According to analysts, Marissa Mayer's, president and CEO of Yahoo, purchase spree in her first year at the company was all about getting involved in the mobile market and investing in research and development. However, it would not be clear yet if her strategy worked.
Yahoo acquired 19 corporations since Mayer stepped in last summer. This included its recent US$1.1 billion deal to purchase Tumblr. Wedge Partners' analyst, Martin Pyykkonen, stated that it was unlikely that Yahoo would continue to acquire corporations at the same rate in 2014. Pyykkonen added that the Tumblr deal was Yahoo's way of buying traffic and targeting the younger demographic. He implied that the other purchases were aimed at acquiring talent that could improve the corporation's mobile strength.
"Most of these fit one description, they are acqui-hires," Pyykkonen remarked. "A fair chunk of them are mobile, which is where there is the most sense of urgency and rightly so, they need to grow mobile traffic."
"I don't think this is a one-year phenomenon, it does seem like Marissa is more inclined to bring in more external talent and companies than previous management. But I do think the US$1 billion acquisitions like Tumblr will be very few and far between," RBC's analyst, Mark Mahaney, said. "I think there may be one large acquisition a year like that."
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