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Verizon Reduces Yahoo Deal Price by $250 Million in Revised Deal
- chrisabrams 10y agoNot that I understand how the deal structure is priced, but that seems like a win for Yahoo at this point?
- adrenalinelol 10y agoI'd say so, I always assumed $~1 billion would get shaved off the asking price after the PR nightmare caused by the hacking.
- geodel 10y agoHuh, I think Yahoo negotiated well.
- Bartweiss 10y agoLooks like the market agrees. Yahoo is up 2 points, Verizon is down 0.7.
- mtgx 10y agoThat's it? Seems like Verizon's negotiation experts weren't very good. Yahoo board is desperate to sell the company. I think they would've easily given up on a billion dollars to do it. Also, if this was some other company, it may have actually cared about Yahoo's disastrous data breaches and its cooperation with the NSA. But because is Verizon, the cooperation with the NSA and the spying infrastructure being already in place is probably why Verizon didn't want to cut too much from the price.
- berberous 10y agoYahoo's board may be desperate, but that doesn't mean they necessarily believed they were contractually in the wrong here. Verizon only had an out if it could show that this event was a "material adverse effect" on the business, which is a very high standard to meet. Verizon likely also preferred to close the deal, and neither company wanted to take the risk of litigating this and losing.
- hrodriguez 10y ago> it may have actually cared about Yahoo's disastrous data breaches and its cooperation with the NSA. But because is Verizon, the cooperation with the NSA and the spying infrastructure being already in place is probably why Verizon didn't want to cut too much from the price. Exactly what I was thinking. Verizon seems more desperate than Yahoo. Been trying to figure out what a phone company wants to do with these online user accounts. The only thing I can come up with is data-mining, surveillance and data-sharing. This seems to be what motivates those in power these days. It's about control. I just don't see a telephone company getting excited about email, news feeds, Yahoo Answers and some of the other properties available for it's own sake. The next question is: how deep is Verizon into surveillance already and, aside from marketing and ads in a business they know little about, what their ultimate goals are?
- empath75 10y agoThere were already contracts signed.
- alrs 10y ago$1B would have been better, but this is a dream come true for the people who take infrastructure and security seriously. We've got Amy Pascal's head on a spike, now we have the same for the Yahoo deal. Please, may this be the year that Wall Street is finally bitten in a serious way by a tech company flaming out due to the technical incompetence of its leadership.
- tantalor 10y agoDid you forget about 2001 already?
- dredmorbius 10y agoThat wasn't technical incompetence, per se, but an unsustainable financial bubble.
- jbigelow76 10y agoUnless executive golden parachutes get trimmed does it really make a difference? The execs that doused the company in gasoline, struck the match and then walked away won't be around to try and operate on $3.75B instead of the original $4 billion after the acquisition is complete. This is just Verizon exploiting some leverage to get a better price, it's not actual punishment of incompetent leadership.
- Arnt 10y agoPecunia non olet. If buyers were to talk the price down due to security sloppiness routinely, then it doesn't really matter why they do it: Shareholders looking for an eventual exit would have to factor their company's security practice into the their sale prospects whatever the reason.
- gozur88 10y agoYep, this is what I expect. The pressure will be on prospective buyers to insist in a rigorous security audit and preparation for that audit will get worked into standard business plans. I work for a huge telecom, and we take sucurity pretty seriously. Sometimes it seems like we've been doing nothing but security upgrades in the last seven or eight years.
- sna1l 10y agoYahoo most likely has contingencies in place that would make a pullout from the deal very painful for VZ. Otherwise VZ would have much more leverage, since they don't need Yahoo like Yahoo needs them.
- grigjd3 10y agoLaws are being relaxed on subsidizing data plans with ads so Verizon wants ad-tech. Is it really that hard to understand?
- jpadkins 10y agoyahoo has adtech?
- notyourwork 10y agoI was as surprised as you are, https://advertising.yahoo.com/ https://advertising.yahoo.com/
- utopcell 10y agoYahoo needs Verizon ? Yahoo just posted $300M Q4 net profits.
- pcurve 10y agoThey made $66.2M in Q4 from their actual business activity. 3 quarters prior to that have been losses. Operating Income -110.5M -107.1M -39.4M 66.2M Q4 earnings was $160mil, most of it came from Equity in earning.
- utopcell 10y agoWhat is the argument here ? $66.2M 'actual' net profit is still net profit. Indeed there were losses in previous quarters, but it seems that they managed to turn it around. Yahoo is by no means a healthy, growing company at this point but I fail to see how they "need" Verizon.
- xenihn 10y agoSo I have 4 shares of Yahoo I bought a few years ago on a whim...what the heck should I do with them? I paid something like $40 per share.
- dforrestwilson1 10y agoIf you like Alibaba then just keep holding. After the sale it is basically a tracking stock for BABA. If you don't like BABA then you should probably sell? Frankly, if you are asking strangers what to do with some stocks you bought, you might consider simply buying a broad market ETF like the SPY, VTI, or VT with the proceeds.
- erikpukinskis 10y agoAsking "strangers", i.e. experts in internet forums related to a stock, is a key step in learning enough about a market to trade intelligently in it. Your comment reads a little like "investors asking baby questions should trade baby securities". But just asking people's opinions on a stock doesn't mean you are a low skill investor. Quite the opposite really. People who si questions tend to get smart.
- oculusthrift 10y agothis is a tech forum. any response you get should not be assumed to be from an expert.
- awfgylbcxhrey 10y agoI've come across more doctors and bankers on HN than on any other social bookmarking site I've ever read. It's not limited to a "tech forum".
- PhoenixWright 10y agoHe flippantly asked what to do with his 4 shares. Doubt he'd get a dcf analysis.
- ptrptr 10y agoDon't forget to reduce final price by 1 billion USD - http://www.recode.net/2016/7/7/12116296/marissa-mayer-deal-mozilla-yahoo-payment http://www.recode.net/2016/7/7/12116296/marissa-mayer-deal-m...
- newscracker 10y agoThis is not even a mild slap on the wrist. It seems like Verizon has been very desperate to get Yahoo and blinked during the negotiations (after the revelations about the security violations/intrusions).
- bigdataanswers 10y agoYahoo has something you cant buy. Yahoo has what makes facebook unique and google plus suk. A user base, an fing large one. This discussion is not really for hacker news. We are techies, this is a talk for business men. If anyone has ad sales experience please step up and speak to the value of yahoo. Aol would love to have the inventory of yahoo in its graps and looks like they will finally get it. Security is for techies, I dont think yahoo's user base cares as much as lets say githubs. So while bad, its context that will help here.
- chrisjensen08 10y agoSeriously just buy the company already. Yahoo is dead anyway.
- git-pull 10y agoIf anyone from Yahoo is listening, I'm still trying to get into my Flickr account after about a year and 10+ contact attempts now. You guys literally have thousands of users in a holding pattern complaining and you're not doing anything about it [1]. I'm not trying to cause trouble or shake anything up. I'm an honest person who just wants in my account with all my photos. Meanwhile while all this happens you're just leaking and leaking account info every year. What am I to do? Yahoo Help is just a FAQ that has no route for me to submit my identification information. Flickr's legacy login is gone. My original gmail was deleted. I do not have a route for escalating my issue. I'll show you my driver's license, birth certificate, maybe even the last 4 numbers of the CC I used for flickr pro in 2008. What do I do? Get a lawyer? This is my stuff! Get it together Yahoo! https://www.flickr.com/help/forum/en-us/72157668446997150/ https://www.flickr.com/help/forum/en-us/72157668446997150/
- rdl 10y agoYahoo has a "concierge customer support" team for exceptions. (No, I can't/won't refer you.)
- yeukhon 10y agoIf you won't, then don't mention it. It comes across extremely rude and arrogant ("oh yeah I think I know a way to help you, but no I won't.")
- steiger 10y agoThe information might be useful nevertheless.
- HeavenBanned 10y agoAnalogous scenario: "Oh I think I know of a way to pick you up from the airport. It's a "special" method. But I can't/won't tell you." How exactly is that useful information in any way? Of course there is a way to get picked up from the airport. Car, taxi, bus, uber, lyft. Infinite number of solutions. That's not the issue. The issue is receiving said help. Basically saying, "There's a way to help you out, but I can't/won't" is tantamount to saying nothing at all. That was extremely annoying to read. A hint would have helped. At the least.
- mtgx 10y agoMeanwhile: http://www.zdnet.com/article/yahoo-warning-users-that-hackers-forged-cookies-to-access-accounts/ http://www.zdnet.com/article/yahoo-warning-users-that-hacker... You've got to give it to Yahoo. It must be the only company that broke its own world record for a data breach. That's kind of impressive in its own way.
- nkkollaw 10y agoYahoo! seems to keep screwing up. Even this last thing is a screwup, last thing they did as Yahoo!, inc.
- 77pt77 10y agoAlso have a look at the latest yahoo mail breach https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13654696 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13654696
- sigjuice 10y ago“I am altering the deal. Pray I don’t alter it any further.”
- sabelo 10y agoAt least now we have a price point for what a breach costs. Very pricey it seems.