Yahoo! (YHOO-NASDAQ) is trading up about 2% in early trading on market rumors that Terry Semel is either out or on his way out. Is this true? Well, he didn’t give this impression just last week and the company would have probably kept him from speaking too much if it was going to force Semel out. We have been pretty vocal about Terry Semel needing to leave. There was actually a point where he was the right guy at the right time, but that was a temporary issue and his value to the company was in the past. Semel came in at a time when the company needed someone with tenure and real world experience.
But now the company has been getting clocked by Google (GOOG-NASDAQ) and the new Panama platform has yet to show any real recapture of relative lost ground. If Semel is out, you can see that the ‘hope of him leaving’ is worth 2% alone to the stock. Based on the comments and attitude at the meeting last week this seems probably premature, although the writing has been on the wall for long enough.
Jon C. Ogg
June 18, 2007
Jon Ogg can be reached at [email protected]; he does not own securities in the companies he covers.