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Yahoo Board To Reject Microsoft Offer
- ivan 19y agoI hope this definitively kills Micro$oft.
- dawnerd 19y agoI very highly doubt that.
- kajecounterhack 19y agoYeah thats not exactly possible. I do wonder, however, what this effectively does to Yahoo's stock price.
- mixmax 19y agosee for yourself http://finance.google.com/finance?q=yahoo http://finance.google.com/finance?q=yahoo
- pg 19y agoWhat this stock price says to me is that investors are betting that this story, even if it's correct, is not the last word, and that Microsoft (or someone) will eventually get them.
- kajecounterhack 19y agoIs it possible though, that the stock prices went up as a sign of investor relief? I'm not sure all stockholders were too happy with the deal.
- aston 19y agoIf Yahoo! does reject the offer, their stock price should, were the market completely rational, fall a lot. Back to what it was before Microsoft made the offer in the first place. Yahoo's the same company it was two weeks ago; the stock was just worth more since MS was offering a premium.
- nostrademons 19y agoThe other possibility is that investors are not completely rational. Yahoo is the same company it was in November; the stock is just worth what it was then. It's the last 3 months that's been the aberration. ;-)
- ahold 19y agodoubts can be dangerous :)
- amichail 19y agoJust imagine all those Yahoo services ported to Silverlight. I think it would be very impressive actually.
- rms 19y agoIt's kind of scary to think that corporations existing today are likely to be around for hundreds of years. All hail our corporate overlords.
- davidw 19y agoI wouldn't count on it. Look how many of 1908's giants are still big today. A few, but most are dead and gone. This book talks about some of the reasons why: http://www.squeezedbooks.com/book/show/2/why-most-things-fail-evolution-extinction-and-economics http://www.squeezedbooks.com/book/show/2/why-most-things-fai...
- rms 19y agoOK. I doubt that Microsoft and Yahoo will be around in 2108. It seems inconceivable that Google could fall though, especially if Google.org's energy research pays off.
- davidw 19y agoHere's the paper: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0002-8282 http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0002-8282(199805)88%3A2%3C62%3ASASMAT%3E2.0.CO%3B2-8 Unfortunately it's not free. The stats cited in the book are that only 20% of the top 100 from 1915 were still there in 1995. Think about the technology landscape 100 years ago, and how much it's changed. I think there's every chance that Google will either not be around, or be radically smaller or different than it is now. It could be even larger, too. It's simply not possible to know. What is evident though, is that with time, companies grow and die. Bonus fact - this is one of the oldest companies in the world: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zildjian http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zildjian
- Tichy 19y agoWhy, by 2108 there will be superhuman machines and all... If Google is not the company who invents them, they will be toast.
- ivan 19y agoHeh, Google's stocks are moving http://finance.google.com/finance?q=NASDAQ:GOOG http://finance.google.com/finance?q=NASDAQ:GOOG
- amohr 19y ago"the $31 per share offer "massively undervalues" Yahoo," Now I'm no mathematician, but when microsoft made that offer, I believe their stock closed at 19.10, which I believe is significantly less than $31. The mere offer from microsoft caused their value to jump 50% in a day. Monday might be ugly for YHOO owners.
- mixmax 19y agoThis is normal in a a takeover situation. The reason being that a company that you control is worth a lot more than a bunch of shares that pay you dividend, but offer you little or no control over the company. The pundits know this and drive up the price, expecting to make a profit when Microsoft buys them out.
- anewaccountname 19y agoShares offer proportional votes.
- deleted 19y ago[deleted]
- tvon 19y agoMany people believe that Yahoo is massively undervalued on Wall Street.
- amohr 19y agoI feel like the value of a company is mostly defined by Wall Street, at least for a company the size of Yahoo. Obviously there are companies that provide important services that aren't even public, however, when determining a company's overall value or growth, stock price is a pretty good indicator.
- corentin 19y agoYahoo stock is trading around $29 a share, yet Yahoo's board say that Microsoft's offer of $31 a share "massively undervalues" the company?
- neilc 19y agoSure, that is quite plausible. The current market capitalization / stock price of a company is not the final word on a company's value. Whether it is true or not is another question, but it is certainly possible that Yahoo is undervalued by the MSFT offer.
- anewaccountname 19y agoThat's YHOO's price after the offer was made, before that the price was below $20.
- corentin 19y agoValue is in the eye of the shareholder ;)
- lyime 19y agoWell even though this is a normal takeover situation. The price Yahoo is going to be asking will most likely be above 60 Billion. I think that might be too much gable for MS. I am sure Microsoft made the offer with levy for a much higher demanding offer. The question is how much levy.
- Xichekolas 19y agoFrom the reason they quoted ("the $31 per share offer massively undervalues Yahoo!"), my guess is that this 'rejection' is just the first play in a dance over the price, which I'm sure Microsoft was prepared for, even if it bid high initially in an attempt to appear the White Knight. If Yahoo!'s board really did not want to sell, it would have cited lack of benefits to the merger, culture differences, or technology platform differences, which are all real concerns. Their risk is that if they ask too much, then Microsoft will slink away, which will probably crush their share price for a while. Hopefully some people had options that they could excercise under the recent 40% jump in Yahoo!'s shares, although considering it's decline in the last year, even that seems unlikely.
- iamelgringo 19y agoHusband of a friend works in management over at Yahoo. She says the word is around the water cooler, that Yahoo's looking for around $36 a share, and then will sell. Sounds like morale is pretty low, and sound like there's going to be a lot of engineers looking for new jobs soon. Or, a lot more startups rising for Yahoo's ashes.
- mattmaroon 19y agoIf I were him, I would have been hoping they'd accept the first offer. There's a pretty good chance now that MS isn't going to go any higher (especially given what's happened to their stock since the bid became public news) and his shares are going to spiral into the abyss.
- pius 19y agoYou're famous: http://valleywag.com/355173/yahoo-to-sell-at-36 http://valleywag.com/355173/yahoo-to-sell-at-36
- bp001 19y ago"Massively Undervalues" huh... Let's see, a stock price of under $20/share previous to the $31/share offer being made. A greater than 50% premium is massively undervaluing the company? Granted the market is not a perfect indicator of true value of a company. Google was a good example of this when they were valued at around $100/share and then proceeded to quadruple in value over the next 2 years. However, Yahoo is no Google. They have not been able to effectively compete. I'm surprised Microsoft was willing to offer such a premium for Yahoo in the first place. Maybe I underestimate the synergies of the two companies and/or Microsoft's concern about their online division. The interesting question to me is what comes next...Does Microsoft: A. Sweeten the offer B. Walk away completely C. Give it a year expecting Yahoo's price to drop significantly before making a subsequent offer? Unless the Yahoo boardmembers have some plan up their sleeves, I expect some very unhappy shareholders should B or C pan out.
- michaelneale 19y agoRobert X Cringely had some interesting theories. Mostly it was about MS wanting to turn itself into a "General Electric" over time, rather then compete head on with google.
- dkokelley 19y ago"Massively undervalues" is a way of Yahoo saying "We think our share price should be higher than A: what it is, and B: what you're offering." Yahoo is undoubtedly going through a rough time in terms of their share price, but what's being forgotten is past performance. Since the beginning of 2007 Yahoo's share price has averaged around $25 or so, with a low of $22.73 and a high of $33.63. The pre-bid low this year was $19.05, and was probably due to the fact that the majority of the industry was taking a beating, along with the rest of the economy. When companies offer takeovers, they usually pay a premium in share price, however Microsoft took advantage of the state of the economy by offering a takeover at a particularly low point in share price, allowing them to offer an artificial premium that was - when compared to YHOO average share price - at only a $5 premium, or 20%.
- bp001 19y ago
- amohr 19y agoVisual proof that this would be a poor move for microsoft, at least according to investors. http://finance.google.com/finance?chdnp=1&chdd=1&chds=1&chdv=1&chvs=maximized&chdeh=0&chfdeh=0&chdet=1202593904000&chddm=98141&cmpto=NASDAQ:MSFT&q=NASDAQ:YHOO http://finance.google.com/finance?chdnp=1&chdd=1&chd...
- mixmax 19y agoThere are some pretty good comments about the deal over at slashdot. http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/02/09/1812239 http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/02/09/1812239
- __ 19y agoIf $29 per share massively undervalues Yahoo, wouldn't Yahoo have spent the last two years buying back huge amounts of its own stock?
- aston 19y agoRequires cash :(
- cstejerean 19y agoPerhaps a private equity firm would have stepped in if this was really the case. And if Yahoo knows something its shareholders don't (as to why it is massively undervalued) it better speak up soon.