In an emailed statement, a Yahoo spokeswoman said that because the company filed its request with the IRS earlier this year, it does not expect any changes the agency makes to affect its spinoff plan.
“Yahoo understands that the IRS’s statement is not specific to Yahoo’s planned Q4 2015 spin-off of its remaining stake in Alibaba Group and Yahoo Small Business, reflects no change in applicable law, and does not affect previously filed ruling request,” the spokeswoman said.
Earlier this week,Yahoo CEO Marrissa Mayer spoke about the planned spinoff of its stake in Alibaba(BABA) together with its small business unit:
Appearing at an event organized by J.P. Morgan on Monday, Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer said there is still “a lot of work to do” to ensure the spinoff goes as planned.
“There’s the legal and regulatory work-stream and then there’s the act of actually separating out Yahoo Small Business into a separate entity and a separate company,” Ms. Mayer said, according to a transcript of her comments. “Things are on track, but there’s a lot of people at Yahoo who are working very hard to make sure that we are able to set up the entity and get it trading in [the fourth quarter] the way that we would like.”
Unspoken is that even if this spinoff is unaffected by the IRS ruling, this will have a negative impact on the company’s ability to monetize its valuable Yahoo Japan stake.
Yahoo stock is up nearly 3% in premarket trading.
Disclosure: The author holds shares in Yahoo