(Fortune)
At first blush, Mayer's nearly two-year tenure at Yahoo seems golden: She has motivated a beleaguered workforce and spent almost $1.3 billion to acquire 36 companies, including the social software startup Tumblr. She has launched a slew of new products, including a weather app that won praise from Apple designer Jony Ive, digital magazines, and mobile versions of Yahoo Screen, the company's YouTube-like video property. She has hired celebrity journalists like Katie Couric and former New York Times tech writer David Pogue. Mayer has unveiled a rich assortment of high-budget original programs, partnerships, and coverage of live events. And she has finally stopped Yahoo from losing both ad dollars and users.
By another measure, Mayer's tenure at the company has seemed a resounding success: Yahoo's stock has more than doubled in value, to around $35. But the stock's strength has little to do with Mayer's turnaround efforts. Yahoo owes its lofty valuation to a pair of smart Asian investments. Back in 1996 the company launched Yahoo Japan, a joint venture with Softbank; its 35% stake is worth $9 billion. More significantly, Yahoo owns 24% of the Chinese Internet dynamo Alibaba. It is expected to soon file for an initial public offering that is likely to be the largest tech IPO in history; Yahoo's share of the company will probably be worth a whopping $40 billion -- impressive until you consider that Yahoo's total market capitalization is $35 billion (for more, see IPO Time for Alibaba). In other words, investors seem to be saying that Yahoo's core business is worth less than nothing.
And there's the rub. Mayer can acquire all kinds of cool technology and generate buzz with video programming, but none of that will solve her biggest problem: Yahoo's advertising business -- which generates roughly four-fifths of its sales -- is a mess. Yahoo's share of the global market for digital-ad spending has continued to shrink, while Google maintains a strong lead and Facebook shows impressive growth, according to EMarketer. In January, Mayer fired her top sales guy, an ex-Googler who had been her first major hire as CEO. This spring two of Yahoo's board members who had the most experience in media and advertising -- the chief marketing officer of American Express and the CEO of media company Scripps -- announced they would step down. (Yahoo has nominated Filo, former Wal-Mart CEO Lee Scott, and brokerage icon Charles Schwab as directors.) And advertisers complain that the technology behind Yahoo's tools is archaic. In 2013 revenue fell 6%, to $4.68 billion, and when Fortune unveils its annual ranking of the country's 500 largest companies next month, Yahoo will not be on the list for the first time in nine years.
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