フィード購読ヤフー経営陣、株主宛ての手紙でマイクロソフトの提案を拒絶した理由を説明
Erick Schonfeld
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Yahooは下に掲載した書簡をさきほど公開した。この株主宛の書簡では、MicrosoftのYahoo買収の提案を拒絶した理由の概要が説明されている。この中で、共同ファウンダーでCEOのJerry YangはYahooはオンラインのコンテンツ提供サイトとしても広告ネットワークとしても十分に強力であり、Microsoftの傘下に入らず独自路線を貫いたほうがYahooの強みが生かせて有利であるとして、「世界のオンライン広告ネットワークの市場は2007年の$45B（450億ドル）から2010年には$75B(750億ドル)に成長すると予測されている。われわれは迅速に市場の成長と変革という現在訪れているユニークなチャンスを活かして市場シェアの獲得と株主価値の創造に結びつけていくつもりだ」と主張している。
Yangは「Yahooはすでに世界No. 1のトラフィックを引きつけるウェブサイトだが、われわれの目標は年間でさらに15%訪問者を増やすことだ」として、YahooをWebへのもっとも重要な入り口としていくという彼の戦略を再度強調した。彼はこれに加えて「われわれはいま登場しつつあるもっとも巨大なウェブへの入り口であるモバイル市場の成長の可能性に強く期待している」と述べた。（だからわれわれもそう言った）。全体として見ると、この書簡は特に新しい論点のない紋切り型ながら、株主に見てもらいたいYahooの側面をよく表現しているといえるだろう。「われわれはNo.1だ。われわれにはMicrosoftなんかいらない」というわけだ。しかし彼が説明しなかったことがある。つまり、そもそもなぜこんな書簡を出さねばならないような苦境にYahooが陥ちいってしまったのかという点だ。
次に書簡の全文を掲げておく。〔書簡は英文〕
Dear Stockholders,
On February 1, 2008, Microsoft made an unsolicited proposal to acquireyour company. As much has been reported in the press recently, I wantedto reach out to you personally to let you know why your Board of Directors,after a careful review by Yahoo!’s management along with our financialand legal advisors, believes that Microsoft’s proposal substantiallyundervalues Yahoo! and is not in the best interests of our stockholders.
Most importantly, I want you to know that your Board is continuously evaluatingall of Yahoo!’s strategic options in the context of the rapidly evolvingindustry environment, and we remain committed to pursuing initiatives thatmaximize value for all our stockholders.
We have a unique combination of strengths
– Yahoo! is one of the most recognizable and admired brands in theworld. We have over 500 million users (nearly 1 out of every 2 internetusers worldwide). In the U.S., we are # 1 in many of the most used onlineservices including personalized home pages, mail, news, music, shoppingand travel. Because we have leadership positions in so many indispensableonline services, users spend more time on Yahoo! sites than anywhere elseonline.
– Yahoo! is an attractive partner for marketers. Yahoo! is #1 inonline display advertising, which represents 90% of the advertising inventoryon the web, and we are also a leader in search marketing and a pioneerin the growing fields of mobile advertising and online video advertising.Through Yahoo!, advertisers can now connect with consumers on our ownedsites as well as those of our growing network of partners including eBay,Comcast, AT&T, a consortium of over 600 newspapers, Forbes.com, Cars.com,WebMD and more.
– Yahoo! has the financial flexibility to execute our plans, thanksto our healthy cash balance, which exceeded $2 billion as of December 31,2007, and our substantial operating cash flow, which we expect to growdouble digits in 2009.
– Yahoo! has made important investments in our core computing infrastructureenabling us to dramatically increase the speed of our search engine updateseven while handling vast and growing quantities of data.
– In addition, we have the added value of our substantial, unconsolidatedinvestments in Japan and China. We have substantial positions in Yahoo!Japan, the leader in its market, and Alibaba, which is strongly positionedin China, a market with enormous growth potential.
These assets–our brand and its audience, our relationships with marketers,our financial strength, our technology, and our strategic investments–arethe core of our value and our leadership position in the industry.
We have a huge market opportunity - and are uniquely positioned to capitalizeon it
The global online advertising market is projected to grow from $45 billionin 2007 to $75 billion in 2010. And we are moving quickly to take advantageof what we see as a unique window of time in the growth - and evolution- of this market to build market share and to create value for stockholders.
We are executing our strategy - and making headway
We have taken significant but disciplined steps to refocus our businesson our objectives to become the starting point for the most consumers andthe must buy for the most advertisers and enhance Yahoo!’s long-termperformance.
Starting Point Objective: Our goal is to grow visits to key Yahoo! startingpoints and properties, where users enter the Internet, by 15% per yearover the next several years. We are the most visited site in the U.S.,and we continue to grow - we experienced double-digit growth in U.S. usersin 2007 on our Yahoo.com home page.
In addition to traditional starting points on the PC - including our homepages, mail, My Yahoo! and search, we are particularly excited about ourgrowth prospects in mobile, the biggest emerging starting point in theworld. Globally, there are twice as many users of mobile devices as usersof personal computers, and mobile advertising is projected to grow substantiallyin the coming years. We have an important competitive edge as the numberone mobile destination in the U.S., and we are building a superior mobileexperience for Yahoo! users globally so we can further capitalize on thisopportunity.
Must Buy Objective: We are working to make online advertising easier andmore effective for marketers, opening up new ways for them to connect withconsumers. We’ve successfully completed the global roll-out of oursearch marketing system, Panama, which improved the search experience forour users, boosted returns for our advertisers, and increased revenue forYahoo!. Last year, we bought Right Media, an exchange that enables buyersand sellers of online advertising to come together. Another 2007 acquisition,Blue Lithium, brings us best-in-class performance marketing capabilities,complementing Yahoo!’s existing offerings for advertisers. We alsointegrated our search advertising and display advertising sales forces,creating a one-stop shop for all of advertisers’ online marketingneeds. All of these - Panama, Right Media, Blue Lithium, and our combinedsales efforts - complement and enhance Yahoo!’s existing capabilitiesand will make it easier for advertisers and online publishers to buy andsell advertising online.
We are also creating a unique and valuable network of premium websitesto serve our advertisers. We are making it easier for our advertisers toprovide interesting and relevant offers to our users by combining advertisingspace on Yahoo!’s owned sites with that from a growing group of premiumpartners including eBay, Comcast, AT&T, a consortium of over 600 newspapersand many others.
As we reach more users both on our own websites and on the sites of ourpremium partners, and better monetize the ad space on Yahoo!’s ownedand operated sites, we are striving to increase the percentage of totalonline advertising demand we touch from an estimated 15% in 2007 to 20%over the next several years.
These key strategies will be enhanced by our adoption of new, more opentechnology platforms that will encourage the development of new applicationsand the involvement of third-party developers - and help enrich the userexperience.
We have accomplished a great deal in a very short time - and we are focusedon building this momentum
Today, Yahoo! is a faster-moving, better-organized, more nimble companythan it was just a few months ago. We have redeployed our resources todrive Yahoo!’s key strategic priorities - taking important stepsto streamline our organization and close down or scale back businessesthat don’t support these critical growth initiatives. The fact isthat we are well on our way to transforming the experiences of Yahoo!’susers, advertisers, publishers and developers - an important shift thatis at the heart of our plan to create stockholder value.
I want you to know that the Yahoo! Board of Directors and management teamremain committed to pursuing initiatives that maximize value for all ourYahoo! stockholders. This is a great company and we are moving quicklyto make it even better.
Jerry Yang
[原文へ]
（翻訳：Namekawa, U）
タグ: ヤフー買収関連, Microsoft, Yahoo【関連記事】
2008年 2月 15日 at 7:23 am