Zeebiz Bureau
San Francisco: Yahoo has completed a long-awaited USD 7.6 billion deal with China's Alibaba Group, generating a windfall that could help ease the pain of Yahoo shareholders who have endured the company's foibles during the past few years.
After Yahoo distributes most of the proceeds to its shareholders, its recently hired CEO Marissa Mayer will still have an extra USD 1.3 billion to finance acquisitions or hire new talent as she tries revive the company's revenue growth.
Tuesday's resolution comes four months after Yahoo Inc. and Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. outlined the details of a complex transaction that took more than two years of on-again, off-again negotiations to hammer out. The deal will give Alibaba greater autonomy as it prepares to pursue an initial public offering of stock within the next three years, while rewarding Yahoo for one of the few moves that has gone right for the troubled company in the past few years.
Yahoo paid USD 1 billion for a 40 percent stake in Alibaba in 2005 and is now reaping a huge return. Alibaba is paying USD 7.1 billion in cash and stock to buy back half of Yahoo's holdings. Another USD 550 million is being paid to Yahoo under a revised technology and patent licensing agreement with Alibaba.
After paying taxes, Yahoo estimates it will pocket about USD 4.3 billion to supplement the USD 1.9 billion in cash the company had as of June 30.
Yahoo, which is based in Sunnyvale, Calif., plans to spend about USD 3 billion of the Alibaba proceeds buying back its own stock in the upcoming months, leaving Mayer with some financial flexibility to pay for other items on her turnaround agenda.
Alibaba currently has a market value of about USD 40 billion, based on the prices paid for the stock that the company recently sold to raise enough money to finance the Yahoo deal. Yahoo, in contrast, has a market value of less than USD 20 billion.
With Agency Inputs
