The company logo is displayed at Yahoo headquarters in Sunnyvale, Calif., Wednesday, Jan. 4, 2012. Yahoo Inc., confirmed Wednesday, Jan. 4, 2012, it has picked PayPal chief Scott Thompson as its next CEO. (AP Photo/Paul Sakuma)
Today: What will Yahoo's (YHOO) hiring of PayPal President Scott Thompson mean for the company, its possible sale and Thompson's former company, eBay (EBAY)? Also: Netflix (NFLX) stock has a huge day after the company announces its streaming volume for last quarter, and Apple (AAPL) steals and Adobe (ADBE) executive.
Analysts sound off on effects of Yahoo's CEO hire
Yahoo announced Wednesday that PayPal President Scott Thompson will be its new CEO, ending the search for Carol Bartz's replacement after nearly four months.
The announcement
did little, however, to answer the two main questions about the Sunnyvale-based Internet company: What will the company do to reverse its diminishing returns, and will it sell all or part of the company? Instead, it opened another question for Silicon Valley: Will eBay, PayPal's parent company, be hurt by the loss of Thompson?Analysts said that Thompson's background as a technologist -- he was chief technology officer at PayPal before being promoted in January 2008, and was executive vice president of technology solutions at Inovant, a subsidiary of Visa, before moving there -- did not suggest that he was skilled at Yahoo's core media and display-advertising business, nor preppared to turn around such a large and struggling company.
"Payments and ads are not the same thing," BGC Partners analyst Colin Gillis told the Associated Press.
Ken Sena, an analyst at Evercore, told Bloomberg News that it was "a surprising choice," explaining that "at a content company, which Yahoo has increasingly become, his experience is kind of lacking."
However, Charlene Li, founder of the Altimeter Group, told the New York Times that Thompson's lack of media experience would not matter if he could connect with advertisers.
"It's not about putting up pretty content, but about maximizing the value of the eyeballs in front of that content," she said. "There's a real opportunity for him at Yahoo, if they can take all this data and use it for advertisers."
Roy Bostock, Yahoo's chairman, agreed that Thompson will need to focus on advertising to be successful.
Thompson "knows how to reach out to customers, find out what they need and what they want, and he will do that with our advertisers," Bostock said in a conference call with investors and journalists Wednesday.
Bostock also told listeners that Yahoo continues to explore selling all or part of the company, saying, "Whatever alternatives we are looking at as part of our comprehensive review, there will be no slowdown and no delay in our process."
However, analysts contend that Thompson's hiring will stand in the way of Yahoo selling the entire company to any interested buyer.
"Hiring a new CEO makes the sale of the whole company unlikely," Brett Harriss, an analyst at Gabelli & Co., told Bloomberg.
Yahoo will also not be taken private, Bostock said in the conference call.
As for Thompson's former employer, eBay CEO John Donahoe, said in an email to employees that it was "a shock" to him when Thompson told him Tuesday he was leaving for Yahoo. However, he said that PayPal "will not slow down," and he will take over managing the eBay division in the interim.
Thompson built PayPal into one of eBay's most profitable divisions, overseeing a doubling of both users and revenue over the past four years. However, one analyst said eBay will not miss a beat.
"PayPal has a strong bench. Over the past 2-3 years, PayPal has hired a number of key executives and we believe could hire a new president from within the existing ranks in addition to the option of looking externally," Sebastian Colin, an analyst with Baird Equity Research, wrote in a research note.
Thompson, meanwhile, is focused on Yahoo and its future, telling Mercury News staff writer Brandon Bailey in an interview Wednesday that "the goal is to put Yahoo in a position to grow its business and have the future be bright."
Yahoo stock ended the day down 3.1 percent, while eBay declined 3.8 percent.
Netflix shares spike 11 percent after streaming volume revealed
Netflix stock soared Wednesday, even as most of the market was standing still.
The Los Gatos streaming-video and DVD-by-mail company saw its stock rise by more than 11 percent after announcing that customers had watched more than 2 billion hours of streaming content in the fourth quarter of 2011. That averages out to about 100 hours per customer in just three months.
BTIG media analyst Rich Greenfield extrapolated that data and reported that Netflix would be the second-most-watched "network" in homes that had a subscription, trailing only broadcast champion CBS, Business Insider reported. Even if his numbers are a little off, Greenfield said, Netflix would still get more eyeballs in subscribers' homes than any cable network.
Netflix stock jumped after the news, then kept rising through afternoon trading, closing at $80.45, an increase of $8.21, or 11.4 percent. Netflix shares have now increased 21.2 percent since Dec. 5.
Apple's struggling mobile-advertising division gets new boss
Yahoo wasn't the only Valley company shopping for a new executive in its neighbors' offices: Apple reportedly poached a new leader from San Jose's Adobe Systems.
Bloomberg News reported Wednesday that Todd Teresi, vice president of Adobe's media solutions group, is already running Apple's struggling mobile-advertising unit, iAd.
Mobile advertising became a billion-dollar business for the first time in 2011, eMarketer reported in October, but Apple's share of the market reportedly decreased. Research firm IDC reported that Apple fell from a tie for first place in the industry in 2010 to third in 2011, behind Google (GOOG) and Millenial Media. iAd had even been cutting prices to keep customers, Bloomberg reported.
Apple stock increased 0.5 percent Wednesday, Adobe decreased 1 percent.
Silicon Valley tech stocks
Up: Netflix, SunPower (SPWRA), Intel (INTC), Cisco (CSCO), Nvidia, Oracle (ORCL), Apple, Google
Down: Jive, Electronic Arts (ERTS), LinkedIn, eBay, Yahoo, Zynga, Juniper, Tesla, Adobe
The tech-heavy Nasdaq composite index: Down 0.36, or 0.01 percent, to 2,648.36
The blue chip Dow Jones industrial average: Up 21.04, or 0.17 percent, to 12,418.42
And the widely watched Standard & Poor's 500 index: Up 0.24, or 0.02 percent, to 1,277.30
Check in weekday afternoons for the 60-Second Business Break, a summary of news from Mercury News staff writers, the Associated Press, Bloomberg News and other wire services. Contact Jeremy C. Owens at 408-920-5876; follow him at Twitter.com/mercbizbreak.
Source: http://c.moreover.com/click/here.pl?r5701130110&f=378
music awards giants eagles bcs rankings week 13 bcs rankings week 13 philadelphia marathon rhodes scholar cranberry sauce recipe
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.