Yahoo released a new letter this morning saying that the board is confident that shareholders will see that it is not a good idea to vote for an activist “slate” that Daniel Loeb and Third Point are pushing for. This whole debacle began after Yahoo blocked Loeb from joining the board of directors.
Here is what part of the letter to shareholders said regarding blocking the Third Point intervention: “We are confident that when you assess our new board’s qualifications against Third Point’s slate, you will come to the same conclusion that we did—that this is the right board with the right mix of skills and experience to lead the company forward to create value for shareholders,” the new letter says. “We also recognize that we have a great deal of work to do to support and challenge the management team to move the company forward fast” (WSJ Deal Journal).
According to David Benoit of the Wall Street Journal, both sides are now promoting their point of view with different websites. The board of directors set up yahooforward.com to show people what is going on and what progress is being made by the board and CEO Scott Thompson. Then on the other hand, we have Loeb’s site valueyahoo.com. Ultimately, it will come down to a shareholder vote but it is interesting how both sides are essentially campaigning to get shareholders’ approval.
Yahoo does need a shakeup though. If you look at a chart of Yahoo’s market share you will see that the company went from a $55 billion market cap in January 2006 to $20 billion in January 2012. In the last six years Yahoo has lost $35 billion in its market cap which is unacceptable. What is even more pathetic is that as of April 2012, Yahoo’s market cap is now $18.8 billion. Not to mention, revenue growth is below zero. In fact, the revenue growth for Yahoo in January 2012 sits at -13.20%.
Yahoo is under fire as rivals Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) and Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) have more popular search engine destinations in Google Search and Bing. This traffic rerouting is having a considerable affect on Yahoo as I was mentioning earlier and quite frankly, if you are a shareholder, I am not sure how you could continue to support the current board of directors and CEO. Its easy from them to sit there and list off all their accomplishments but at the end of the day when you lose $35 billion in market cap during a six year period, you are unfit to lead.
*All revenue growth/market cap data came from the SEC, click on hyperlink to see more statistics
