8 ms·

Here are my thoughts on this: - Mayer's tenure at the helm of a big co like this is over, she will take a multi year hit before she resurfaces somewhere else (w

Here are my thoughts on this: - Mayer's tenure at the helm of a big co like this is over, she will take a multi year hit before she resurfaces somewhere else (will take a while for her to get another CEO job) - Yahoo still has tons of traffic (default browser tabs?), though the quality of it is questionable. - If someone can pull a 1980s style buy and chop up and resell deal, they could extract positive value instantly. They are trading right now at a negative value to their cash. - Can someone buy the company and then sell the email users to google? The search traffic to Microsoft? - They are going to need to lay off thousands of people (many might be best off quitting now and beating the crowds to the market)

bachmeier 11y ago
> will take a while for her to get another CEO job Genuinely curious: Why would she get another CEO job (excluding startups and sinking ships)? There was no reason to think she would do a good job at Yahoo, she has no track record of success as a CEO, she certainly can't point to anything she's done at Yahoo, and as far as I can tell, people don't like working for her.
- w1ntermute 11y ago
  Because CEO jobs (as with most other valuable things in life) aren't doled out solely based on merit or track record. Mayer is one of the few women in a high-profile position in the Valley, and hiring a female CEO can be good for optics.
  - programmernews3 11y ago
    Agree. Judging her on her track record would just be sexist.
  - throwaway021916 11y ago
    I had a trading idea: create and short a portfolio of tech companies that have female CEOs. Unfortunately shorting long term is nearly impossible- the horizon is 2-3 years.
  - sremani 11y ago
    To be fair most of the male CEOs get hired because of their story rather than raw skills. Honestly, the dye has been cast before Mayer entered the fray, but she cashed the hype and that was my only point of criticism. She will live to be CEO of another company and it could be sooner than most of us expect.
    - cft 11y ago
      Was the die cast before Steve Jobs returned to Apple? I read it had less than 1 year of runway. I do not think Yahoo has ever been in such a dire position...
      - fweespeech 11y ago
        Steve Jobs was a rare talented individual who actually mattered in the CEO position. Many CEOs have negligible impact.
- randycupertino 11y ago
  It may be an arguable point, but I think at bare minimum she brings some value via bringing ton of cache and PR with her, so she may be a good fit for a small firm that could benefit from a lot of press and razzle dazzle. She seems absolutely obsessed with the fashion industry (why did Yahoo need to open an office in Milan and spend $3 million sponsoring the Met Fashion Gala) so perhaps some sort of online fashion store would be a good fit, like Net-A-Porter, Shop Bob or Poylvore.
  - w1ntermute 11y ago
    It would be extremely amusing if Mayer ended up running Polyvore, a Yahoo! acquisition that she has been criticized for[0]. 0: http://www.businessinsider.com/eric-jackson-slams-yahoo-for-polyvore-acquisition-2015-12 http://www.businessinsider.com/eric-jackson-slams-yahoo-for-...
  - SEJeff 11y ago
    Too bad Camille stepped down, but I'm sure Rent the Runway could use some serious new talent.
- jblow 11y ago
  Even if you think she failed, AND if you think this was her fault, she now has a LOT more experience at being a CEO than someone who has never been a CEO.
  - rantanplan 11y ago
    That's like saying "bet all your money on that horse, because it has lost a race and knows more about racing than a horse that doesn't race." Seriously, it doesn't make sense. You can pick other people, who haven't been CEOs yet, but have shown potential. She never showed potential. Quite the contrary I'd say.
    - nulltype 11y ago
      Running a company and running around a race track might be different sorts of skills.
      - rantanplan 11y ago
        Hmmm. Yeah unfortunately this isn't one of those "I just learned 1000 ways of how not to make a lightbulb" kind of things. There aren't enough high profile companies for Mrs Mayers to expend until she acquires those skills, which we know she doesn't have. If for some reason she acquires them in the future, good for her. I wouldn't invest on that hope though, and you have no argument to convince anyone that they should.
    - charlesdm 11y ago
      In case you haven't noticed yet, CEOs and board members all appoint each other on various other corporate boards and in various companies. Once you're in the inner circle, unless you messed up MAJORLY (i.e. bankrupted a billion dollar company), you'll always be able to get a new gig at some point. Yes, it's not always a meritocracy - yes, that's how the world works. If I sit on a board, would I rather appoint my buddy, who will have my back? Of course. As much as I think Marissa did a terrible job, she didn't pick the easiest company to become CEO of. Some CEOs have it easier than other; certain companies run on autopilot and have just a few major competitors.
perseusprime11 11y ago
Highly unlikely she will get another CEO job. She has made a lot of money from Yahoo and Google. She will most likely become a VC and funding startups that have design angle.
- xyzzy4 11y ago
  Why will she become a VC? So she can waste her money? VC has the worst returns out of any investment class. If you mean invest other people's money as a VC, then maybe, but I haven't seen her show any interest in that.
  - w1ntermute 11y ago
    VC is where high-profile tech execs are put out to pasture (see: Marc Andreessen, Dick Costolo, Reid Hoffman, Phil Libin, Peter Thiel). You won't see Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos becoming a VC any time soon (or probably ever). And of course she will be investing other people's money, not her own.
    - hiddencost 11y ago
      http://www.bezosexpeditions.com/ http://www.bezosexpeditions.com/ Bezos runs a VC. (With Bezos, it's super dangerous to say he won't do X; chances are he's got a 30 minute meeting scheduled for 2am Sunday morning to review his X operation.)
      - w1ntermute 11y ago
        Just because Bezos makes some investments doesn't make him a VC ('runs a VC,' as you put it, isn't the same thing and also isn't really accurate). His primary job is running Amazon, and the idea that he's got his hands in all kinds of pies ('it's dangerous to say he won't do X') is just an illusion he's been very successful at creating.
        AndrewUnmuted 11y ago
nerfhammer 11y ago
Why would wall street value a company at less than its book value? Struggling to understand how that could make sense.
- ziszis 11y ago
  As an example - imagine a company with a billion $ in cash. If investors believe that the company will be wasteful with that money (for example by making poor acquisitions as is sometimes the case with companies with an excess of cash) then investors will value the company at less than a billion $.
- clock_tower 11y ago
  I've heard it said that stock price is the market's best estimate of the NPV of future cash flows. If that's true, does that mean that the market expects some of Yahoo's cash to disappear? I can imagine ways that it could: lawsuits, golden parachutes, maybe even stupid acquisitions... In general, though, the market is not as rational as it's credited with being. Perfect information never exists, and emotion can distort prices; think of Black Tuesday, or all stock-market bubbles, or how MLPs are falling right now because of problems with Kinder Morgan (which isn't even an MLP in the first place).
- profeta 11y ago
  you usually bad mouth things you want to buy. it brings the price down.
- jleader 11y ago
  One obvious reason would be if they don't trust the book value. For example, if the assumptions made in computing the book value are systematically wrong in some way.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- jkot 11y ago
  Taxes. You might have to pay extra to convert assets into cash.
Infinitesimus 11y ago
> The search traffic to Microsoft? IIRC Yahoo Search is powered by Bing so I'm not sure what MS will gain from that besides brand name
- brianbreslin 11y ago
  I think that deal was expiring, and they split revenue on that traffic with yahoo, 30% of yahoo's revenue comes from that deal. So could add a couple more Bs to Microsoft's top-line.
mratzloff 11y ago
She's not getting another crack at CEO. She's done. She'll sit on a board or two, maybe.
- mindcrime 11y ago
  I don't know about that. The business world tends to recycle CEO's like the NFL recycles head coaches. And for something of the same reason - some people believe it's better to hire somebody who's done a job and failed (and learned a lot about what went wrong and what to do better next time), as opposed to hiring somebody who's never done the job at all. Some look at it as "I'd rather hire somebody who got trained on someone else's dime". I'm not necessarily endorsing this position, but I think it has at least some merit.
logicrook 11y ago
>Mayer's tenure at the helm of a big co like this is over, she will take a multi year hit before she resurfaces somewhere else (will take a while for her to get another CEO job) That's a shame really, we need diversity in tech, and she could continue her excellent job in a company like Microsoft or Apple. That would also help ending a monopoly, so everybody would win.
- apta 11y ago
  > That's a shame really, we need diversity in tech Diversity for diversity's sake is not the goal (seems what you're implying, unless I misunderstood).
  - praneshp 11y ago
    "That would also help ending a monopoly, so everybody would win." makes it sound like he was sarcastic, but I'm not sure.
    - apta 11y ago
      I missed that part. I guess you're right.
thrownaway2424 11y ago
Don't worry about Mayer. She can follow the path blazed by another bozotic Silicon Valley CEO and run increasingly high profile elected office. After all, if you can ruin a company, you can ruin a nation.
- SEJeff 11y ago
  Didn't work for Carly Fiorna, either at HP, the Gov of CA, or her (now) failed presidential bid.
  - w1ntermute 11y ago
    Perhaps they can go for joint speaking gigs[0], now that they both have plenty of free time on their hands. 0: http://fortune.com/2016/02/11/carly-fiorina-speaking-gig/ http://fortune.com/2016/02/11/carly-fiorina-speaking-gig/
  - thrownaway2424 11y ago
    You forgot that Fiorina ran for the Senate (in 2010). It was Whitman who ran for Governor.
    - SEJeff 11y ago
      Touche, you're right, but still just further my point.
- oldmanjay 11y ago
  It's pretty unfair to say Mayer ruined anything. She didn't save Yahoo, but there is no evidence it was ever in a position to be saved by her.
  - jonknee 11y ago
    If a pet rock was installed as CEO instead of Mayer Yahoo would be a more valuable company today. She didn't ruin it, but she sure helped shove it off the cliff.
JonFish85 11y ago
I want to play devil's advocate here, just a bit. Looking at it solely from a stock price perspective, she's done remarkably well: the share price roughly doubled during her tenure there. Obviously there are a lot of other metrics to look at, but if you're a struggling company as Yahoo was, that's probably enough to consider hiring her. Not to mention, I think a lot of people would argue that Yahoo was a sinking ship regardless of who was running it. She'll probably spend some time with her family, and eventually pop up at some other company that's looking to turn things around.
- jonknee 11y ago
  > I want to play devil's advocate here, just a bit. Looking at it solely from a stock price perspective, she's done remarkably well: the share price roughly doubled during her tenure there. Obviously there are a lot of other metrics to look at, but if you're a struggling company as Yahoo was, that's probably enough to consider hiring her. She has done terribly. The stock price has little to do with her and almost everything to do with Alibaba. If you remove Alibaba she is now in control of a company worse less than its cash.
  - toast0 11y ago
    > She has done terribly. The stock price has little to do with her and almost everything to do with Alibaba. If you remove Alibaba she is now in control of a company worse less than its cash. Wasn't that the case when she started, too?
    - AnimalMuppet 11y ago
      One could argue that she was hired to fix that, though. And failed.
      - toast0 11y ago
        Sure, but when was the last time Y! had a successful CEO? Terry Semel before people he fell out of favor? Lasting 4 years is pretty good.
mathattack 11y ago
She could easily morph into a VC or professional board director, and make plenty of money without the headaches of being a public company CEO. She doesn't need the money at all. The irony is despite the company sinking, Yahoo is still a great place to have on a resume, and boasts a loyal alumni network.

bachmeier 11y ago

> will take a while for her to get another CEO job Genuinely curious: Why would she get another CEO job (excluding startups and sinking ships)? There was no reason to think she would do a good job at Yahoo, she has no track record of success as a CEO, she certainly can't point to anything she's done at Yahoo, and as far as I can tell, people don't like working for her.

w1ntermute 11y ago
Because CEO jobs (as with most other valuable things in life) aren't doled out solely based on merit or track record. Mayer is one of the few women in a high-profile position in the Valley, and hiring a female CEO can be good for optics.
- programmernews3 11y ago
  Agree. Judging her on her track record would just be sexist.
- throwaway021916 11y ago
  I had a trading idea: create and short a portfolio of tech companies that have female CEOs. Unfortunately shorting long term is nearly impossible- the horizon is 2-3 years.
- sremani 11y ago
  To be fair most of the male CEOs get hired because of their story rather than raw skills. Honestly, the dye has been cast before Mayer entered the fray, but she cashed the hype and that was my only point of criticism. She will live to be CEO of another company and it could be sooner than most of us expect.
  - cft 11y ago
    Was the die cast before Steve Jobs returned to Apple? I read it had less than 1 year of runway. I do not think Yahoo has ever been in such a dire position...
    - fweespeech 11y ago
      Steve Jobs was a rare talented individual who actually mattered in the CEO position. Many CEOs have negligible impact.
randycupertino 11y ago
It may be an arguable point, but I think at bare minimum she brings some value via bringing ton of cache and PR with her, so she may be a good fit for a small firm that could benefit from a lot of press and razzle dazzle. She seems absolutely obsessed with the fashion industry (why did Yahoo need to open an office in Milan and spend $3 million sponsoring the Met Fashion Gala) so perhaps some sort of online fashion store would be a good fit, like Net-A-Porter, Shop Bob or Poylvore.
- w1ntermute 11y ago
  It would be extremely amusing if Mayer ended up running Polyvore, a Yahoo! acquisition that she has been criticized for[0]. 0: http://www.businessinsider.com/eric-jackson-slams-yahoo-for-polyvore-acquisition-2015-12 http://www.businessinsider.com/eric-jackson-slams-yahoo-for-...
- SEJeff 11y ago
  Too bad Camille stepped down, but I'm sure Rent the Runway could use some serious new talent.
jblow 11y ago
Even if you think she failed, AND if you think this was her fault, she now has a LOT more experience at being a CEO than someone who has never been a CEO.
- rantanplan 11y ago
  That's like saying "bet all your money on that horse, because it has lost a race and knows more about racing than a horse that doesn't race." Seriously, it doesn't make sense. You can pick other people, who haven't been CEOs yet, but have shown potential. She never showed potential. Quite the contrary I'd say.
  - nulltype 11y ago
    Running a company and running around a race track might be different sorts of skills.
    - rantanplan 11y ago
      Hmmm. Yeah unfortunately this isn't one of those "I just learned 1000 ways of how not to make a lightbulb" kind of things. There aren't enough high profile companies for Mrs Mayers to expend until she acquires those skills, which we know she doesn't have. If for some reason she acquires them in the future, good for her. I wouldn't invest on that hope though, and you have no argument to convince anyone that they should.
  - charlesdm 11y ago
    In case you haven't noticed yet, CEOs and board members all appoint each other on various other corporate boards and in various companies. Once you're in the inner circle, unless you messed up MAJORLY (i.e. bankrupted a billion dollar company), you'll always be able to get a new gig at some point. Yes, it's not always a meritocracy - yes, that's how the world works. If I sit on a board, would I rather appoint my buddy, who will have my back? Of course. As much as I think Marissa did a terrible job, she didn't pick the easiest company to become CEO of. Some CEOs have it easier than other; certain companies run on autopilot and have just a few major competitors.

perseusprime11 11y ago

Highly unlikely she will get another CEO job. She has made a lot of money from Yahoo and Google. She will most likely become a VC and funding startups that have design angle.

xyzzy4 11y ago
Why will she become a VC? So she can waste her money? VC has the worst returns out of any investment class. If you mean invest other people's money as a VC, then maybe, but I haven't seen her show any interest in that.
- w1ntermute 11y ago
  VC is where high-profile tech execs are put out to pasture (see: Marc Andreessen, Dick Costolo, Reid Hoffman, Phil Libin, Peter Thiel). You won't see Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos becoming a VC any time soon (or probably ever). And of course she will be investing other people's money, not her own.
  - hiddencost 11y ago
    http://www.bezosexpeditions.com/ http://www.bezosexpeditions.com/ Bezos runs a VC. (With Bezos, it's super dangerous to say he won't do X; chances are he's got a 30 minute meeting scheduled for 2am Sunday morning to review his X operation.)
    - w1ntermute 11y ago
      Just because Bezos makes some investments doesn't make him a VC ('runs a VC,' as you put it, isn't the same thing and also isn't really accurate). His primary job is running Amazon, and the idea that he's got his hands in all kinds of pies ('it's dangerous to say he won't do X') is just an illusion he's been very successful at creating.
      - AndrewUnmuted 11y ago

nerfhammer 11y ago

Why would wall street value a company at less than its book value? Struggling to understand how that could make sense.

ziszis 11y ago
As an example - imagine a company with a billion $ in cash. If investors believe that the company will be wasteful with that money (for example by making poor acquisitions as is sometimes the case with companies with an excess of cash) then investors will value the company at less than a billion $.
clock_tower 11y ago
I've heard it said that stock price is the market's best estimate of the NPV of future cash flows. If that's true, does that mean that the market expects some of Yahoo's cash to disappear? I can imagine ways that it could: lawsuits, golden parachutes, maybe even stupid acquisitions... In general, though, the market is not as rational as it's credited with being. Perfect information never exists, and emotion can distort prices; think of Black Tuesday, or all stock-market bubbles, or how MLPs are falling right now because of problems with Kinder Morgan (which isn't even an MLP in the first place).
profeta 11y ago
you usually bad mouth things you want to buy. it brings the price down.
jleader 11y ago
One obvious reason would be if they don't trust the book value. For example, if the assumptions made in computing the book value are systematically wrong in some way.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
jkot 11y ago
Taxes. You might have to pay extra to convert assets into cash.

Infinitesimus 11y ago

> The search traffic to Microsoft? IIRC Yahoo Search is powered by Bing so I'm not sure what MS will gain from that besides brand name

brianbreslin 11y ago
I think that deal was expiring, and they split revenue on that traffic with yahoo, 30% of yahoo's revenue comes from that deal. So could add a couple more Bs to Microsoft's top-line.

mratzloff 11y ago

She's not getting another crack at CEO. She's done. She'll sit on a board or two, maybe.

mindcrime 11y ago
I don't know about that. The business world tends to recycle CEO's like the NFL recycles head coaches. And for something of the same reason - some people believe it's better to hire somebody who's done a job and failed (and learned a lot about what went wrong and what to do better next time), as opposed to hiring somebody who's never done the job at all. Some look at it as "I'd rather hire somebody who got trained on someone else's dime". I'm not necessarily endorsing this position, but I think it has at least some merit.

logicrook 11y ago

>Mayer's tenure at the helm of a big co like this is over, she will take a multi year hit before she resurfaces somewhere else (will take a while for her to get another CEO job) That's a shame really, we need diversity in tech, and she could continue her excellent job in a company like Microsoft or Apple. That would also help ending a monopoly, so everybody would win.

apta 11y ago
> That's a shame really, we need diversity in tech Diversity for diversity's sake is not the goal (seems what you're implying, unless I misunderstood).
- praneshp 11y ago
  "That would also help ending a monopoly, so everybody would win." makes it sound like he was sarcastic, but I'm not sure.
  - apta 11y ago
    I missed that part. I guess you're right.

thrownaway2424 11y ago

Don't worry about Mayer. She can follow the path blazed by another bozotic Silicon Valley CEO and run increasingly high profile elected office. After all, if you can ruin a company, you can ruin a nation.

SEJeff 11y ago
Didn't work for Carly Fiorna, either at HP, the Gov of CA, or her (now) failed presidential bid.
- w1ntermute 11y ago
  Perhaps they can go for joint speaking gigs[0], now that they both have plenty of free time on their hands. 0: http://fortune.com/2016/02/11/carly-fiorina-speaking-gig/ http://fortune.com/2016/02/11/carly-fiorina-speaking-gig/
- thrownaway2424 11y ago
  You forgot that Fiorina ran for the Senate (in 2010). It was Whitman who ran for Governor.
  - SEJeff 11y ago
    Touche, you're right, but still just further my point.
oldmanjay 11y ago
It's pretty unfair to say Mayer ruined anything. She didn't save Yahoo, but there is no evidence it was ever in a position to be saved by her.
- jonknee 11y ago
  If a pet rock was installed as CEO instead of Mayer Yahoo would be a more valuable company today. She didn't ruin it, but she sure helped shove it off the cliff.

JonFish85 11y ago

I want to play devil's advocate here, just a bit. Looking at it solely from a stock price perspective, she's done remarkably well: the share price roughly doubled during her tenure there. Obviously there are a lot of other metrics to look at, but if you're a struggling company as Yahoo was, that's probably enough to consider hiring her. Not to mention, I think a lot of people would argue that Yahoo was a sinking ship regardless of who was running it. She'll probably spend some time with her family, and eventually pop up at some other company that's looking to turn things around.

jonknee 11y ago
> I want to play devil's advocate here, just a bit. Looking at it solely from a stock price perspective, she's done remarkably well: the share price roughly doubled during her tenure there. Obviously there are a lot of other metrics to look at, but if you're a struggling company as Yahoo was, that's probably enough to consider hiring her. She has done terribly. The stock price has little to do with her and almost everything to do with Alibaba. If you remove Alibaba she is now in control of a company worse less than its cash.
- toast0 11y ago
  > She has done terribly. The stock price has little to do with her and almost everything to do with Alibaba. If you remove Alibaba she is now in control of a company worse less than its cash. Wasn't that the case when she started, too?
  - AnimalMuppet 11y ago
    One could argue that she was hired to fix that, though. And failed.
    - toast0 11y ago
      Sure, but when was the last time Y! had a successful CEO? Terry Semel before people he fell out of favor? Lasting 4 years is pretty good.

mathattack 11y ago

She could easily morph into a VC or professional board director, and make plenty of money without the headaches of being a public company CEO. She doesn't need the money at all. The irony is despite the company sinking, Yahoo is still a great place to have on a resume, and boasts a loyal alumni network.