Yahoo investors urge Mayer to buy back stock

AILING INTERNET GIANT Yahoo has been urged to spend some of its Alibaba windfall to buy back its own shares.

Yahoo scored something of a rare victory through its stake in Chinese internet firm Alibaba, which it eventually sold off for $3bn. Now the firm's investors are urging Yahoo's new CEO Marissa Mayer to spend some of that cash to buy back some of Yahoo's stock to show faith in the company's future.

Yahoo has done stock buybacks before and every time it wasn't done to show faith in the company's long term future but rather to pump up the Yahoo's stock price. Given that the firm's stock price has barely moved in four years, it is not surprising that Yahoo's investors want to see a bump upwards if for nothing else than to offload the firm's stock for a small profit.

While Mayer has managed to generate a lot of interest in Yahoo since she took the reins earlier this year, she has yet to actually do anything that improves the firm's fortunes. Wall Street and industry watchers have given her some breathing space partly due to her giving birth to a child in September and partly because of the firm's disarray she inherited from the decade of mismanagement by those that previously sat in her seat.

Yahoo is scheduled to announce its third quarter financials on 22 October, which suggests that any stock buyback plan is unlikely to be announced before then. µ