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http*//www.thestreet.com/_yahoo/tech/georgemannes/10078443.html
Also, this news caused Overture to regain its lost stock value from the Soundview Report.
Looks like Yahoo may be trying entrench as much as possible before MSN breaks into the market.
A recap of the article:
Yahoo!'s late-night announcement Thursday that it had priced $750 million in convertible bonds.
A Yahoo! spokeswoman acknowledged Friday morning that the money could be used for "future potential acquisitions," but declined to be more specific about potential targets, such as Overture. "We don't speculate on [mergers and acquisition] activity," she said.
Shak
My question is, Would they need that much cash to buy espotting?
With "$1.5 billion in cash on hand and generated $221 million in free cash flow in 2002" I wouldn't think they would need to raise an additional $750 to buy espotting.
They might aquire other companies or tech's to boost these services even more.
Search is just part of Yahoo's plan. I can't see them blowing a large chunk of that money on Overture.
However, It's a valid idea, buying out Overture would be much faster than building PPC from the ground up, and Overture comes with its own customer base.. plus Yahoo has been spending a lot of time and money on the search sector recently, it also falls in line with getting its duck in a row before MSN hits the market.
MSN has the time, money and engineers to create its own PPC without having to worry about an initial user base, Yahoo doesn't have that luxury.
I don't think they would allow FAST to power other portals when Yahoo wants to market their own. Those engines need a lot of work and with work on Inktomi, that's a lot of wasted time and money for juggling three crawler-based search engines.
Yahoo traffic converts. If they start their own PPC i'm sure they won't have any trouble grabbing a user base in no time. They could be testing out something while keeping their Overture contract.
This industry is full of surprises so who knows.
Ask, Inc?
Exactly. That would be three independant, fully developed search engines, with lots of staff on board.
A truly funny thing however would be for Yahoo to buy the OV package just so that MSN can't. Now that would leave MS pretty much out in the cold, with the only option to try and get Google.
>Search is just part of Yahoo's plan
True. But it's the part that brought them out of the red.
(Added)
"Certainly, Overture is playing a major role in Yahoo!'s revenue recovery this past year. Yahoo!'s sponsored search revenue, derived primarily from the company's relationship with Overture, will grow from $131 million in 2002 to as much as $240 million in 2003, according to Yahoo!."
-- Thats easy to say, and do, when it is all your money to begin with.
Yahoo buys up Overture... and all the new toys. It makes sense ladies and gents, 'cause to replace Google-powered SERPS, you're gonna need a big index. Last I checked, OAF had access to one.
Espotting is likely although with only a Euro presence and privately held i would think $750m would be a lot of money for that and as such very very unlikely.
OVER is NO chance as Yahoo would need billions to take them out and they did not raise that much.
It sure has made this sector interesting with the consolidation going on but i personally think the target is in search and its not FWHT or ASKJ also.
