According to the Wall Street Journal, Internet giant
Yahoo! Inc.
(
YHOO
) is in talks to acquire a 75% controlling stake in a leading
French video website called Dailymotion in a deal roughly valued
at $300 million.
Dailymotion was founded by Benjamin Bejbaum and Olivier
Poitrey in 2005. It is a video-sharing website where users can
upload, download, share and view videos. In 2011, France
Telecom's Orange acquired a 49% stake in Dailymotion for €62
million or $170 million.
According to a comScore report, as of Feb 2013,
Google's
(
GOOG
) YouTube tops the list with 150.7 million unique
viewers, followed by
Facebook
(
FB
) with 61.2 million.
Microsoft
(
MSFT
) has 36.7 million unique viewers while Yahoo has 43.6 million
unique viewers. Dailymotion occupies the #12 spot. Yahoo still
has some way to go in this segment. The acquisition could
strengthen its position and extend its reach, which could
increase its position at advertisers.
Yahoo, under its new CEO Marissa Mayer is also beefing up its
mobile business. The company has undertaken a new marketing
strategy according to which it is acquiring struggling start-up
companies. It has concluded four such acquisitions. Its recent
purchases include Stamped, a mobile review app maker; OnTheAir,
specializing in broadcasting video chats or interviews to online
audiences; Snip.it, which is a kind of clipping service for the
web and Propeld, which is a location-based apps maker.
Currently, Yahoo has a huge task at hand, which is to bring
back its users and make them spend more time on its properties.
If successful, Yahoo may reclaim some of its lost market share
going forward.
In the third quarter of fiscal 2012, Yahoo generated revenues
of $1.20 billion, which were down 1.3% sequentially and 1.2% year
over year. Traffic acquisition cost (TAC) was down 17.7%
sequentially and 22.2% from last year. Excluding these costs in
all periods, net revenues were essentially flat on a sequential
basis and up 1.6% from last year, in line with the consensus
estimate.
Yahoo has a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold).
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