Loeb's thesis was simple - that Yahoo is worth a lot more as the sum of its parts as it was a combined entity. He was right - there were long periods of time where Yahoo on its own had a negative value.
The stock price was largely driven by Alibaba - hence why attributing stock growth to Mayer's appointment was misplaced.
The idea was that you sell off the BABA holding, distribute that to investors and then you end up with Yahoo on it's own which is then pivoted to being a tech company (higher PE's) rather than a boring media company.
Mayer ended up becoming far from the ideal hedge fund CEO. She kept more of the BABA sales for acquisitions than the activists wanted, she spent hundreds of millions on silly recruiting like Henrique De Castro and then spent $2.5B+ on 50+ acquisitions - all of which didn't move the needle and ended up being written down to near-zero.
That's a lot to spend for a company that had a negative value - and Mayer hastened / worsened the situation (hence why Loeb got the hell out of there when offered $29 by Mayer)
The stock price was largely driven by Alibaba - hence why attributing stock growth to Mayer's appointment was misplaced.
The idea was that you sell off the BABA holding, distribute that to investors and then you end up with Yahoo on it's own which is then pivoted to being a tech company (higher PE's) rather than a boring media company.
Mayer ended up becoming far from the ideal hedge fund CEO. She kept more of the BABA sales for acquisitions than the activists wanted, she spent hundreds of millions on silly recruiting like Henrique De Castro and then spent $2.5B+ on 50+ acquisitions - all of which didn't move the needle and ended up being written down to near-zero.
That's a lot to spend for a company that had a negative value - and Mayer hastened / worsened the situation (hence why Loeb got the hell out of there when offered $29 by Mayer)