Yahoo! Inc

Social, mobile, analytics, and cloud (or SMAC) is a disruptive technology that’s transforming the current IT environment at a rapid pace. Many technology leaders, who failed to acknowledge its importance or were slow in embracing it, are suffering. HP has been impacted by SMAC.

The mobile advertising market is expected to grow at a faster rate than the overall digital advertising market.

The company has now stopped including results from Microsoft’s Bing search engine through the Facebook search.

Yahoo! Inc. is a global technology company that provides a variety of products and services. Recently, Yahoo shares climbed higher on third-quarter earnings and revenue that beat analyst estimates.

Farallon Capital Management sold its position in Yahoo! Inc. (YHOO) during the third quarter. The stock accounted for 3.39% of the fund’s total 2Q14 portfolio.

Audience Network benefits not just Facebook, but developers too. By helping developers manage ad inventories, apps can be more readily monetized.

The online advertising industry is growing at a much faster pace. This is an exciting opportunity for advertisers and marketers around the world.

Yahoo’s other area of core business is the display advertising business. It hasn’t been performing well. In 3Q14, its revenue declined by 6% YoY.

Yahoo plans to make Tumblr similar to YouTube and is trying to convince some of Google’s top YouTube stars to make Tumblr their exclusive video distributor.

Facebook has been hiring new talent and investing heavily in improving user experience on Instagram, WhatsApp Messenger, and Messenger. Instagram is expected to churn big money for Facebook.

Initially, Facebook had posted restrictions on the content being marketed on Instagram, and this made Instagram unique on social media.

User engagement is an important parameter for Internet companies. It helps drive ad pricing. Tumblr is helping Yahoo increase its user engagement.

Tiger Global increased its stake in Vipshop Holdings (VIPS) which now accounts for 4.54% of the fund’s 1Q14 portfolio.

Yahoo (YHOO) is expected to announce its fiscal 4Q14 earnings on January 27, 2015. Yahoo had robust third quarter results. Its revenue was $1.09 billion.

Yahoo now has more than 430 million monthly mobile users—30% growth year-over-year—and more than half of Yahoo’s total monthly audience is on mobile.

Recently, Yahoo shares went higher after third quarter earnings and revenue beat analyst estimates. Third quarter profit rose to $6.77 billion.

According to a report from eMarketer, and as the chart above shows, Google has about a 31% share in the worldwide digital advertising market, followed by Facebook at ~8%.

Yahoo’s trailing P/E is almost in line with its peers but it’s below Google (GOOG), Facebook (FB), and Chinese Internet giant Baidu (BIDU).

In addition to its partnership with Paperless Post, Yahoo (YHOO) also launched contact cards in Yahoo Mail to increase user engagement.

Yahoo’s mobile search business continues to increase at a fast rate. It shows that the company’s investments in mobile are finally paying dividends.

Mozilla Firefox has a relatively smaller share of the browser market. But its decision to replace Google with Yahoo will hurt Google.

The promise of technology stocks has translated into solid deliverables with strong earnings growth.

Third Point initiated a new position in CF Industries (CF) last quarter that accounts for 3.70% in the fund’s total 1Q portfolio.

Event-driven strategy is designed to make an investment in special situations, including mergers and acquisitions, restructuring, split-offs, bankruptcy, and other major events.

Point72 Asset Management, previously SAC Capital, added to its position in Weatherford International (WFT) in 2Q 2014. The position accounts for 1.03% of the fund’s 2Q portfolio, up from 0.55% in 1Q14.

Melco’s net revenue for the second quarter of 2014 was $1.19 billion, down approximately 7% year-over-year.

Despite the slow user growth, Facebook continues to be the leading social network in terms of monthly active users.

Ctrip.com International, Ltd., or Ctrip, is a leading travel service provider of accommodation reservations, transportation ticketing, packaged tours, and corporate travel management in China.

First quarter results beat estimates despite a decline in earnings and revenue.

On November 19, 2014, Mozilla entered into a five-year strategic partnership with Yahoo (YHOO). It made Yahoo the default search engine for Firefox users in the US.

The company missed on 4Q13 earnings and revenue back in February.

According to a Bloomberg report in March, Vipshop’s Guangzhou-based share price doubled this year after surging 369% in 2013. This was the biggest advance on the Bloomberg China-U.S. Equity Index.

Viking Global Investors opened a new position in Cemex SAB de CV.

Since its inception in the early 90’s, online advertising has exponentially increased in growth.

In its latest amended filing to SEC, JAT Capital revealed it has an activist stake equal to 9.36% of the company’s shares outstanding. It upped its stake to 5.96 million shares, pushing the company’s management harder to consider strategic alternatives.

Zillow, Inc. operates the leading real estate and home-related marketplaces on mobile and the Web. Zillow reported quarterly revenue of $88.6 million, up 66% over 3Q 2013.

Orbitz net revenue rose 10% year-over-year to $248.1 million in 2Q14 as a result of higher hotel, vacation package, car, and air transaction volume.

RCAP, which has a ~$1.24 billion market cap, is an investment firm that focuses on the retail investor.

In 3Q14, BJ’s total revenues increased 9.7% to $206.5 million and net income rose 77.7% to $6.5 million.

Altisource Portfolio Solutions and its subsidiaries are a premier marketplace and transaction solutions provider for the real estate, mortgage, and consumer debt industries.

Altisource Asset Management’s primary business is to provide asset management and certain corporate governance services to institutional investors.

As of the end of 2Q14, Luxor Capital’s U.S. long portfolio was worth $5 billion, slightly down from $5.07 billion in 1Q14.

Although Google’s revenues were better than expectations, the growth still isn’t fast enough.

According to a report by the Interactive Advertising Bureau, Internet ad revenues grew 17%, to $42.8 billion, in 2013 compared with 2012, while overall TV ad spending remained stagnant.

The Netherlands-headquartered Yandex is presenting tough competition to Google Inc. (GOOG) in Russia, as search engine yandex.ru is the largest Internet search service in Russia.

On January 26, financial adviser Andy Chase told CNBC’s Mike Santoli that equity valuations are at an all-time low. Chase believes that stocks provide the strongest investment opportunity in 2017.

Facebook acquired Instagram, a photo-sharing app, in 2012 for approximately $1 billion in cash and stock.

Pinterest is expanding its self-serve advertising feature to allow advertisers to place ads without any help from advertising sales representatives.

Out of 43 analysts covering Yahoo, 26 have “buy” recommendations, none have “sell” recommendations, and 17 have “hold” recommendations on the stock.

Despite its high number of online users, Facebook keeps an eye on Tencent’s WeChat features to improve its messaging app.

On Wednesday, December 2, 2015, the stocks at the top of the SPDR S&P 500 ETF (SPY) were Avon Products (AVP), Yahoo! (YHOO), and Qualcomm (QCOM).

In this series, we’ll analyze the YTD performance of firms in the Technology, Hardware, and Storage subsector and that are a part of the Technology Select Sector SPDR ETF (XLK).

The healthcare sector rebounded on Tuesday, September 29, after being rattled the week prior.

Instagram reported its click-through rate of 1.50% for the month of August to date. This is almost double Facebook’s rate. Instagram clearly has the potential to churn out big money for Facebook.

The main objective of Alphabet is to streamline its varied businesses and focus on opportunities for new initiatives under the Google brand.

In the camcorder market, GoPro (GPRO) has the leading market share of 47.50%. It’s followed by ION, Sony (SNE), and Polaroid.

In May 2012, Facebook’s stock price was $38, and its PE ratio was 80.0 x. The ratio reached an all-time high of 7,930x, when net income dropped to $53 million that year.

IBM has in fact been decreasing the degree of its share repurchasing activity since 2014, as the number of shares outstanding is now below $1 billion.

Oracle Learning Cloud promotes social learning and contextual functions. It aims to educate users in real time with customized recommendations based on skills and job types.

Microsoft will take over the responsibility of selling ads on the Bing platform while Yahoo will continue to sell Gemini ads on its own platform.

In 4Q14, JAT Capital cut its stake in Facebook (FB). The position represented 2.58% of JAT Capital’s fourth-quarter portfolio.

Yahoo Gemini is a marketplace that combines mobile search and native advertising, helping advertisers manage and optimize their ads.

Apple’s (AAPL) Safari is the most popular browser on mobile devices, with a 44% market share.

Yahoo’s native ads generated $106 million in 4Q14, up 32% quarter-over-quarter. Revenue for 2014 of $300 million exceeded company estimates of $250 million.

IBM (IBM) intends to fuel its growth in the cloud space through the investment of billions of dollars, as well as strategic acquisitions.

In November 2014, Yahoo signed a deal with Mozilla agreeing to replace Google (GOOG) as Mozilla’s default search engine for desktop and mobile devices.

Facebook (FB) is losing lot of its teenage demographic, as teens find the social networking site more mature now and are moving to other popular sites.

Farallon Capital Management sold its position in Weyerhaeuser Co. (WY) during the third quarter. The stock accounted for 1.16% of the fund’s total 2Q14 portfolio.

Windows 10 is Microsoft’s (MSFT) latest operating system. It launched in January 2015. Its success is a key determinant of Microsoft’s platform.

During the conference call to announce its 3Q14 earnings, management mentioned that Yahoo’s products are doing well. They have new and improved features.

Yahoo (YHOO) had a 23% stake in Alibaba before the IPO. After the IPO, Yahoo retained 383 million Alibaba shares—a 15% stake in the company.

We’ll look at Yahoo’s search market business. In the third quarter, Yahoo (YHOO) generated 41% of its revenue from the search advertising business.

Farallon Capital Management increased its position in Covidien plc (COV) during the third quarter. The stock accounted for 5.06% of the fund’s total 3Q14 portfolio.

Right now, mobile advertising is witnessing healthy growth. However, it will only grow 22% in 2018. The mobile advertising market will likely be saturated by 2018.

Although Starboard only said that it has analyzed alternative structures for Yahoo, unconfirmed reports noted that the fund is expected to push for a breakup of Yahoo.

Google has maintained its leadership position in the overall digital advertising market mainly on the back of its dominance in the search advertising market.

Last week, Alibaba (BABA) became a public company in the U.S. stock exchange with its IPO (initial public offering) receiving an overwhelming response. Its stock finished its first day of trading at $93.89—up 38% from the $68 initial price that the company had set.

Point72 Asset Management, previously SAC Capital, slightly trimmed its position in Baidu (BIDU) in 2Q 2014. The position currently accounts for 0.49% of the fund’s 2Q portfolio and is down from 1.64% in 1Q14.

This will be one of the biggest IPOs in the recent history of the U.S. stock market. The IPO may value Alibaba at more than $200 billion, which would be closer to the combined market cap of eBay (EBAY) and Amazon (AMZN) at $225 billion.

Variety first reported that Google (GOOG)(GOOGL) reached a preliminary agreement to buy Twitch for $1 billion. Then Business Insider reported that Yahoo (YHOO) had also made an offer to buy Twitch.

During the last four years, SAP hasn’t made any massive job cuts. However, as the company shifts from software programming to cloud computing, workforce reduction seems inevitable.

The layoff, roughly 14% of Microsoft’s full-time workforce, is considered one of the largest in the company’s history.

Owing to the enormous digital data flow, there’s hardly any field that isn’t likely to be benefited by huge investments in “big data.”

The cloud services market is expected to grow from $47.4 billion in 2013 to $107.2 billion in 2017, at a compound annual growth rate of 23.5%.

Yahoo has failed to monetize its mobile advertising business.

In the second quarter, Yahoo’s search revenue of $428 million increased by 6%.

According to a report from eMarketer and as the previous chart shows, Yahoo’s U.S. digital display ad market revenue growth is only expected to be 2% this year.

Before the IPO, Alibaba values itself at $130 billion.

The first issue that Yahoo mentioned was the delay in execution of its Yahoo Ad Manager Plus product.

The point you need to note here is that LinkedIn expects its sales to range between $2.06 billion and $2.08 billion for full-year 2014.

We didn’t expect a 4% fall in Facebook’s stock—especially since the company has been doing well in the online advertising market.

Google generates more than 90% of its revenue from online advertising. The majority of this revenue come from search advertising.

According to a report from Adobe (ADBE) Digital Index, Google (GOOGL) has surpassed Microsoft (MSFT) in terms of U.S. browser market share.

EOG’s 1Q14 profit was up 34% to $661 million, or $1.21 per share, up from $495 million, or $0.91 per share in the year ago quarter.

Bing has managed to increase its market share from 16.9% in March 2013 to 18.6% in March 2014, and its presence on Apple devices would help it gain further market share.

Tiger Global increased its stake in Charter Communication (CHTR) which now accounts for 2.72% of the fund’s 1Q14 portfolio.

Third Point initiated a new position in Citrix Systems (CTXS) last quarter that accounts for 2.15% of the fund’s total 1Q portfolio.

Third Point initiated a new position in Roper Industries (ROP) last quarter that accounts for 2.26% in the fund’s total 1Q portfolio.

Facebook is well ahead of its direct competitors Yahoo (YHOO), Google (GOOG), and LinkedIn (LNKD) in terms of advertising growth rates, and the company only lags behind Twitter (TWTR).

The Chicago-based Orbitz Worldwide Inc. (OWW) is a global online travel company (or OTC). It recently posted a net loss for the first quarter of 2014 although its revenue grew, driven by hotel bookings.