Free cash flow decreased over 60%.

Continue reading Can Yahoo!'s cursing CEO lead the company to victory?

Can Yahoo!'s cursing CEO lead the company to victory? originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Wed, 22 Apr 2009 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

With only a day of trading remaining in February, stocks are poised to post another monthly loss. There have been very few stocks going higher in this very persistent bear market.

One exception to the rule has been Yahoo (NASDAQ: YHOO). Can you believe it?

Get rid of that nitwit Jerry Yang, and this stock is finally catching some tailwind.

Shares have gained more than $1 in value in February, as investors unwound short positions tied to the ineptitude of Chief Yahoo. In addition to short covering, shares caught a bid as buyers look to acquire shares at a discount in case a new deal for the company emerges.

Continue reading Microsoft still yearns for Yahoo

Microsoft still yearns for Yahoo originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Fri, 27 Feb 2009 08:50:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Yahoo! (NASDAQ: YHOO), which competes with Google (NASDAQ: GOOG), Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT), and Time Warner's (NYSE: TWX) AOL, reported Q4 stats after the bell on Tuesday. They were pretty dismal, but expectations were bea t. Revenues dipped by 1%, and earnings per share on an adjusted basis were $0.17. According to Wall Street's view, Yahoo! was only supposed to earn $0.13. A four-penny beat on the bottom line is a pretty good thing.

Or is it in this case? I would argue it's no big deal. I mean, we are talking about Yahoo! here, and there's a new CEO on the job, Carol Bartz. She replaced the disaster known as Jerry Yang. Considering that there's a new regime, you can't really rely on this beat as a proper indicator for what's to come.

Continue reading Can the new CEO change things at Yahoo!?

Can the new CEO change things at Yahoo!? originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Wed, 28 Jan 2009 08:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ: YHOO) is scheduled to discuss fourth-quarter and full-year 2008 results today in a conference call at 5:00 PM Eastern. You can catch the live webcast of the call on the company's website.

For the quarter that saw the departure of CEO Jerry Yang and on-again off-again negotiations with Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ: MSFT), analysts polled by Thomson Reuters expect Yahoo! to report a profit of $0.13 per share, compared to $0.15 per share in the same period of the previous year. Revenue for the quarter is expected to total $1.4 billion, down 2.3% from a year ago. Yahoo! earnings have topped estimates in four of the past five quarters.

Continue reading Yahoo! Q4 and 2008 earnings expected to slip

Yahoo! Q4 and 2008 earnings expected to slip originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Tue, 27 Jan 2009 12:40:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Carol Bartz expected to be named CEO of Yahoo! (YHOO) originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Tue, 13 Jan 2009 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

This post is part of our feature on Money Losers of 2008. See all 20.

There's no doubt about it -- times are tough. People are struggling to find work and to pay the bills as the value of their homes and savings dwindle. The poor get poorer, and the rich get richer.

Or do they? It's all relative, of course, but world's billionaires have been taking some big hits too. We take a look at Sheldon Adelson, Kirk Kerkorian, and Lakshmi Mittal in their own separate posts, but here are some other billionaires who have lost billions this year (courtesy of Forbes and Business Sheet).

• Brothers Anil and Mukesh Ambani of India's private conglomerate Reliance lost $32.5 billion and $28.2 billion, respectively.
• Warren Buffett, the Sage of Omaha, lost $16.5 billion. Shares of Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (NYSE: BRK.A) are down about 32% since the beginning of the year.
• Microsoft (NYSE: MSFT) founders Bill Gates and Paul Allen lost $12.3 billion and $2.6 billion, respectively, while CEO Steve Balmer lost $6.5 billion. Shares of Microsoft are down 46% since the beginning of the year.
• Larry Page and Sergey Brin, cofounders of Google Inc. (NYSE: GOOG), lost $11.9 billion and $11.7 billion, respectively, and CEO Eric Schmidt lost $3.8 billion. The share price of Google has fallen 55% since the beginning of the year.
• Larry Ellison, CEO of Oracle Corp. (NASDAQ: ORCL), lost $8.2 billion. Shares of Oracle are down 21% since the beginning of the year.
• Media maven Sumner Redstone lost $7.2 billion. Shares of his private investment firm National Amusements fell 70% this year.

Continue reading Money losers of 2008: Billionaires who lost billions this year

Money losers of 2008: Billionaires who lost billions this year originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Wed, 24 Dec 2008 12:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

This post is part of AOL Money & Finance's Best & Worst in Money 2008 feature.

In 2008, many big names took big face plants. Since this is a blog about money, I ranked them based on how much they lost and how far they fell. As you can see, the method is not exactly scientific. Here are the five biggest falls from grace:

1. Richard Fuld, Lehman Brothers. The $639 billion bankruptcy is history's largest so far by a factor of at least six. And Fuld personally lost about $1 billion in his personal holdings of Lehman stock. And the repercussions of letting Lehman fail stretched from money market funds to Iceland. Ouch!
2. Jimmy Cayne, Bear Stearns CEO. Cayne lost plenty of his personal wealth when Bear Stearns stock stumbled. But at least shareholders were able to get out with something when JPMorgan Chase (NYSE: JPM) bought it.
3. Eliot Spitzer, New York governor. Spitzer destroyed his once promising political career by spending time with at least one woman other than his wife. He was trying to use his prosecution of Wall Street to boost his political career as Rudy Giuliani did. But his self-destructive urges got the better of him.
4. Sheldon Adelson, CEO, Las Vegas Sands (NYSE: LVS). Adelson, a colorful character who was a consulting client of mine, has lost $30 billion on paper thanks to his excessive debt load and a decline in gambling.
5. Jerry Yang, CEO, Yahoo! (NASDAQ: YHOO). Poor Jerry Yang suffered from delusions about his ability to revive his creation. He lost a chance to boost shareholder returns by selling to Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ: MSFT) for $31 a share. With the stock at $11.51, he left big bucks on the table, and the board kicked him out of the big chair.

Let us know which one you would chose as the biggest fall of 2008.

Peter Cohan is president of Peter S. Cohan & Associates. He also teaches management at Babson College and edits The Cohan Letter. He has no financial interest in the securities mentioned.

Share the reasons for your Biggest Fall from Grace pick in the comments, or let us know about any contenders we overlooked. Also be sure to see the rest of the Best & Worst in Money 2008.

Best & Worst in Money 2008: Biggest fall from grace originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Mon, 08 Dec 2008 14:40:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

This post is part of AOL Money & Finance's Best & Worst in Money 2008 feature.

In the decades to come, business school students will be faced with a plethora of examples from 2008 in studying how not to do something.

Picking one business decision as the worst is sort of like choosing a favorite child. Each was wretchedly awful in their own unique way. They each deserve their own wing in the hall of shame, but there only can be one winner. In my mind, the company that consistently shot itself in the foot with a heretofore unknown precision was American International Group Inc. (NYSE: AIG).

Of course, AIG is now owned by the U.S. government, largely thanks to two bailouts. The government ripped up the first $85 billion deal after determining that the New York-based company needed an even bigger life preserver of $150 billion. Even then, it managed to post a $24.5 billion loss.

What set the standard for corporate hubris, though, were the junkets. There was a fun-in-the-sun getaway to a resort in California, only days after the $85 billion bailout went through. Recently, it was disclosed that another junket was held in Arizona. Though the amount of money involved in the gatherings was piddly, the principle at stake was not. AIG was telling people -- especially members of Congress who approved the bailout -- that nothing had changed when, of course, everything had.

Continue reading Best & Worst in Money 2008: Dumbest business move

Best & Worst in Money 2008: Dumbest business move originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Thu, 04 Dec 2008 10:56:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Lately it's been very difficult for investors to get their bearings, but I can tell you that the winners in this game will be companies with little or no debt. Forget what stock values are doing now and focus on the future. You can take it to the bank that stocks gaining in value will have started from a very solid balance sheet foundation.

That said, I want to talk about Yahoo (NASDAQ: YHOO).

Yesterday the company was in the news again with reports that former AOL chief Jon Miller is seeking capital to purchase YHOO outright for a price that is reported to be in the $20 range.

YHOO shares rocketed higher on the news, immediately jumping up by nearly $1 per share, or approximately 10%.

My initial reaction, as you might expect, was skeptical. Jump on this news as a chance to dump shares. Management at YHOO, with or without Chief Yahoo Jerry Yang, has destroyed shareholder value so much that it would be hard to believe that anyone would pay a premium for the stock.

How could it be that a lone ranger from the failed AOL model be considered a serious alternative to YHOO going it alone? It makes no sense until you take a closer look at YHOO fundamentals. There the story starts to get a little more interesting.

Continue reading Is Yahoo a screaming bargain without Jerry Yang?

Is Yahoo a screaming bargain without Jerry Yang? originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Wed, 03 Dec 2008 14:20:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

We may have broken the ultimate barrier to diversity with the election of the 44th President of the United States Barack Obama, but the ranks of minorities in top positions at Fortune 500 companies remain thin and are steadily declining.

Late Monday, Symantec (NASDAQ: SYMC) CEO John Thompson announced plans to retire from the post in March, but will remain on as chairman. Also planning to move out of the corner office until a replacement is found is the CEO of struggling Web portal Yahoo (NASDAQ: YHOO), Jerry Yang.

Their pending exits continue a string of other high-profile minority CEOs over the past year due to various reasons, ranging from Dick Parsons at Time Warner (NYSE: TWX), to Stan O'Neal at Merrill Lynch (NYSE: MER) to Alwyn Lewis at Sears (NASDAQ: SHLD) and William Perez at Wrigley.

Continue reading Yang, Thompson departures to further diminish pool of minority CEOs

Yang, Thompson departures to further diminish pool of minority CEOs originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Wed, 19 Nov 2008 10:50:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Jerry Yang to step down as Yahoo! CEO: Can a new CEO reinvent the company? originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Mon, 17 Nov 2008 21:54:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Sheldon Liber is the CEO of a small private investment company and the principal for design and research at an architecture & planning firm. He writes the columns Chasing Value and Serious Money. Disclosure: I do not own shares of MSFT or YHOO.

MSFT/YHOO: Jerry Yang, are you kidding? originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Thu, 06 Nov 2008 14:54:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Jerry Yang fires 10% of workforce in lowercase email originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Tue, 21 Oct 2008 19:10:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Yahoo! (NASDAQ: YHOO) will be reporting earnings for the third quarter on Tuesday, October 21. The internet portal hasn't had a great year so far. According to data at Earnings.com, the company hasn't seen too much in the way of bottom-line growth. And the stock is, as of this writing, at the low end of its 52-week range. Of course, just about all stocks are having a rough time this year. Then again, Yahoo! could have avoided all this misery and just allowed itself to become assimilated into the Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) culture. Poor CEO Jerry Yang. What was he thinking?

The call is for Yahoo! to post at least $0.09 per share for the bottom line. It would be nice if management could go beyond those expectations, since the company posted $0.11 per share in the year-ago period. Yahoo! really needs to show the market that it can stay relevant and keep up with the likes of Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) and Time Warner's (NYSE: TWX) AOL. Google recently booked a quarter that went well beyond the thinking of analysts. Yahoo! has a relatively decent history of beating earnings expectations, but it did miss the call last quarter, according to AOL Finance. So there's going to be a lot of pressure on Yang to perform.

Of course, let's be honest. The earnings, in the big picture, don't really matter. Yahoo! is essentially, in the minds of many, still an arbitrage play. In fact, Tobias Buckell recently commented on this subject. There are a lot of investors out there who would like to see Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer come back to the table to begin a new round of negotiations for a takeover of the portal. I, for one, wouldn't want to see that. Does Microsoft really need the headache of integrating the web company's brand assets with its own? No. However, looking at it from the perspective of a Yahoo! shareholder, I obviously see why a buyout would be attractive. That might be the only way for the stock to command any premium these days.

Continue reading Earnings preview: Can Yahoo! impress Wall Street (and maybe Microsoft)?

Earnings preview: Can Yahoo! impress Wall Street (and maybe Microsoft)? originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Sat, 18 Oct 2008 13:40:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

CEOs have been doing the old soft shoe at quarterly report time since the market first form, but dancing now seems to have become a favored pastime of CEOs include Steve Ballmer of Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT), Jerry Yang of Yahoo (NASDAQ:YHOO) and (surprise? hardly) Mark Cuban (also a yahoo).

Yang busted some moves recently dancing with the star of Where the Hell is Matt?, the outstanding internet feature following adventurer and dancer (I use the term loosely) Matt Harding. Don't miss the video at the end of this post, if you're not familiar with Matt. - it's perhaps the most charming, uplifting video I've seen in years.

Of course, who can forget Steve Ballmer's dance at the podium during a Microsoft presentation? And, of course, Mark, 'Gimme the Cubs" Cuban performing on Dancing with the Stars?

Come to think of it, many CEOs are already quite accomplished at performing the fan dance with their balance sheets. Ex-Gov. Spitzer has shown his fondness for the hustle and the shag, while Donald Rumsfeld is still waiting for the cakewalk to begin. Senator Craig seems to favor the swing, while President Bush appears dead-set on taking on the Persian Dance before he waltzes out of the White House.

And me? Having lived through the Vietnam Era, I'm doing the Time Warp again.

Thanks to Portfolio.com

CEOs practice the old soft shoe originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Fri, 08 Aug 2008 15:17:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Large Yahoo shareholder raises questions about vote on Yang originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Tue, 05 Aug 2008 08:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

MAJOR PAPERS:

• Corporate advertisers are not flocking to YouTube despite the fact that the video sharing site attracts one billion views a day, upsetting Google Inc's (NASDAQ: GOOG) expectations for a strong revenue stream, according to the Wall Street Journal. Total ad revenue for Google this year will be about $200M from the site, where the company is counting on growth beyond its text ads from Web searches.
• A day after Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ: MSFT) said it would be interested in reopening talks to acquire some of all of Yahoo! Inc (NASDAQ: YHOO) if Carl Icahn's proxy battle succeeds, the Wall Street Journal reported that Yahoo! CEO Jerry Yang accused Microsoft of "trying to destabilize" the company "without a real desire to complete a deal".

• The Atlanta Journal Constitution reported that Comair, a subsidiary of Delta Air Lines Inc (NYSE: DAL), is set to cut 300 pilots and 220 flight attendants from its staff. The paper said the layoffs will go into effect in September when Comair cuts its flight schedule as part of Delta's capacity cuts and will affect crew members based at Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport and New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport.

• Iran successfully test-launched a long-range version of its Shahab-3 missile, according to Iranian news service Al-Alam. The missile can reach U.S. military bases in the Persian Gulf and Israel.

Newspaper wrap-up: Google has a difficult time getting ad revenue from YouTube originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Wed, 09 Jul 2008 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

There's no question that, at this point, Yahoo! (NASDAQ: YHOO) needs to partner up with some company. I didn't see the logic behind the Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) interest in Yahoo! I thought then -- and still think now -- that Microsoft didn't need a big brand in the Internet portal space. It's doing fine with its own MSN.com, its operating-system monopoly and current portfolio of investments.

However, I see the merit in a deal between Yahoo! and Time Warner (NYSE: TWX). The following article discusses the possibility that Time Warner and Yahoo! are talking about a combination. Since Time Warner owns AOL, and since AOL has been transforming its business model over the last few years to capture a more advertising revenue, Time Warner would be wise to at least consider the transaction. Leveraging both brands would generate a lot of clout when it comes to advertisers, who would look at the platform as a must-buy to reach the surfing eyeballs.

There would be many other areas of synergy between the two companies and, of course, the potential to cut redundant costs. Or course, the deal would have to make financial sense and who knows if Yahoo! CEO Jerry Yang will be reasonable.

I think we'll be hearing more about Time Warner and Yahoo! in the coming weeks. However, I don't think anyone should place trades in these stocks based on deal speculation. Buy them for other reasons, but not for purposes of gambling on potential headline news.

Disclosure: I don't own any company mentioned; positions can change at any time.

Time Warner and Yahoo!: A deal makes sense originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Tue, 08 Jul 2008 09:09:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Continue reading Can Carl Icahn deliver Yahoo to Microsoft?

Can Carl Icahn deliver Yahoo to Microsoft? originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Mon, 07 Jul 2008 11:57:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.