Comments on: Microsoft CFO: Yahoo a 'declining asset'

Speaking to financial analysts, Chris Liddell concedes online business hasn't shown much tangible progress, but says Yahoo deal making less and less sense.

[robvme]

Its called Wall Street Greed

[JCPayne]

And Microsoft (I take) is somehow an asset that is ascending???

Read 'em and weep MSFT....
Article: Apple Now Third Largest PC Vendor in the US, Survey Says - Agam Shah, IDG News Service
Date: Wednesday, July 16, 2008 7:30 PM PDT
Source: www.PCWorld.com - PC World News

Link: http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/148531/apple_now_third_largest_pc_vendor_in_the_us_survey_says.html

(QUOTE)
Apple is moving up the charts, toppling Acer to become the third largest PC vendor in the U.S., according to a survey from Gartner.

Apple defied a weakening economy to record a 38.1 percent growth rate in U.S. PC shipments, according to Gartner. Overall PC shipments in the U.S. grew just 4.2 percent to 16.5 million units during the quarter.
(END QUOTE)

[gsmiller88]

Microsoft has no right to call any company a declining asset.

[anonymuos]

What was used to create that attractive chart? :)

[bicparker]

Market value isn't defined by how much you earned, but the market's forward looking perception of increasing value (not just continuing value). Microsoft hasn't been managing those expectations well for a few years now and so their stock value has suffered.

Their move into the stock major stock indices (DJIA, S&P 500, et al) has, in some ways, made their ability to manage that expectation of market capitalization upwards even more difficult. The responsibility for this management falls clearly on Microsoft's executive management, especially the CEO and CFO. I have never seen them really aggressively marketing their stock price in recent years.

And until recently, they didn't have to. When you have a enormous amount of cash in the bank and your stock price is fairly stable, your stock price is only interesting when you are making a bunch of cash acquisitions or stock as cash exchanges. When the stock price starts to dive as it has recently and you are bidding on cash depleting acquisitions like Yahoo, the stock price starts to become a touchy thing since it is the only remaining coin of the realm (software companies don't work well at all with debt on the books).

I have always maintained that a software company is only as good as their next release. Until Windows 7 comes out, it will very very difficult for Microsoft to convince the stock buyers that there is explosive growth in their markets (with an over 1 year old flagship version now out) beyond the value given by their current P/E ratio.

[t8]

Microsoft as big as it is, is actually the declining asset. Yahoo are Web focused and their stuff fits better in the world of tomorrow. Microsoft is all about software in a box, but the Web is making that redundant. Of course Google is better than both of them put together.

[AdamMoore]

I'm amused.
People are so blind-sided by their blind-hate for Microsoft, they'll call it the equivalent worth of their local grocery store.

Sorry to tell you guys, Microsoft gets into more than just Windows and your Office program. They're one of the largest companies in the world for a reason, not just due to how they market things, if that were the case, the other 500,000 other constrained companies in the world would be in the same place, which, they're not.

I sometimes wonder if people just post in threads that have "Microsoft" in them just for the sake of consuming energy by moving their fingers; hard to say. However, when you get up from your computer chair, you'll likely forget to whole notion of what you just mentioned, and continue on your life.

And YaHoo! is a declining asset, in comparison to Google, who destroys it in market share and projects, and Microsoft, who is all over the board (Sorry, not only Vista). I figure these people all spawn from the same forest-bound camp as Apple zealots?

[Penguinisto]

Actually, MSFT is a declining asset. Yes, they have numerous fingers in numerous pies, but the diversification isn't really getting them anywhere.

Let's look at the biggies (by major product initiative):

xbox: falling behind to Wii (by orders of magnitude) and PS3 (which is keeping a small but increasing lead over xbox in sales). 8 years on and not really a profit out of them yet.

Zune: You. Must. Be. Joking.

Other MSFT hardware: Mostly re-branded Logitech stuff, but not really performing all that well.

MSN/Live/etc: 3rd place in most aspects (well, all but the online ads market, where they're a far-distant #2 to Google) and slipping. Becoming a giant money pit from the looks of it.

Windows: Vista is underperforming, and Windows is starting to lose marketshare to Apple from the top end (and Linux from the bottom-end). Enterprises (most notably some real biggies in the Fortune 500) won't touch it with a 10-foot barge pole. Still makes money overall, but just barely keeping pace with PC growth overall while its competitors are growing at rates that are orders of magnitude larger. 'Lipstick on a Pig' is not exactly the best way to have your flagship product described by the majority at large, y'know?

Office: One of the few bright spots in the whole mess, but office app suites are a commodity nowadays.

Exchange, Sharepoint, MSSQL, etc: Mixed results. MySQL is eating MSSQL alive, Sharepoint is nothing more than a warmed-over (and IMTO badly architected) Wiki/CMS suite, and Exchange manages to hang on by sheer dint of interia... but not much else.

Windows Mobile: The Zune of Mobile OSes, in spite of the obscene amounts of money and effort put into it. Got spanked hard in marketshare by the iPhone in less than 8 months after the iPhone's launch.

...did I miss any others?

Given all of this, its not surprising that Microsoft is looking a LOT like a stock (and a company) in decline. Even the day-trader non-techie types can see it now.

---

Meanwhile, Yahoo looks like a company who has decided to feel the fear again, and get off their butts to do something productive and growth-oriented. While six months ago I would've agreed with the article's premise, today I doubt that I'd call 'em anything with the word "decline" in it. Whether they succeed or not I do not know, but at least they have a shot at it, and they're certainly getting the buzz.

/P

[pmchefalo]

Penguinisto,

Bad weather in Arkansas? Your Apple masters will be verrryyyy, very angry with you by being at the bottom of this thread. They're paying you verrryyy, very well to be bright and early.

Oh, you never mentioned Apple? Yes you did. The war on this forum is not about Linux, despite your extremely misleading nickname (you probably are a corporate programmer for IBM doing Linux kernel work as your day job, but everyone knows that's going nowhere in this consumer-oriented space) or Google (which depends eseentially entirely on the Microsoft eco-system (they'd be out of business tomorrow without Microsoft products to leech on) but between Apple and Microsoft.

Apple is a consumer electronics company with a very focused, amazingly good marketing effort. The marketing surmounts the lower value received by the consumer by appealing to a "with-it" appeal. It is clear that Apple's anti-consumer behavior (bricking iPhones, short product life (no removable batteries in the Air, for heaven's sake!), low product quality, security patches ad infinitum, are all killers for everyone but the Apple publicity machine. All since the lemmings ad ...

Your work here for Apple however is part of the overall marketing effort. By casting your mis-statings of the corporate software scene into the "on-line" world, you seek to undermine the actual strength of Microsoft, in order the Apple mystique (which has been a complete failure in the bottom line corporate world) is not exposed. Gotta keep the fad alive in the consumer space (xBox, wiii?) (Zune?)!

Yahoo is completely dead. They are AOL-in-waiting. Everyone knows it, even you. A consolidation will come, and it will be good for the consumer and the market, currently besieged by the online version of Gresham's law: bad money drives out the good.

I note that you do not mention Microsoft's all-encompassing Live initiative. (Although you would call it "Dead" -- hah-hah, that's a good one! What an Arkansas knee-slapper!) Or the Facebook tie-in.

That's where the Google space gets swallowed. The end of Gmail (that clumsy, non-working POS) and Picasa is at hand. The social networking space by Google was dead at birth. And the dreadful "tagging" of every Web page by Google ad words: we'll have to see if advertising low value ("Murder Your Yellow Teeth" and "Financial Analysis Site" at the bottom of this page) has any more legs than the ads that were in comic books a decade ago.

What confuses me is WHY Microsoft is always so fearful/greedy. The stack was flying until they started their acquisition talks with the dead-deader-deadest Yahoo folks. The CFO should be fired, and someone should put a gag over Balmer's mouth. (Not likely to happen to one of the world's richest men, however, Too bad he never outgrew his college frat-boy phase.) Early success on merits and internal geek-boy disconnect with the in-crowd has permanently dented Microsoft's ability to connect with the "cool" factor. They'll just have to continue to cry on the way to the bank.

[Penguinisto]

Don't work for IBM or Google (or Apple), and I live approximately half a continent away from Arkansas. Your stalking skills (much like your analysis skills) are sorely lacking.

As for "or Google (which depends eseentially[sic] entirely on the Microsoft eco-system (they'd be out of business tomorrow without Microsoft products to leech on" Err, no, kid. Google doesn't require MSFT for much of anything, since their datacenters run off of Linux/MySQL.

As for: "What confuses me is WHY Microsoft is always so fearful/greedy."? Well, judging by the metric ton of nonsense in your post, you seem to be confused easily. ;)