Comments on: Is Yahoo Stock a Bargain?

By: jay hardy

jay hardy — Sun, 30 Nov 2008 15:19:55 +0000

from a standpoint of assets it is a bargain. Yahoo has $11billion in assets (after deducting for liabilities). At $10 a share with 1.29 billion outstanding shares you’d be paying only $900M over asset valuation. They still are making over $1 billion in annual profits so I don’t see the Icahn’s risk. But, my viewpoint is one as a trader of it’s stock. And I’d have been out Friday with a 15% gain in a week. It’ll like spike higher with trader activity. (There were some 250K chucks sold Friday near the end of the session for $11.45- which has certainly NOT a retail trader). Notice that the volume has been decreasing steadily (I know Friday was only a half-section) as the price has been spiking. That’s usually a sign the stock is moving due to amateur trading– not the major institutional holders disposing or acquiring that accounts for 70% of Yahoo’s stock. So that said if Icahn is “trading” he is smart. If he’s “investing” he’s not so smart.

By: Om Malik

Om Malik — Sun, 30 Nov 2008 14:52:16 +0000

@austinandrew

Fair enough. I guess we would have to see how he does in the future before making a final judgement. I am not buying his "expertise" on Yahoo for now. I think both in case of Motorola and Yahoo, he over paid and had clearly not seen how bad things were for these two companies. I think like many investors, they rely on advise from analysts who are really removed from the on-the-ground problems. Yahoo has a structural and cultural problem.

By: Xavier

Xavier — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 07:10:51 +0000

Yahoo’s a great company, as long as they stop trying to compare themselves to Google. If Icahn’s thinking of a new CEO that’ll cure their Google-obsession, then this is a brilliant move. But if it’s more of the same, the stock will go down to 4 or 5 and be stuck there like Sun has been for so long.

By: austinandrew

austinandrew — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 22:56:30 +0000

To say Icahn has a bad track record based on these two purchases isn’t saying much. Anyone who has bought into a company over the past year — Warren Buffet included — has lost money. But I would guess this is a good sign.

By: Ted Murphy

Ted Murphy — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 20:08:57 +0000

Sure, Yahoo is cheap here. Consensus for 2010 is $0.46, but I think a good CEO could triple that number in five years pretty easily.

By: Dave Mackey

Dave Mackey — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 19:07:52 +0000

Yahoo still has an amazing property and has a lot of opportunity to continue making it better. I’d say the stocks are a bargain…but then again, I don’t do stocks. :)

By: michael

michael — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 18:21:29 +0000

Bargain if a leader is brought in who can

1) focus all resources on mail, search, ads, and 3 content plays (news, sports, and finance) and kill or sell the rest really fast. 2) 100% product focused, stop the dealing and focus on what got us into this mess--- way too much product compromise and no Yahoo! application experience. 3) change the culture--- raise expectations from employees, top-down decision making, kill consensus decision making. 4) brings in new engineering talent

if the new yahoo leader does these 4 things the stock price will take care of itself.