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Yahoo Could Fetch Less Than Expected; Stock Falls

Yahoo ( YHOO ) stock fell Friday on speculation the Web portal’s buyout offers might be less than half of what most observers had been expecting, amid a second round of bidding. Yahoo stock fell 1.4% to 36.50 in the stock market today .  That gives it a market valuation of roughly $35 billion, but almost all of its value is comprised of big stakes in China e-commerce giant Alibaba ( BABA ) and in Tokyo-listed Yahoo Japan. Verizon Communications ( VZ ), which bought AOL last year, has been viewed as the front-runner to buy Yahoo, although private equity firms have also been kicking the tires. There’s been speculation that Microsoft ( MSFT ), which has a search partnership with Yahoo, could team with a private-equity firm, or that Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway ( BRKB ) might back a bid by Quicken Loans founder Dan Gilbert. Some early estimates put possible bids in the $5 billion to $8 billion range for the core Yahoo business, which excludes Alibaba and Yahoo Japan. As many as 10 bidders have taken part in presentations led by Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer, according to reports. The Wall Street Journal, however, reported late Thursday that some PE firms might offer as little as $2 billion to $3 billion, or not bid at all. And Verizon, too, might offer a lower bid, says the report, citing unidentified people familiar with the matter. Yahoo has set a deadline in the first week of June for the next round of bids. Verizon, which bought AOL in 2015 for $4.4 billion, aims to morph into a digital media company that garners more advertising revenue, as wireless data competition mounts.

Baidu, Tencent May Rule Digital Ads In China, Like Facebook, Google

Baidu ( BIDU ) and Tencent ( TCEHY ) will dominate digital advertising in China, much as Alphabet ’s ( GOOGL ) Google and Facebook ( FB ) do in the U.S., says Goldman Sachs. Facebook and Google combined are “implied to represent” around 70% to 80% of the U.S. digital ad market’s dollar growth in 2016 and 2017, Goldman Sachs said in its research report. “ Consistent with the rest of the world, China’s digital advertising continues to take a growing share of total media ad spend,” wrote Goldman analyst Heather Bellini. “China total online spending was $33 billion in 2015, or 45% of total media spending, and is on track to exceed more than half of total ad spend in China in 2016. “Tencent and Baidu, principally the leading social and search engine in China, respectively, contributed 56% of the ad revenue growth among the major Chinese online market companies that are covered by (Goldman Sachs).” Goldman Sachs says the “Seven Pillars” of China’s Internet market are games, online advertising, e-commerce, travel, local services, finance and cloud computing. Tencent, a rival of Alibaba Group ( BABA ), has the dominant gaming platform in China, while Baidu is the search leader. Baidu is ramping up its Internet finance arm and making efforts in autonomous vehicles. Alibaba and Tencent lead in cloud computing. “Social advertising, online video and search will be the three growth drivers for the online advertising industry into 2020,” Goldman Sachs said. “For search, Baidu has demonstrated consistent paid click and cost-per-click trends with market leaders Google and (top Russian search provider)  Yandex ( YNDX ). Baidu looks primed for better mobile monetization as the gap between mobile and desktop cost-per-click narrows. “Given China’s large social media user base, we expect mobile ad spending to become an important theme in advertising. Applying Facebook’s successful social mobile monetization, we believe Tencent could benefit most, given its powerful social asset, Weixin. Online video is the fastest growing vertical and major driver of traffic in China. Baidu-owned  iQiyi, Alibaba’s Youku  and Tencent are the top three players in mobile online video.” In the U.S., meanwhile, the online ad market grew by $23.5 billion in 2015, Goldman Sachs said. Google’s net advertising revenue increased by $6.9 billion, while Facebook’s ad revenue increased by $5.6 billion.

Alibaba Rival Tencent’s Profit Jumps 33% On Mobile Games, Entertainment

Tencent Holdings’ investment in NBA broadcasts, mobile games and entertainment content is paying off, driving first-quarter earnings at Asia’s biggest instant messaging company to a record. Net income climbed 33 percent to 9.18 billion yuan ($1.4 billion), the Shenzhen-based company said on Wednesday. That compares with the 8.71 billion-yuan average of estimates compiled by Bloomberg. After converting WeChat and QQ from message services into social network giants, with more a billion combined users, Tencent ( TCEHY ) added streaming content such as National Basketball Association games to attract big-budget advertisers. That spurred a 73 percent surge in online ad revenue during the quarter, even as the Chinese economy slows. “Advertising is rising at a much faster pace than the rest of the company,” said Li Yujie, an analyst at RHB Research Institute Sdn in Hong Kong. “It has a huge advantage in attracting advertisers with its huge traffic volume via instant messaging, its portals and video sites.” Sales jumped 43 percent to 32 billion yuan in the quarter, beating estimates for 30.3 billion yuan. Revenue from the Value Added Services unit, which includes online games and messaging, rose 34 percent to 25 billion yuan. Adding titles such as Wind Saga and Kungfu Frontier not only helps make money from existing users, it attracts even more customers to the platforms. The company is buying up the rights for anime, comics and novels to convert them into content and boost its slice of a China mobile gaming market expected to reach 68.8 billion yuan by 2018. WeChat had 762.4 million monthly active users and the mobile version of QQ had 658 million users at the end of the quarter. Adding online payments and facilitating e-commerce are part of Chairman Ma Huateng’s efforts to make money from China’s 688 million Internet users. Shares of Tencent fell 1.1 percent to HK$161.10 in Hong Kong before earnings were announced. The stock has gained 5.6 percent this year, compared with a 2.4 percent drop for New York-listed Alibaba Group Holding ( BABA ). To strengthen its dominance in instant messaging, it created a service called Enterprise Weixin for the office that enables chat and company notices. Ma has identified online health care, education and the anime industry as potential areas of growth for this year. In a proposal to China’s National People’s Congress this year, Ma suggested that the government allow doctors to freelance, build online personal medical files, and relax digital content policies to help China’s Internet sector to prosper. The company is in the process of raising as much as $4 billion in a syndicated loan to fund its expansions, people familiar with the matter said in May. Tencent announced 40 deals worth $19.6 billion of acquisitions and investments in the past 12 months, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.