What to do with Yahoo? Last night Carol Bartz was due to present her first set of quarterly results as chief executive. In January, she inherited a company reliant on advertising in the depths of recession. Attempts to restructure by her predecessor Jerry Yang had largely come to naught. Meanwhile, the share price languishes at less than half the $31 Microsoft was prepared to bid last year.
First, Yahoo needs to keep shrinking. In spite of two rounds of redundancies, more costs need to come out, with unprofitable units binned. Even though revenues stagnated last year, the group continued to add staff up until the third quarter of 2008.
Second is a decision on Yahoo's Asian assets. Last week Yahoo sold a 10 per cent stake in South Korea's Gmarket for $120m as part of its purchase by Ebay. But the urge to dispose of Yahoo Japan and Chinese online marketplace Alibaba should be resisted. Both fit well with Yahoo's core business, and this would be a poor time to sell. Bernstein estimate that the stronger dollar and weakness in the Chinese economy has cut the value of the two by 13 per cent to $7.7bn, or $5.53 per share.