Not-Parsing Yahoo: We're "Playing" Offense

Yesterday, Jack Flack took a day off from Parsing MicroHooGleCahn, instead watching various insects speckle his windshield while he was speeding through south Georgia. (And yes, he chose to use his lunch break to parse Walmart's logo release.)

Fortunately, the WSJ's Heidi Moore was kind enough to pick up the slack, translating selected bits from the latest PowerPoint deck from Yahoo.

The presentation and its accompanying release largely re-treaded recent Yahoo rationalizations, but they also drove headlines by showing that Yahoo could actually go on the attack. Unfortunately, the fightin' words felt somewhat like the too-little, too-late smack-talk of the de-limbed Black Knight, as Yahoo's stock price continued to bleed.

Fightin' Words #1: Seeking to "set the record straight" on the Microsoft negotiations, the presentation outlines selective details of kinda when who sort of said what to maybe whom. Such a recountment may have added some texture, but all good flacks know that it's almost impossible to reset history once the concrete has already begun to harden. So Yahoo can quibble for another century about who wrecked the deal, but the dominant perception will continue to be that Jerry Yang didn't ever really want to sell, and that a frazzled Steve Ballmer got tired of being yanked around while his targeted asset disintegrated before his eyes.

Fightin' Words #2: Obviously sick and tired of plucking poisoned Icahn-o-grams out of its shiny forehead, Yahoo also took the time to run a report card on Carl Icahn's performance since 2004. The tactic might have had more impact if Icahn was a mysterious hedge fund recluse, not the most chronicled individual investor this side of Warren Buffet. In other words, do any of the major investors who will determine this proxy fight not already have a strong opinion of Carl Icahn's strengths and weaknesses?

The presentation did, however, smartly focus on Icahn's lone, massive weakness, his dependence on Microsoft to come back to the table with its checkbook. But even that tactic may unintended consequences.

After all, what are the odds we might hear something a little "plannish" from Mr. Icahn any minute now?

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