Stock price when the opinion was issued
From a sum of the parts basis, this is undervalued. The risk is that you have to be careful of Chinese companies. The primary value in this company is there shareholding in Ali Baba (BABA-N). There is a lot of great growth in China, but Ali Baba does not pay a dividend. If something bad happens in China, the primary determinant in this stock is going to get hit.
There are still reasons to hang onto this. Their Internet business is being sold to Verizon. What you have left is the stub, which is basically a holding company of Ali Baba (BABA-N) and Yahoo Japan. Looking at the current price of Ali Baba, and multiply it times the number of shares that Yahoo owns, the Yahoo price is below its holdings.
The company is planning a Dutch auction, offering to buy back $3 billion worth of stock. Currently they have slightly negative to sort of low single digit growth, and at the same time they are asking for a multiple year. This is not a bad exit point. There are probably better spaces to be in at this time.
Yahoo (YHOO-Q) versus Google (GOOG-Q)? Google has 60%-70% plus of market share in terms of Search and is clearly the dominant player in the space. On ad based revenue growth, they been able to grow and currently have a new “enhanced campaign” for targeted marketing. Yahoo is getting beaten out by Google. If you want to play search, growth in mobile and ad revenues, Google is the one to play.