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back to article $350m! shaved! off! sale! price! as! Verizon! swallows! Yahoo!

Yahoo! will be gobbled by Verizon for $4.48bn, $350m cheaper than the initial deal, apparently due to the damage done to the company's value by widely reported successful cyber-attacks. Verizon slashed its acquisition offer in the wake of Yahoo! confessing to cyber-attacks, and the companies will now share the liability for …

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  1. creepy gecko
    Meh

    I expected a bigger price-drop...

    ...than $350m. Verizon obviously see more in Yahoo! than I do.

    I wonder if there are any more Yahoo! data breaches to look forward to? Surely just a matter of time?

    13 0 Reply
    1. MrDamage Silver badge
      Reply Icon

      Re: I expected a bigger price-drop...

      Proof Verizon is run by reptiles.

      They seem to have a fascination with "tree-fiddy".

      I'll get my coat.

      3 0 Reply
    2. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: I expected a bigger price-drop...

      Does it even matter if more data breaches have occurred. The current ones already cover everyone :)

      0 0 Reply
  2. CAPS LOCK

    Verizon must see something I don't...

    ... where's the value in a weak news site and a lot of mail freeloaders?

    9 0 Reply
    1. James 51
      Reply Icon

      Re: Verizon must see something I don't...

      When deals like this don't make sense you need to look at bonus conditions and tax structures. If the answer isn't one it's ususally the other (or sometimes both).

      7 0 Reply
    2. Andy Non Silver badge
      Reply Icon

      Re: Verizon must see something I don't...

      If the mail freeloaders are all like me (I had half a dozen or so Yahoo email accounts and haven't used any of them for several years now) then Verizon are buying something that is long since dead and buried. Haven't used Yahoo search for nearly twenty years and as for their news and other websites - do they still exist?

      4 0 Reply
      1. Mage Silver badge
        Reply Icon

        Re: Verizon must see something I don't...

        Yahoo Groups are still a thing.

        The senior people of each live group (and Google's) ought to migrate to proper forum sw, phpBB isn't bad for free and most groups are low enough traffic for cheap linux hosting.

        1 0 Reply
  3. John Sager

    Can we finally get rid of the bangs. Please

    That joke wore out for me about a decade ago.

    3 11 Reply
    1. Gene Cash Silver badge
      Reply Icon

      Re: Can we finally get rid of the bangs. Please

      Yahoo is a joke that wore out over a decade ago...

      14 0 Reply
  4. Ron1

    Is this supposed to be a good deal for Yahoo! stockholders?

    Back in 2008 Microsoft offered roughly $45B to buy Yahoo, 62% over market value. Half in cash, half in MS shares. Since MS shares rose roughly 3 times in 9 years since, the offer if taken would be worth more than $80B today.

    Yahoo share price in 2008 was $20, today it's $45.

    Yahoo market cap today is $43B.

    So, how come the sale to Verizon for 10% of market cap is a good deal?

    What am I missing here?

    The value of the deal to shareholders is twenty times less than the deal from MS they declined in 2008...

    Hope the shareholders are happy for declining to sell to MS back then :-)

    5 0 Reply
    1. ARGO
      Reply Icon

      Re: Is this supposed to be a good deal for Yahoo! stockholders?

      >What am I missing here?

      That various shareholdings in Asia are not part of the sale and acocunt for most of Yahoo's market cap

      6 0 Reply
      1. ratfox
        Reply Icon

        Re: Is this supposed to be a good deal for Yahoo! stockholders?

        >What am I missing here?

        That various shareholdings in Asia are not part of the sale and account for most of Yahoo's market cap

        In fact, for quite a while, the shareholdings in Asia (Alibaba & Yahoo Japan) were worth more than Yahoo! 's market cap. Verizon is paying over $4bn for something which the market considers to have a negative value.

        The only reason this makes sense is that there is a tax issue stopping Yahoo! from selling off all their Asian holdings and giving the cash straight to their shareholders. They wanted to do it, but the IRS warned they might be taxed, so they decided to sell Yahoo! proper instead.

        5 0 Reply
    2. Andy Non Silver badge
      Reply Icon

      Re: Is this supposed to be a good deal for Yahoo! stockholders?

      So, how come the sale to Verizon for 10% of market cap is a good deal?

      Give it another ten years and Yahoo would be worth about the same as a 3 1/2" floppy disk.

      4 0 Reply
    3. jake Silver badge
      Reply Icon

      Re: Is this supposed to be a good deal for Yahoo! stockholders?

      Who the fuck cares about market cap? That's just paper.

      Real values, like P/E and PEG suggest "Run away! Run away!"

      Verizon's buying a pig in a poke. Probably, as pointed out above, for tax reasons.

      1 0 Reply
      1. wayward4now
        Reply Icon
        Mushroom

        Re: Is this supposed to be a good deal for Yahoo! stockholders?

        "Verizon's buying a pig in a poke. Probably, as pointed out above, for tax reasons." Meanwhile I get no deal on my Verizon plan. Time to switch away from these dumb bastards.

        0 0 Reply
  5. Pascal Monett Silver badge
    Flame

    "widely reported successful cyber-attacks"

    are apparently not worth more than a mere 10% off.

    No wonder nobody gives a flying fig about security.

    4 0 Reply
  6. naive

    Statler and Waldorf

    Many comments about Yahoo remind me about the characters mentioned in the subject.

    Yahoo was attacked by a state party. Given the world wide presence of Yahoo, it will probably be a repressive and nosy regime who did this. It is an unequal battle if a state starts attacking a company, its resources exceeds those of most companies by large.

    Still using yahoo, anyone can, and ultimately will, experience information leaks at some point in time.

    0 2 Reply
    1. MrDamage Silver badge
      Reply Icon

      Re: Statler and Waldorf

      > "Yahoo was attacked by a state party. Given the world wide presence of Yahoo, it will probably be a repressive and nosy regime who did this."

      The NSA was already tapping their comms, so why would they need to attack them as well?

      4 0 Reply
    2. C Montgomery Burns
      Reply Icon

      Re: Statler and Waldorf

      "Yahoo was attacked by a state party. "

      Says who? Yahoo? That's just lawyer-cushioning against class-actions.

      2 0 Reply
  7. Planty Bronze badge
    FAIL

    Friends Reunited

    feels like the time ITV bought that. You just look on bewilderment, wondering how out of touch these companies are.

    2 1 Reply
  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Responsibility and liability

    "Yahoo! will retain its responsibility for liabilities from shareholder lawsuits and Securities and Exchange Commission investigations...."

    .... what about Marissa?

    0 0 Reply
    1. jake Silver badge
      Reply Icon

      Re: Responsibility and liability

      Marissa's the one diving out the back. You'll see her when her 'chute opens. It's gold.

      Yahoo will continue on, pilotless, to crash & burn in the vast swamps of Verizon.

      1 0 Reply
  9. Florida1920
    Facepalm

    Verizon, one buy away from the Fail Trifecta

    They have AOL and Yahoo! Who's next?

    0 0 Reply
    1. jake Silver badge
      Reply Icon

      Re: Verizon, one buy away from the Fail Trifecta

      I'm fairly certain that Who's Next is still selling quite nicely ... The album was hardly a failure, anyway ;-)

      1 0 Reply
    2. CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge
      Reply Icon

      Re: Verizon, one buy away from the Fail Trifecta

      They have AOL and Yahoo! Who's next?

      Uber? The business models will at least be familiar..

      0 0 Reply
  10. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Now we know the real price of privacy...

    One billion hacked over and over ... Fuckheads!

    1 0 Reply

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