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Why Yahoo and Marissa Mayer's Over Reliance On Alibaba Could Spell Trouble
DavidGilbert99 writes "Marissa Mayer has been in charge at Yahoo for one year now. In that time she has seen the share price rise 70% and she's made some headline grabbing acquisitions — notably Tumblr for over $1 billion last month. However, look beneath the surface and things are not going so well. In this week's quarterly results, we saw ad sales fell by 12% year-on-year and as Alistair Charlton says in IBTimes UK: ' Yahoo earned $846m in cash by redeeming its shares in the group, representing a significant chunk of Yahoo's $1.07bn revenue for the quarter, down 1% on last year. ... The next few years will be a balancing act as the stabilizing wheels are removed and Yahoo, with dozens of acquired startups patching up the rust, will have to make progress under its own steam.'"
This just in: Throwing money at startups and other unstable revenue streams gets you... unstable revenue streams and some guys who like to play ping-pong at work. Film at 11
What exactly does Yahoo sell? Do they even have a mission statement? Personally I do not understand why they didn't sell to Microsoft when they had the chance.
Some people die at 25 and aren't buried until 75. -Benjamin Franklin
What exactly does Yahoo sell? Do they even have a mission statement?
From several investor calls she has said:
“Yahoo is about making the world’s daily habits more inspiring and entertaining,”
Which is a little more positive and slightly better than Yahoo!'s previous mission statement:
"Now open up all your little fucking birdie mouths because Papa Yahoo!'s got a big juicy unwanted browser toolbar to slam down your goddamn throats."
My work here is dung.
Most of those "superstar" business executives are no better than their college classmates. They just happened to land in the right company at the right time.
I don't believe that Mayer has CEO super powers. She was lucky to have worked at Google at a time when it was poised to take off. Putting her in charge of a wounded beast like Yahoo is a completely different ball game though. I don't know that she actually has the chops to handle that kind of situation.
The problem with Yahoo is that it's an aimless company. Essentially an answer to a question nobody asked. Everything that used to make Yahoo special, somebody else now does better. They either get back on top in search (unlikely) or find something new to excel at.
In that time she has seen the share price rise 70% and she's made some headline grabbing acquisitions...
That's just people's expectations and hopes. Meaning, any increases in revenue from those purchases has already been factored into the price and if the targets aren't meant, the stock will just go down.
OTOH, if things turn out better than expected, then there may be more upside.
I think all those purchases are going to bite her in the ass.
They've existed by cashing out their own property ever since she came on board. It's corporate cannibalism designed to make her look great at the expense of the company and its employees.... yet she is lauded as the second coming of Joan of Arc or something. The next few years will see her jump ship just before the company takes yet another nosedive, which will probably be attributed to her loss of leadership. It's fucking disgusting to anyone who is paying attention.
there is no way this is legal to report in the USA as revenue
Mayer has a proven track record in industry, what do you have exactly?
I just flipped 10 heads in a row, do I have a "proven" track record?
And judging by her acquisitions, her strategy seems to be "throw a lot of money around and see what works."
You want an example of great CEO leadership? Go back and see what Lou Gerstner did to IBM in the 90s - THAT is how it's done.
I was under the impression that Alibaba was a scam site. Exhibit A: http://www.alibaba.com/product-gs/517265716/Factory_Promotional_OEM_MP4_Player_with.html
Slashdot apparently still has a special icon for Yahoo stories
Which can only mean one of two things: /. isn't
(1) Yahoo still is very cool, hip, and totally in.
or (2)
Apple used to do that all the time back in the day, before they started doing well. They used to sell shares of ARM to keep themselves afloat. In fact, there's an article about it, so I don't have to rely on my faulty memory.
http://www.cultofmac.com/97055/this-is-how-arm-saved-apple-from-going-bust-1990s/
Talk is cheap: those of you who are willing to predict Yahoo's future can go eother long or short on the stock.
The author of this article does not know what the fuck he is talking about.
Proceeds from sales are NOT counted in revenue numbers. Yahoo! earned 1.071 billion doing exactly what it has always done to make money: sell ads.
Just this afternoon I opened my first dispute with Alibaba. This was on my first received shipment through them. Actually my second order, but the first order still has not been received. I got the package on Monday but the enclose item was not at all as advertised. I wrote to the seller on Monday but two full business days later I still had no response and Alibaba wanted to close out the payment so I tried to open the dispute. Interesting to note that your detailed explanation of the problem is artificially limited to 512 characters. You are encouraged to include attachments and they mention correspondence, but the attachments will not accept text files. (Almost like they don't really want the details). And they all know it will be too expensive with US International postage charges to return the item.
You gotta give them credit. Most of use remember the stories of Alibaba and his forty "business associates". This has got to be one of the best choices in names since years ago when a similar American fencing organization wanted to call themselves "The Electronic Bay of Thieves" but it was pointed out that this was too long and hard to type correctly and they decided to shorten it.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
I am waiting to see if Yahoo can integrate its acquisitions into a platform. I see their strategy, to provide an end-to-end platform that combines Google, Facebook, and more - sort of everything you can do on the Internet rolled into one with great mobile support. If it works, this will be the most brilliant turnaround ever. Problem is that Yahoo has all the pieces, but they're not integrated into one platform. That's going to be hard, and may be impossible. Yahoo is going for the home run, because it has no other choice - the only way to survive is to hit a home run.
yahoo news seems to have lurched to the right. It was probably fairly left-tilting before but now it seems to feature endless stories on the imaginary atrocities of obamacare, "truths" from the blaze etc. And there are quite a few ads posing like news stories that were not there before.
Nullius in verba
There are plenty of sellers on there at least representing themselves as selling single units or low quantities directly to U.S consumers.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
....are the reason that it would spell trouble