Yahoo! Inc. (YHOO) Acquires Evntlive

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Yahoo Inc. (YHOO) recently announced that it has acquired Evntlive, an online platform for live concerts. The financial details of the deal have not been made public.

California-based Evntlive was founded in 2012 and launched its beta version in Apr 2012. The company allows viewers to stream live concerts and events on their computer, tablet and other mobile devices.

Per the deal, Evntlive will shut down its existing service and its team will join Yahoo’s video unit to work on Yahoo Screen and Yahoo Music. With this acquisition, Yahoo! seems to continue with its strategy of refocusing its offerings on its video business. As a means of achieving the aforesaid target, it is acquiring small firms with some strategic value.

According to a comScore report, as of Aug 2013, Google’s (GOOG) YouTube topped the list with 167.0 million unique viewers, followed by AOL, Inc. with 71.2 million. Facebook (FB) has 62.2 million unique viewers while Yahoo has 45.0 million. Yahoo still has some way to go in this segment. The acquisition could strengthen Yahoo’s position and extend its reach, which could increase its position among advertisers.

With this acquisition, Yahoo! has taken its year-to-date acquisition tally to 25. The company acquired microblogging platform Tumblr in June, followed by the acquisition of mobile advertising specialist AdMovate a month later. It recently acquired natural language processing firm, SkyPhrase, and mobile photo and video editing app Ptch.

In the third quarter of 2013 alone, Yahoo purchased eight companies, including Lexity, Rockmelt and Xobni, with the net cash impact of those purchases totaling $163 million.

Yahoo’s search business continues to show signs of improvement, even in the face of tough competition from Facebook, Google and Microsoft (MSFT). Currently, Yahoo has a huge task at hand, which is to retain and add to its user base and make them spend more time on its properties. This would play an important role in bringing back advertisers as well.

However, the inability to protect user information could damage its reputation and affect credibility, thus slowing down financial growth and pulling down stock prices.

Currently, Yahoo has a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold).

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