Valley Chai

apart from $29, there isn’t much of a difference between JPMorgan’s opportunism against bear sterns and microsoft’s offer to buy out yahoo. both are examples of a stronger company eating up the weaker ones when the times are tough. like some ballers say, it is what it is, and it did what it do.

take a long & hard look at yahoo’s latest SEC’s filing. i am not stud at understanding this deck, much less someone that can critique. but the following strikes quite stunning.

• yahoo’s world rotates around third-party brand-name publishers. yeah throw in a bit of user-generated-content (UGC for insiders), if you will.
• and then it revolves around it’s search and display centers of gravity.
• everything else inside the company is simply an accessory. what about communications platforms? what about local markets & listings, fee-based services like search submit, yahoo! premium mail, small business services..? video? scary how much of this is non-critical low-leverage drag on the company.

and then..

• the potential upside is clear and present, and it’s there for the taking. but have the exec team shown that this time, it really is going to be different? may be something more than a whimper should’ve came out of the 100-day plan, and wouldn’t have been here.
• on the other hand, google’s potential and upside has already been taken off the table! just look at penetration of search and RPS upside potential for google. recent mis-steps at improving the monetization show that the easy pickings are long gone for the giant, even with the efforts of a brainy thousand(s) engineers dedicated to search monetization.
• as long as the firehose that is yahoo.com is gushing user linkoffs, there will always be a math that will work, and yahoo will always be the prized scalp.

notwithstanding this sharp focus on a few fat slivers of this organization, i am still impressed at how the math was put together. glad this deck crossed out from the yahoo event horizon. now we need everybody cool, everybody calm, NOW!