"Figure Up Yahoo!'s Downside"
By Jim Cramer
RealMoney.com Columnist
10/11/2006 12:07 PM EDT
"How expensive is Yahoo! (YHOO - commentary - Cramer's Take) really? I think that on an earnings basis, it's very hard to get a grip on its worth.
If every time the company speaks, its numbers come down, you don't even want to put a price-to-earnings ratio on the darned thing, let alone the 44 P/E that it has now. eBay (EBAY - commentary - Cramer's Take), the serial underperformer, gets a 33 multiple, and Amazon (AMZN - commentary - Cramer's Take), another underperformer, gets a 44 multiple, so you could argue that it is no better or worse than those chronic screwups.
But is there a valuation component that is missing? Is there something that people don't realize about Yahoo!? This morning David Faber mentioned on CNBC that nobody's talking about a leveraged buyout for Yahoo! even down here. And he's right.
But Yahoo! has $12 billion in Yahoo! Japan stock and cash for a $33 billion market cap. You back that out and you get a $21 billion company. At some point, that is going to be of interest to someone. Or to put it another way, does anyone think this company can drop to $25 billion with $12 billion in assets? I don't think so.
I don't know where Yahoo! is going to go, but I do know where it isn't going: down to $17-18. There's too much value there.
For the first time, I think we can quantify the downside based on asset value: probably $18-19. That's $5 down. I know it can be $5 up.
In other words, we're getting there. Even if the next thing we hear from Yahoo! is still one more guidedown. Which wouldn't shock me; they're that bad. "
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