Under pressure, once again, from Starboard following the abandonment of its plan to spin off its huge stake in Alibaba(BABA), Yahoo(YHOO) has formed an independent committee of its Board Of Directors to explore strategic alternatives. The Board has formed a Strategic Review Committee of independent directors to lead this effort, with the assistance and support of management. The… Read More »
After fighting to push forward with a spinoff of its Alibaba(BABA) stake as Aabaco Holdings since the IRS first indicated its opposition in May, Yahoo(YHOO) and its embattled CEO Marissa Mayer have finally thrown in the towel. After days of intense speculation, the company announced this morning that the Board, “after careful review and consideration of how to… Read More »
Verizon(VZ) is a proto-spinoff. At its core rest two of the original baby bells, Bell Atlantic and NYNEX, although it didn’t take on the Verizon moniker until after its merger with GTE(as part of that merger, GTE spun off Genuity). Verizon later purchased other spinoff related companies such as Alltel, which had spun off its wireline business into… Read More »
The unprecedented number of spins this week has kept the folks at S&P working overtime making changes to their indexes. Last week, AOL(AOL), a spinoff of Time Warner(TWX) was acquired by Verizon(VZ), a conglomeration of several spinoffs of the original AT&T(T). As a result, Casey’s General Stores(CASY) will move from the S&P SmallCap 600 to take its spot in… Read More »
The M&A market remains hot and the latest billion dollar deal is Verizon’s(VZ) proposed $4.4 billion takeover of AOL Inc. (AOL). The deal expands Verizon’s video and advertising ambitions while also providing AOL a larger platform to compete against the big boys in the space such as Google (GOOG). The WSJ has a nice piece laying out the possible… Read More »
Time Warner(TWX) is no stranger to spinoffs. The company once known as AOL Time Warner lost the AOL(AOL) in what has proven to be a successful spin- much more successful, certainly, than the disastrous merger, perhaps the worst in American history, which brought the two firms together. Earlier in 2009, the company spun off Time Warner Cable(TWC). And… Read More »
Tim Armstrong, CEO of AOL (AOL), recently sat down with Business Insider’s Henry Blodget for a little chat and self-congratulations. I think he must have had his arm checked out post-interview after patting himself on the back so much for his performance in unraveling one of the ‘worst mergers in history’. To be fair, Mr. Armstrong certainly deserves… Read More »
Remember dial up internet? Remember Juno and NetZero? United Online(UNTD) owns both brands and continues to generate cash flow from its legacy dial up business, though it continues to decline. The company has used this cash to pay a nearly 10% dividend, and to diversify its revenue stream by acquiring other businesses. Yesterday, United decided it was time… Read More »
With the announcement last week that News Corp.(NWSA) would be spinning off its publishing business, analysts have been looking for copycat transactions to propose. It was inevitable that some of them would turn their attention to Time Warner(TWX), and, indeed Jeanine Poggi reports at AdAge that Pivotal Research analyst Brian Wieser renewed the calls for a Time Inc.… Read More »
Amidst the current carnage, it feels a bit disingenuous singling out one or two individual stocks for poor performance, but some spin-offs have taken quite a beating recently. Just prior to the increase in market ‘volatility’, nursing home operator and health care REIT stocks nose-dived because the CMS announced a harsher than expected (11.1%) cut in Medicare reimbursement… Read More »