Browse by Tags
-
Posted
May 05 2008, 06:21 AM
by
Douglas McIntyre
Rating:
Pegging Yahoo!'s potential financial exposure from shareholder lawsuits after it turned down an offer of about $33 from Microsoft is hard. It starts with the difference between the offer and where the stock falls after the rejection. That price could be $22 or lower. Investors would have lost $12 billion, and perhaps more.
Yahoo! is lucky, if one can call it that. Proving damages beyond the actual financial set-back to shareholders will be hard. Investors were not "damaged" as much as they simply lost money.
The other factor to Yahoo!'s advantage is that some groups of stockholders may not sue it at all. That would include the company's founders. Along with some large shareholder who supported the company walking away, probably 20% of the stock is in hands of people who would take no action. But, large class actions suits, especially if they are making progress, could be joined by that majority of the stockholder base who held shares three months ago as well as when the offer was rejected.
Read More...
-
Posted
May 05 2008, 06:15 AM
by
Douglas McIntyre
Rating:
Google rules the search world in all but one important country. China not only has the largest population in the world, it has the largest number of people online totaling 221 million users. It passed the US last month for total number of internet citizens. At some point China could have 500 million people on the worldwide web, more than double the US.
Google's share of the search market in China is only 25%. Local search engine Baidu has 60%.
Baidu is a very small company when put along side Google. Revenue at the Chinese company many hit $200 million this year. Operating income might be $60 million. Google's revenue will be well over $20 billion this year. Operating income should be almost $10 billion. Still, Google can't make progress in China.
Read More...
-
Posted
Apr 22 2008, 01:19 PM
by
Kim Peterson
Rating:
Today's a big day in the high-stakes, back-and-forth drama surrounding Microsoft's $43 billion offer for Yahoo. That's because Yahoo told us how it performed in the first quarter, an announcement that ranks among the most crucial earnings reports in company history. In short: Yahoo had a good (but not spectacular) quarter, beating Wall Street's expectations on revenue and profit.
So what does this mean? Yahoo shareholders can exhale -- the company emerges looking healthier than some thought. Maybe it's not the weakened prey that Microsoft was hoping to snatch up and use against Google. Microsoft may have to consider raising its initial $31-a-share bid -- a move that CEO Steve Ballmer seemed to dismiss earlier today. Or it could take the offer directly to Yahoo shareholders in a proxy fight.
Read More...
-
Posted
Apr 14 2008, 06:07 AM
by
Douglas McIntyre
Filed under: Microsoft, Cisco, Yahoo, E*Trade, Intel, Sirius, XM Satellite Radio, JetBlue, Dell, Take Two Interactive, Electronic Arts, Level 3
Rating:
Most companies on Nasdaq did fairly well with the shorts in the two-week period which ended on March 31. The two tremendous exceptions were Level 3, where short interest moved up 20.3 million shares to 243.9 million, and Sirius, where shares sold short jumped 40.4 million to 137.8 million.
In a tough stock market and credit environment, it is not hard to see why investors would place bets against both companies. Each stock trades near its 52-week low. Level 3 recently pushed out its president. Although it is in an attractive business, bandwidth infrastructure, it is a patch-work of M&A work with a large amount of debt and almost no cash-flow. In other words, a liquidation candidate in a deep recession.
Sirius is also hurt by a high debt-load -- over $1.2 billion -- and negative operating income. If the company's merger with XM Satellite does not go through, it may not be able to survive as a standalone company either.
Read More...
-
Posted
Apr 11 2008, 12:09 PM
by
Kim Peterson
Rating:
My, how things can change in a week. Last Friday, Microsoft was putting the screws to Yahoo, telling Reuters it was "evaluating" its $31-a-share bid for the company because Yahoo has dropped in value. This week, a furious round of wheeling and dealing has given Yahoo the edge. I have to hand it to CEO Jerry Yang. His flirtation with AOL and Google is putting incredible pressure on Microsoft to raise its offer. The market seems to like where all this is headed: Yahoo shares are
up slightly from where they started the week and closed today at $28.34. The Street seems to think a Microsoft acquisition is still the most likely scenario, and Yahoo shares are up because of a general belief that Yang can extract more money out of the deal. And while things today may appear murkier than ever, this corporate drama seems to be careening (wildly, perhaps) to some sort of closure, possibly in the next week.
Read More...
-
Posted
Apr 04 2008, 12:23 PM
by
Kim Peterson
Rating:
It's either a slow news day or people are starved for developments in the Microsoft-Yahoo saga. How else to explain the attention being given today to an article that says nothing happened in the on-again, off-again acquisition talks between the two companies? And late this afternoon, we get word that Microsoft might be "evaluating" its bid. Oh, brother.
According to the WSJ story, the two sides met, talked and left without resolving differences. Microsoft doesn't want to raise its initial bid (valued now at about $42 billion), and Yahoo won't enter formal negotiations unless more money is on the table. That's about where they were a month ago when the two companies met to chat.
The next date to watch for is April 22, when Yahoo reports its first-quarter earnings. If it has a blow-out quarter, it will certainly gain more leverage in negotiations. If it gives a less noteable performance, it will give up ground. Companies can tweak earnings a million different ways, and I bet Yahoo has done everything it can to produce an impressive quarter.
Read More...
-
Posted
Mar 31 2008, 01:23 PM
by
Kim Peterson
Rating:
Yahoo has been busy, busy, busy with new product rollouts these days, perhaps trying to make itself more valuable as it negotiates an acquisition deal with Microsoft. The newest offering, unveiled today, is a Web site called Shine. The site is for women, and while it seems to be a little lacking in real news (what, women don't care about finance?), it thankfully doesn't read like a Cosmo cover. If Shine can stand out from the legions of other sites that target the female demographic, Yahoo could have a pretty nifty little advertising vehicle on its hands. Here's what some others are saying about Shine's debut today:
Read More...
-
Posted
Mar 14 2008, 12:23 PM
by
Kim Peterson
Rating:
Yahoo seems to be dropping its anyone-but-Microsoft merger attitude. Senior executives from both companies met on Monday to discuss Microsoft's cash-and-stock acquisition offer, although "discuss" might be too strong a word, since the Yahoos "mostly listened," according to the WSJ.
Yahoo had a duty to shareholders to at least hear Microsoft out, now that its list of possible alternatives is down to pretty much zero. AOL is busy with its $850 million acquisition of social networking site Bebo. Rupert Murdoch says News Corp. is staying out. Google lost its initial enthusiasm about thwarting the bid.
It's unclear how serious the meeting was. No bankers attended and no negotiation took place. We don't even know if the CEOs were there. But the official silence has been broken. Yahoo shares fell nearly 3% today to $26.71 on the news, and Microsoft shares are down nearly 2.3% to $27.96.
Read More...
-
Posted
Mar 12 2008, 01:14 PM
by
Douglas McIntyre
Intel management and lawyers are in Europe talking with EU officials about whether the big chip company violated anti-trust laws in the region.
According to The Wall Street Journal "The E.U. filed preliminary charges against Intel in July, alleging the company offered rebates to customers only if they didn't use AMD products." Officials want to know whether Intel came by its 80% market share in the PC and server markets by playing fair or by using dirty tricks to keep customers away from AMD.
The case is much more important to AMD than it is to Intel. As E.U. dealings with Microsoft have shown, a large company can survive sanctions from the body, even penalties, and continue to do business successfully. AMD, on the other hand, is losing share. If it can get the locals to go along with its way of thinking, that Intel executives are thugs and mobsters, the smaller chip company might get a little wiggle room to sell more of its products.
Read More...
-
Posted
Feb 27 2008, 10:52 AM
by
Kim Peterson
Rating:
"I think it's a mistake. But I think Napoleon said never interrupt your enemy when they're in the middle of making a mistake." -- AOL chief exec Randy Falco on Microsoft's bid to acquire Yahoo in order to compete with Google.
More interesting quotes from the usually reserved Falco in this AdAge.com article.
Read More...
More Posts Next page »
|
