stock leader,
Yahoo! still has its own set of financial problems. The current share price is about $16, down from over $250 at the apex of the dot com bubble.
Earnings are way off from their high of 48 cents a share in FY2000. FY2001 came in at 6 cents a share, and this year is looking like (so far, so good) a recovery to 12 cents a share, which is still down 75% from FY2000. FY2003 is currently estimated at 22 cents a share, moving in the right direction, but still way down from FY2000.
How is Yahoo! keeping their story on the "good" path? Certainly not through revenues. Revenues remain down from FY2000, mostly due to loss of advertising dollars. To their credit, they are actively diversifying and increasing revenues via user fees, which are up considerably. And further to their credit, they made a very prescient acquisition in the purchase of Hot Jobs, which has been (for the most part) accretive to earnings. But the really big thing in their financials is cost cutting, via layoffs and shedding unprofitable enterprises. So yes, management is doing well within an extremely difficult economy, but I most certainly wouldn't classify them as great. Better than some, but not great. Cash on hand is not the only measure of a firm's worth, or its abilities to profitably execute its business plan.
So, since their growth is not in the venue of message boards, rather in the area of services for fees, I still seriously doubt that they have any interest in acquiring SI (and I'm talking only the SI entity within all of INSP). That's my opinion, and it's just an opinion. Other people may speculate differently.
KJC |
