Vice President :
That's true. But is Marissa Slayer to be blamed for this mess?

Student :
Oh Marissa Slayer, the super start CEO brought in from Google to run Yahoo! But why did it sell? Yahoo grew exponentially in the 1990’s. The company's revenue kept growing in the last decade, too.

Senior Management :
Yes, the revenues had peaked in 2008 but post that - things have been downward! Both revenues and operating margins declined. In 2014, the revenues were down 40%, and profits were $0!

Vice President :
No wonders, the unlucky CEO who came in 2012 dealt with a bad hat. When I look at the share value, only about 10% comes from its operating business. The remaining comes from assets: Yahoo has about 50 different web properties (most of them are websites) and a few other IPRs.

Senior Management :
Perhaps 10% is a big number. It may be lesser than that. Because in the previous 15 years, Yahoo had made two great investments outside its operating business. One investment was in Yahoo Japan, and for some reason, the Japanese still seem to like the Yahoo search engine, and Yahoo owns 35% of Yahoo Japan, and the other one was a billion dollar investment in Alibaba, a then very young Chinese online retail/advertising company.

Student :
True. The Chinese and Japanese don't seem to like Google very much. But importantly: those investments have paid off big time, why is she then unlucky?

Vice President :
Marissa, like other executives, can't be judged on the basis of investments, but on operating business. She effectively only controls the limited scope of Yahoo's operations. More than 90% of Yahoo's value is not under her control.

Analyst :
And, I do not see what she could have done differently. We discussed technology companies earlier. They age in dog years. Tech companies grow much faster than non-tech companies, their maturity phase doesn't last as long. When they decline, it is precipitous. A classic example of this is BlackBerry, it grew dramatically in the first part of the last decade and just as quickly seems to be on the verge of disappearing.

Vice President :
What you're saying is only partly right. Why don't we see Apple?

Senior Management :
As a tech company, it's tough to turn this life cycle around. I know you can bring out exceptions and the two companies that usually come to the mind is IBM in the early 1990’s and Apple under Steve Jobs; those are the exceptions, and their success cannot be used as an indicator to other tech companies can pull off exactly like this. I believe that both the companies not only benefited from exceptional CEO's but by the confluence of circumstances - some coming from their competition and some from macro variables helped them in their turn around.

Analyst :
Yes, the CEO's alone can't do it! The odds were against her, right since the beginning. You'd always find people saying she wasn't bold enough. An article in the New York Times even suggested that only if Mayer had taken big risky bets, then she might have succeeded.

Senior Management :
I find those words unfortunate for a CEO of a publicly traded company. Firstly, it's not her farm. And reading the 90%-10% breakdown above, I'd say - she was given just the farmhouse and not the farm.

Analyst :
Precisely. Taking these long bets could be a good strategy for a startup who has nothing to lose, but Yahoo had a lot to lose.

Student :
Is it so? Maybe because this did not lead to success, or maybe because I have the Steve Jobs syndrome, I feel taking big bets is the only way to turn around a tech company. To be the next Steve jobs, to take your company from $10 million to $600 billion, you have to do what he did, that is to make big bets even if the odds are low.

Senior Management :
Kid, take a step back. Be practical. If it pays off then, you become a celebrity CEO - the next Steve Jobs. But if it doesn't, your shareholders are left holding the empty bag. On a street corner. It's not a great trade-off.

Analyst :
I think the kind of CEO a dying company needs is Danny Devido playing Larry the liquidator with the people's money.

Student :
I don't get the reference. I haven't watched the movie you're referring to. What are you trying to say?

Senior Management :
He's saying it's now the time to fold your cards. They've dealt with a bad hat and folding the cards - means liquidating the operating business was the best option.

Student :
Okay, I'm sure a company like Microsoft would value it if Yahoo talks about the number of users.

Analyst :
Absolutely, in spite of its decline in the last decade Yahoo has a billion users, and more than 250 million people use Yahoo mail.

Student :
If not Microsoft, then maybe they could have sold it to someone who has the Steve Jobs syndrome. Somebody who has big ambitions, and wants to be a celebrity CEO. Somebody who can take the shareholders money and bet on it.

Analyst :
Oh dear, we've already established that. Let's analyse the next step: the company is like a mutual fund, with two big investments. One in Yahoo Japan and one in Alibaba. What can it do to revive?

Vice President :
THe first thought that comes to my mind is: Why not liquidate those as well?

Analyst :
Good lord! Because there are tax consequences. In this case, you might be better off, and the shareholders will be better off leaving the company as it is.

Senior Management :
They should reduce their staff down to one, and can give her (the CEO) - two displays and leave her with strict instructions. All she has to do come in and watch the two screens. On one price you would have the stock price of Yahoo Japan, and on the other, you would have the price of Alibaba.