Yahoo Stores were pushed over to separate servers and rebranded Aabaco in advance of a planned spinoff. New reports do nothing to lessen the uncertainty facing merchants who remain in limbo over their stores’ fate.
Yahoo has been under pressure to sell off its core business, and Verizon has been named as a possible suitor. A rumor surfaced this week that Verizon offered $8 billion for Yahoo Core.
The news must be jarring to merchants who host (or hosted) ecommerce sites on Yahoo Stores. The company was in the process of spinning off Yahoo Stores when it abruptly nixed the spinoff in December.
The New York Post said it heard Yahoo has ignored proposals from at least one private equity firm and heard a rumor that Verizon had “already put a very generous $8 billion bid on the table for core Yahoo! assets.”
Responding to the story, Citi Research’s Michael Rollins said he estimates Yahoo will generate gross revenue of $4.6 billion – or $3.7 billion net of traffic acquisition costs. And he explained Yahoo’s attraction for Verizon: “We continue to believe Verizon may be acquisitive, especially within the Media category where it is trying to expand its scale of eyeballs to boost advertising inventory and its media monetization engine.”
Verizon acquired AOL last summer.
Whatever the Yahoo board decides to do, merchants who host their sites through the company are surely hoping it does it quickly.
