Ross Levinsohn Leaves Yahoo

A little less than two weeks after Marissa Mayer was appointed as Yahoo’s new CEO, the company’s former top exec and interim CEO, Ross Levinsohn, is on his way out.

Mayer sent a note to the company on Monday announcing his departure, a Yahoo spokesperson confirmed in an e-mail to Mashable. “Ross has done a terrific job during his time at Yahoo!. We wish him all the best,” the spokesperson wrote.

The news was originally reported by AllThingsD.

Before becoming interim CEO — a post he was named to after Yahoo’s last CEO, Scott Thompson, was pushed out by the company’s board — he served as Yahoo’s executive vice president of the Americas. Many thought he would be instated as the company’s long-term CEO before Mayer was named to the post, especially since he did so well in the interim period, negotiating the sale of the company’s stake in Alibaba and handling a difficult patent dispute with Facebook.

Levinsohn served as interim CEO from May 13 to July 17. He joined Yahoo in late 2010 under then-CEO Carol Bartz. Before Yahoo, he worked at Fuse Capital, a digital media fund. Before that, he worked at News Corp.

No news on where Levinsohn will be headed next.

Read more: http://mashable.com/2012/07/30/ross-levinsohn-leaves-yahoo/

Ross Levinsohn Leaves Yahoo

business, marissa mayer, Ross Levinsohn, U.S., Yahoo

Yahoo is spinning off its stake in Alibaba to avoid taxes

Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer at Cannes Lions in France on June 17, 2014.

Image: Lionel Cironneau/Associated Press

Yahoo announced on Tuesday that it will be spinning off its remaining stake in Chinese ecommerce giant Alibaba.

The move will help the company avoid paying taxes on the profits from its stake in Alibaba, which helped the company reap billions of dollars afters its IPO.

Like people, companies have to pay taxes on profits from investments. However, there are ways to avoid taxes — and this is one of them. The new company, currently called SpinCo, although that name is just a placeholder, will be owned by Yahoo shareholders, who will each receive stock in the business depending on how much Yahoo stock they own.

Shares in Yahoo were trading 7.6% higher in after hours trading. They company’s stock has rise almost 27% in the past 12 months.

Yahoo announced the spinoff together with its fourth-quarter earnings report. It generated 1.18 billion in revenue, just below expectations, while logging earnings per share of $0.30, just above analysts’ estimates.

CEO Marissa Mayer has been under pressure to provide investors with a return from the value that had been accrued thanks to Alibaba’s growth. Yahoo was forced to sell about $10 billion of stock in Alibaba after its IPO, which resulted in around $3 billion in taxes. This time, Yahoo is sidestepping the tax by spinning the assets into a separate business.

Post-spin, $YHOO will have returned $50B to shareholders via it’s @Alibaba stake. (For reference, @Yahoo‘s mkt cap is $47B.)

— Kayla Tausche (@kaylatausche) January 27, 2015

Mayer touted Yahoo’s mobile revenue, noting a 23% increase compared to the previous quarter of 2014. “Our mobile strategy and focus has transformed Yahoo and yielded significant results,” she said in the press release.

On the downside, Yahoo’s core business of display ads continued its descent. Revenue from display adds (excluding traffic acquisition costs) fell 5% compared to the same period in 2013. This comes despite a 17% increase in the number of display ads sold, as price-per-ad continues to plummet, off 20%.

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Read more: http://mashable.com/2015/01/27/yahoo-alibaba-spinoff/

Yahoo is spinning off its stake in Alibaba to avoid taxes

AliBaba, marissa mayer, Yahoo