I am following MSFT. I almost bought it the day before the deal was announced. Lucky break. ;)
I am very conflicted about the deal.
From one point of view, MSFT would get some very valuable properties: Yahoo portal is still one of the top Internet sites, I am (and a lot of other people too I guess) still using Yahoo Finance and Mail, Flickr is a top property (that I hate, but a lot of people love), Yahoo Asian connections/stakes are apparently highly valued.
On the other hand, I am not sure how much of these properties would be destroyed by MSFT ownership. There is no point for MSFT to have two email platforms, so Yahoo mail has to go or get converted into MSN/Hotmail. Portal may or may not stay depending on politics. Finance - same. Flickr is the only one guaranteed to stay if MSFT is not totally idiotic. I don't know much about the Yahoo "back end" solutions, such as ad sales platform and such and how much they are valuable and whether they will stay or get canned.
So, IMHO, MSFT gets quite a bit, but the price tag is very high too. My bet is that they are overpaying. Still that does not answer the question if MSFT stock is a good value or not. Unfortunately, valuing MSFT recently was a tough exercise anyway IMO. It seemed undervalued, but market is totally set against Mr Softie and perhaps they are somewhat right. On the other hand, this MAY be the historic opportunity to buy MSFT cheap. I missed such opportunities with ADBE and ORCL and look where they are now... So I think I will hold my tiny MSFT position and not do anything... Unless the stock falls to $25 or something.
Nice number grab BTW. ;) |
