Yahoo’s drawn out sale is now in its final stages.According to a prominent Yahoo investor, final bids are due July 18 2016.
The stumbling internet titan put itself up for sale in February, starting a secretive but closely watched auction process that has dragged on for more than five months. The time it’s taken to bring Yahoo to the point of sale reflects the firm’s multiple assets, including the core internet business, real estate and patents, said Mizuho Securities senior analyst Neil Doshi.
“There are just more moving parts,” Doshi said. “Different people were probably bidding on different classes of assets.”
Rumour has it that Verizon is the leading suitor, and AT&T as another bidder, along with a group including Quicken Loans founder Dan Gilbert and backed by Berkshire Hathaway Chairman Warren Buffett.Other offers, which round out a shortlist of close to 10 bidders, have come mostly from private equity firms, reports based on anonymous sources have suggested.
Yahoo in April announced its first-quarter revenue had fallen 18 percent, to $859 million, the biggest quarterly drop since CEO Marissa Mayer was hired in 2012, and that it had suffered a $99 million quarterly loss. Despite spending billions of dollars buying numerous companies, hiring A-list media personalities, and shifting the focus to high-growth areas like mobile and video, Yahoo’s core Internet advertising business has continued to lose ground to Google and Facebook
