Yahoo to Spin Off Its Stake in Alibaba
雅虎分拆所持阿里巴巴股份，着力转型
SAN FRANCISCO — Marissa Mayer, chief executive of Yahoo, said on Tuesday that the Internet company would spin off its 15.4 percent stake in Alibaba, China’s leading e-commerce company, into a separate company, avoiding any taxes on the transaction.
旧金山——雅虎(Yahoo)首席执行官玛丽莎·梅耶尔(Marissa Mayer)在周二表示，这家互联网公司持有的阿里巴巴——中国首屈一指的电子商务公司——15.4%的股份将分拆成一家独立公司，以避免交易产生的任何税收。
The decision, which Wall Street has been waiting for since Ms. Mayer joined the company in 2012, cheered shareholders since they will directly reap all the remaining profit from Yahoo’s prescient investment, which cost virtually nothing a decade ago but is now worth about $39.5 billion.
自梅耶尔于2012年加入雅虎以来，华尔街一直在等待这一决定，股东们对此欢呼雀跃，因为他们将直接获得雅虎这项投资剩余的所有利润，十年前这项有远见的投资成本几乎为零，而现在价值约为395亿美元（约合2463亿元人民币）。
The Alibaba stake alone now makes up nearly 85 percent of Yahoo’s market value.
阿里巴巴的股份目前在雅虎市值中占了将近85%。
“We felt maximum tax efficiency was important in our role as stewards of capital,” Ms. Mayer said in a conference call with investors.
梅耶尔在与投资人的电话会议上表示，“我们觉得，作为资本管家，最大化税收效率是我们的重要职责。”
The immediate reaction to the announcement was positive, with investors driving Yahoo’s stock up about 6 percent in after-hours trading after disclosure of the plan.
这一公告立即引发积极反应，计划公布后，雅虎股票在盘后交易上涨了将近6%。
“It’s kind of hard not to view it as an unadulterated positive,” said Mark Mahaney, who follows the Internet industry for RBC Capital Markets. “This was the single biggest issue raised by activists.”
“很难不把这看作一个不折不扣的利好消息，”加拿大皇家银行资本市场(RBC Capital Markets)网络产业分析师马克·马哈尼(Mark Mahaney)说。“这是维权股东提出的头号问题。”
Resolving the Alibaba question now turns the spotlight to Ms. Mayer’s plans to turn around Yahoo’s core Internet advertising business, which has had years of declining revenue as advertisers and Internet users switched their money and attention to flashier, more innovative services from competitors like Google, Facebook and Twitter.
现在解决了阿里巴巴问题，关注焦点转移到了梅耶尔改变雅虎核心网络广告业务的计划，随着广告商和网络用户将钱和注意力转移到谷歌(Google)、Facebook和Twitter等提供更快速、更创新服务的竞争者身上，雅虎的广告收入几年来不断减少。
Ms. Mayer delivered a report card on her turnaround plan on Tuesday, noting that overall revenue and profits fell in the fourth quarter but that the company’s mobile businesses, as well as other newer initiatives such as so-called native ads, showed rapid growth.
梅耶尔周二分发了一份有关业务转向的工作报告，她指出，第四季度的总收入和利润下降，但公司的移动业务，以及所谓的原生广告等新项目的收入迅速增加。
“I’m pleased to report that our performance in Q4 and in 2014 continues to show stability in our core business,” Ms. Mayer said in a statement accompanying the financial results. “Our mobile strategy and focus has transformed Yahoo and yielded significant results.”
“我很高兴地告诉大家，第四季度及2014年的业绩显示，我们的核心业务保持稳定，”梅耶尔在发布财务业绩的同时发表声明称。“我们的移动战略已经使雅虎转型，并带来了重大成果。”
Yahoo reported revenue of $1.25 billion and adjusted profits of 30 cents a share, slightly exceeding Wall Street’s expectations. Analysts had on average expected the company to report revenue of $1.18 billion and adjusted earnings of 29 cents a share, according to data collected by S&P Capital IQ.
雅虎报收12.5亿美元，调整后利润达到每股30美分，稍高于华尔街的预期。标普资本智商(S&P Capital IQ)收集的数据显示，分析人士普遍预测该公司报收11.8亿美元，调整后利润为每股29美分。
The company’s net income was $166 million, or 17 cents a share, in the fourth quarter, compared to $348 million, or 33 cents a share, in the same quarter a year ago.
雅虎第四季度的净收入为1.66亿美元，或每股17美分，而去年同期净收入为3.48亿美元，或每股33美分。
Yahoo sold a hefty chunk of its stake in Alibaba in September when the Chinese company sold shares in an initial public offering. Yahoo had a $10.3 billion gain from the sale, but nearly 40 percent of that was eaten up by taxes.
雅虎在阿里巴巴去年9月进行首次公开募股时出售了大量股份，从中获得103亿美元的收益，但其中40%都交了税。
Yahoo executives promised shareholders that they would find a way to dispose of the rest of the Alibaba stake in a way that incurred a much lower tax bill. The solution they chose — a spinoff of the Alibaba stake and a Yahoo operating business — avoids $16 billion in corporate taxes that Yahoo would have owed if it had simply sold the stake, executives said. Instead, investors will receive shares in the spun-off company in proportion to their stake in Yahoo, and will pay taxes on their capital gains when they sell those shares. The spinoff is expected to be completed in the fourth quarter.
雅虎管理人员向股东们承诺，他们会通过一种较少纳税的方式处理在阿里巴巴持有的剩余股票。他们最终选择将阿里巴巴股份分拆成一家公司，避免了160亿美元的企业税——如果雅虎选择出售股票，就需要缴纳这笔税款。相反，投资者将在这家分拆公司获得与他们的雅虎股份比例相当的股份；当他们出售这些股份时，需要为自己的资本收益缴纳税款。分拆计划预计将在第四季度完成。
One investor, the activist hedge fund Starboard Value, had threatened to wage a fight over the company’s board if it was unhappy with Ms. Mayer’s strategy. Starboard did not respond to a request for comment on Yahoo’s spinoff plan.
作为投资者之一的维权对冲基金斯塔博德价值(Starboard Value)曾威胁称，如果梅耶尔不能拿出让他们的满意的策略，他们会掀起一场董事会争斗。对于雅虎的分拆计划，斯塔博德没有回应置评请求。
An Alibaba spokesman also declined to comment.
阿里巴巴的新闻发言人也拒绝置评。
Yahoo said it was not ready to discuss its plans for its other large investment, its 36 percent stake in Yahoo Japan, worth $7.3 billion. Although Yahoo has signaled that it would eventually like to dispose of that stake, too, the two companies have some intertwined operations and share intellectual property, so unwinding the relationship would be more complicated than the Alibaba spinoff.
雅虎表示，公司尚未准备开始讨论针对其他大型投资的计划，公司在雅虎日本(Yahoo Japan)持有36%的股份，价值为73亿美元。尽管雅虎曾表示，它最后可能也想处理掉这个股份，但两家公司有些业务相互交织，而且共享知识产权，所以理清这种关系可能比分拆阿里巴巴的股份更加复杂。
Yahoo’s principal business — selling ads against articles, videos and search results shown to its hundreds of millions of visitors — continues to falter. Yahoo was late to recognize that people around the world were switching to mobile phones and tablets for access to the Internet, leaving it to play catch-up when Ms. Mayer arrived.
雅虎的主要业务——通过展示给数以亿计的访客的文章、视频和搜索结果而出售的广告——仍然缺乏活力。雅虎没有及时认识到，世界各地的人们已经开始使用手机和平板电脑访问互联网，所以当梅耶尔到来时，雅虎不得不开始追赶这一趋势。
In 2014, Yahoo’s share of the $146.4 billion worldwide digital ad market fell to 2.36 percent, according to eMarketer, a research firm. Google, the market leader, had 31.1 percent of the market, and Facebook had 7.75 percent.
调查公司电子商务市场研究(eMarketer)表示，2014年，雅虎在价值1464亿美元的全球数字广告市场中所占的份额跌至2.36％。市场领军者谷歌所占的市场份额为31.1％，Facebook占7.75%。
Ms. Mayer said on the conference call that the company was seeing strong growth in its mobile, video, social, native advertising businesses — a group she called “the mavens.” She said that collectively, revenue from the mavens grew 95 percent in the fourth quarter compared to the same quarter in 2013. For the full year, those businesses brought in $1.1 billion in revenue.
梅耶尔在电话会议中说，公司的移动、视频、社交和原生广告业务正在强劲增长——她将这些业务称为“四达人”(the mavens)。她说，与2013年同期相比，这些“达人”第四季度的收入合起来增加了95%。全年来看，这些业务共带来了11亿美元的收入。
Yahoo said that it had 575 million monthly users on mobile devices in the fourth quarter, including users of its Tumblr social network, up 18 percent compared to the previous year.
雅虎说，公司第四季度共拥有5.75亿月移动设备用户，同比增长18%，其中包括其社交网络Tumblr的用户。
But revenue from Yahoo’s traditional businesses continued to flag. Display advertising — the banner ads that made the company a juggernaut a decade ago — fell about 4 percent, and revenue from Internet searches was up 1 percent.
但是，雅虎传统业务的收入持续走低。显示广告——10年前使公司成为巨头的条幅广告——下跌大约4%，网络搜索带来的收入增加了1％。
The company also gave disappointing projections for its performance in the first quarter, Mr. Mahaney said. “There is no news here that tells you Yahoo has fundamentally turned the corner,” he said.
马哈尼说，公司对第一季度业绩的预测也令人失望。他说，“这里面没有哪条消息能告诉你，雅虎已经从根本上走出了困境。”
Ms. Mayer, who built her reputation overseeing Google’s Internet search business, said that Yahoo remains committed to search.
因为负责谷歌的网络搜索业务而创下名声的梅耶尔说，雅虎仍将致力于搜索。
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