just fade away. liz: number one thing to watch tomorrow, is yahoo! maria bartiromo's call on the stock is due in next few minutes. maria, what should investors scrutinize on the call. maria: we're focused whether or not the company holds on to stakes in yahoo! japan and alibaba. we have the fox special report on yahoo!. we'll be answering big questions, will the company sell those stakes as the activists want it to do? will one of america's highest profile ceos keep her job? it looks like a very good number in extended hours. it is all coming up at top of the hour in just about a minute. >> this is a fox business special report. here is maria bartiromo. >> hello, everyone, welcome to a fox business special report tonight. yahoo! coming out with earnings just moments ago. a big beat on both top and

bottom lines. earnings per share coming at 52 cents a share, compared with the expectation of 30 cents a share. revenue generated $1.09 billion for the quarter. that compares to 1.04 billion on the expectation. it may not be the hottest company on wall street it does move markets. take a look what it is doing right now. yahoo! trading up nearly 3% in the extended hours session. that may well set the tone for others tomorrow morning. this is after a monster day in the markets. technology like nasdaq composite best day in 2014 there. is a lot of buzz but for the next hour we're talking about yahoo!. what lies ahead for the company? is alibaba helping or hurting? is this a do-or-die moment for ceo marisa mayer. all this and more coming up in the next hour. we have the founder and ceo of morgan creek capital management. larry fishel man, with the cofounder of dinah link communications and very own

charles payne, host of making "g money with charles payne." scott kessler, capital iq. thanks for all of you being with us. mark, you are heavy into technology stocks. do you own yahoo!? >> we do. we absolutely do. what is your reaction tot numbers tonight? >> we love the beat. we're digging into it like you are over the next hour. we love the relationship they have with alibaba. we love how they changed that late in the process to hold on to a bigger stake. lots to talk about the relationship with alibaba as well. maria: that is certainly true. i know alibaba is big holding of yours, mark. larry, the question of alibaba and whether or not this is hurting or helping, let's delve into this. this is big ownership and value alibaba soared. having said that, does it make it more difficult if the company were to explore a sale?

how do you value stakes in yahoo! japan and alibaba and come up with a price? >> it is tough to do that but if you strip away alibaba yahoo! is really naked right now. if you look at the growth, we'll dive into it, it was display ads, only 5% growth year-over-year which is really anemic. just because they came in beating the street i think they will be in real trouble here. i think if you take everything apart, there is really not much there. i think what will happen there he will be profit-taking on this thing tomorrow. i think it will go back down. i have it at $25 stock in one year. i believe what will happen eventually they get taken over or take under of what they are now, by somebody, whether apple or microsoft. microsoft, they offered at one point $48 billion. i think they get a lot better price now. maria: no kidding. jerry yang said no at the time. charles payne, isn't that the issue though? the fact when you look at the core business, the search business, the content business, it's not growing? so she needs those stakes, marisa mayer, and the board,

they need those stakes and in fact, the core business is not really moving? >> right. ultimately, that is what the invest something all about, right? that is what investors want to see. this week we've seen a certain theme with names, companies that have certain assets, whether ibm or coke or mcdonald's but the ability to grow your core business, to your point, larry i think he makes the point eloquently, down to less than 5% market share from 7% a year ago. it is hard to understand, outside of these assets that they own, what are you investing in? maria: right. >> if i bought the stock tomorrow, what am i investing in? if i want to own alibaba, maybe i buy alibaba now that it is public. what am i investing in when i invest in yahoo! today? that is absolutely the question. maria: let's get to the conference call. marissa mayer is speaking. let's listen in for a few minutes. >> search communications,

digital magazines and video. our resul on display are mixed, with new investment areas growing triple digits but with legacy pc display more than offsetting that growth. turning now to search, our search business continues to be strong showing 6% growth year-over-year on an ex-tac basis. with our search quick driven revenue up 1%, based largely on strong ppc trend and clicks flat year-over-year. this quarter represents our 11th quarter of search revenue growth year-over-year on a revenue ex-tac basis. our price per click is up in almost all regions as we continue to find ways to enhance the performance of our search ads through better user interfaces and higher quality traffic and as advertisers ultimately find our search ads more valuable. in terms of clicks the story is more regional. we saw strong click growth in the americas for example, where clicks grew 9% year-over-year. however we saw fewer clicks

year-over-year in asia, in our asia-pacific region resulting in flat clicks year-over-year. search across both pc and mobile continues to be a highlight where we see a lot of momentum opportunity. speaking of mobile, i'm delighted to report to you today that our revenue in mobile is now material. in q3 we saw mobile revenues in excess of $200 million on a gaap basis. further, we estimate that our gross revenues in mobile will exceed $1.2 billion in revenue this year. this gaap revenue of more than $700 million in 2014. we have invested deeply in mobile and those investments are paying off. our mobile revenue more than doubled year-over-year. not only are mobile products attracting praise and engagement from users and industry rewards, they're generating meaningful revenue for yahoo!. fundamentally we're moving from a company that makes web pages and monetizes through banner ads to a company that makes mobile apps and monetizing them through

native ads. we effected this transformation remarkably quickly with 44% of display ads now being native and our mobile revenue now being material. and as we continue to think about growth, we know that we'll stay strong here. mobile remains the minority of our traffic. and as our mobile traffic grows, we anticipate so will the associated revenue given the effectiveness of our mobile native ads. our display business continues to show some weakness. with revenue down 6% year-over-year. we would certainly like to see our display business grow, we see some very encouraging trend and anticipate we will see growth in the next year. for instance, the number of ads sold is up 24% year-over-year. this really represents and increase in our user ingaugement, especially on mobile. our price per ad declined 24% year-over-year. what we would like both price per ad and ads sold to be positive, if we were to have one

positive one negative, in my view it is always better to have more things to sell and subsequently focus on building greater demand, value and an improved pricing strategy. we feel the pricing of our mobile ads in particular will improve over time with better targeting and increased advertiser demand. and while display revenue has been flat to down, the components of our display business have not been. traditional pc advertising is a sector of advertising and it is in decline across the industry. that decline has been steep here at yahoo!, with legacy pc display advertising creating a drag on the business. maria: we're listening to marisa mayer on her conference call post the earnings news. the earnings news was better than expected, the stock however losing some of its early jump as we are watching it trade in extended hours as this call is going on. anyone on the panel here, hear anything that strikes you from marisa mayer on the call? >> i heard her use the word mobile at least seven times. everyone knows mobile is where

it's at. you can succeed there that is where you want to succeed. obviously alluding to the fact maybe that is where they're going to be. they're not there yet. interesting that small, was at least seven times. i might have miss ad few. >> revenue per ad going down, wait until you see earnings on facebook where i believe they will blow it out and revenue per ad is going up. they're going opposite trend. that's why they're getting wiped out. maria: that is why they're sees such a difference in market value by the way. >> oh, yeah. maria: look at situation of market value, yahoo! with market value of $40 billion and facebook is $196 billion. the market is valuing others a lot higher when it comes to this. let me get to scott kessler, s&p capital iq. in terms of quality of these earnings, scott, what can you tell us? >> the stock traded off as marisa mayer offered her comments because frankly the fundamental outlook is mixed at best.

you know what? contrary to what other panelists as mentioned people are not buying this stock because of fundamentals. if people are doing that they should probably reconsider. we think they should be buying the stock because of tremendous value on the balance sheet. if you look, based on today's market prices, yahoo! stakes and their cash, we're talking about a substantial premium above wh. >> i mean -- >> we agree completely. maria: mark, what do you agree with? you want to buy the stock, not the fundamentals? >> yeah. we agree completely. we think value of their stakes on the balance sheet, softbank japan and alibaba, are worth upwards of mid 50s, to high 50s. if they could figure out how to avoid taxes. we have a creative way for them to do that but we'll talk more about that later. >> no, let's talk about that right now. that is the bottom line. you've got these two incredible stakes, a stake in yahoo! japan and a stake in alibaba.

if they were to sell those stakes they would have an enormous tax bill? >> well, when we said, when we were together on the alibaba day, we talked about alibaba has this desire to be the first global e-commerce brand. and i think there is a beautiful fit for yahoo! to be tucked under alibaba. so, that is how i think they do it in a very tax efficient way. you realize all the stakes. people like us who own yahoo!, get paid in full, as opposed to get marked down like the other commentator said is reality. if they try to sell this in the open market we'll all get less than we have today whereas if we do it in tax efficient way which i think means being bought by somebody, i think it could be a quite interesting acquisition. maria: how about being bought by softbank? that is the. >> that works too. maria: softbank has the money. we know that.

>> that works too. he has said kind of openly he is not as interested. i think he is pretty interested but, you know, he has a lot of assets on his balance sheet that he is trying to wrestle and you know, the telecommunications assets an some of the things he is trying to do. so i actually think it's a beautiful fit for alibaba for lots of different reasons. opening up their e-commerce business. i think they could go after ebay as well but i like the fit with yahoo! because of embedded assets. maria: is that you own the stock? you think it's a take-out target? >> that might be the reason, yes. maria: let me, cheryl casone, were you trying to jump in there? >> no. i was just saying one of the things that noticed here we're seeing other breaking news crossing. you were talking about online ad market, one of the things she was talk about, charles payne picked up on this talking about the fact it is mobile, mobile, they have only .49% on mobile market. she is on conference call putting this out to analysts,

they're putting her bank on that, that is not what they want to hear. they want to hear about her strategy and potential acquisition. she is not giving them what they want yet. i'm listening to the call. she is not going there yet but need to. maria: as you mentioned the stock gave up some momentum as she began talking. joining me with conversation on the telephone fox business wire, john sculley, former ceo of apple. thanks very much for weighing in here, what i would love to get your take, you're a big investor in a whole host of mow -- mobility type companies and internet spaces. why do you think search is not as strong here as perhaps at like a google? why is display ads so troubled? >> well,? >> what we know in the high-tech world you go through different eras. the era of display ads is largely on a downtrend because they don't work as well on mobile devices as they did on

big screens. reality we're moving more towards a world of big data analytics and that works just fine on mobile devices. so i think that is a troubling issue for yahoo!. the thing that is most interesting to me listening to the conversation, maria, is potentially being yahoo! being taken out by alibaba, maybe softbank but alibaba is the more interesting one. what they get, what marissa mayer, and she has her back up against the wall, but she is a highly-respected talent. imagine if alibaba were able to get a relationship with someone as talented and well-connected to maria, as marisa? she can get on the phone and talk with anybody she wants. she can recruit people. if she were part of alibaba, what they call circle of truth, about 25 alibaba related companies in china, she became one of those and with a footprint in the u.s., it could be potentially a game changer for her obviously but it could

be a really interesting entry point for alibaba into the u.s. market. maria: but, john, would they do that? there was a moment in time when yahoo! wanted to acquire alibaba. would alibaba, would yahoo! turn around and accept alibaba acquiring yahoo!? >> come on, this is the high-tech world. anything is possible. maria: i guess so. >> i wouldn't rule that out. it really comes down to jack ma, who has a great relationship apparently with jerry yang and ma's son who has a great relationship with jerry yang. jerry yang will be the king-maker i think if a deal is ever conducted. i have by the way no inside information on this but jerry yang is a key player as the cofounder of yahoo! and marisa is a key talent and she has her back up against the wall. there is no future in display ads and mobile as was pointed out a moment ago is still, they have a very small market share. so i wouldn't rule out thinking about what combination, what is

the win-win for alibaba, what is the win-win for yahoo!? maria: it is great analysis. i guess the question is, where is the strength at yahoo! right now, charles payne? with the core business what is her big shot? >> i think they have to buy a business to have a big shot. what will they do with all the alibaba cash? listen you have starboard pressuring them not to make anymore acquisitions. you gist spent billion dollars with zero growth but everybody is champing at the bit. instant growth, instant change of dynamics of your company. alibaba buying yahoo!? i don't know, maybe that happens but they're sitting on a bunch cash and most shareholders want them to do something smart with it. maria: mark, you're a shareholder. >> yes. maria: would you like to see them sell the two stakes even if it involves a huge tax bill? >> not, not at all.

i clearly prefer them just as john so eloquently described. you take marisa's leadership skills and her network and her creativity. she has done some very creative things at yahoo! they're not being monetized yet. they're long term but i think that is the vision of these other companies. you know jack ma talks in decades. ma's son talks in centuries. when they talk about long-term trend and i think we've become so focused on quarter to quarter numbers we kind of lose track we're in a true technological revolution and i think if alibaba can come to the united states, plant a flag, a big orange flag, my hashtag, wear orange on twitter. >> right. >> if they can do that and get a talent like marisa to lead them, i think that also smooths the anti-competition problems that some people have. you snow, china hasn't opened their market to other u.s. tech companies. they basically want national

champions. and so here's a chance for one of those national champions to try to skip into the united states. i could see some of the government officials in the u.s. saying hey, hey, quid pro quo, you have to open up your market. if they come in and save so to speak or really leverage the brand of a yahoo! which is iconic american company, one of the best things about the revolution in the '96 to 00 tech wave, i think it could be magic. i really like the opportunity. i can't describe it as well as john did. that was quite eloquent. i will have to watch the tape and write it all down. maria: she is making some news here. she is saying that the company is returning about $3 billion to shareholders. obviously that is what shareholders want. john skullly, let me ask you, in terms of the best part of this business right now, where is the opportunity for her to capitalize on? is it the search business or is it really monetizing that advertising business? and content? >> i don't think it's a search

business. they're a distant player in search and that is not likely to be there, big play. i think it all comes down to talent with mariessa. this is not silicon valley anymore. it is not about a technology valley anymore. it's a talent valley. she is up at the top of the pyramid in talent. that is one big asset that yahoo! has. the other one is its brand. yahoo! is highly recognized brand that people go to every day. beyond that i don't see much there, obviously some talented people in the company but i think to go out and acquire aol would be stupid because it is taking two broken companies and putting them together. i don't see anyone in the u.s. wanting to buy yahoo!. there is not a lot there because marisa would probably leave. and so i think the best play is the one we've been talking about which is, you know, go for the long ball and see if there is a relationship. my guess jack ma and marisa would probably get along really

well. they're both really smart, highly ethical, have great reputations. it could be a interesting match. >> i agree. maria: she just said yahoo! has done a great job building its relationship with alibaba and that she continues to grow that relationship. so obviously talking a lot about alibaba and that is the main focus in the extended hour conference call. john, what about softbank, could you see softbank acquiring yahoo!? >> well i never underestimate ma's son. massa when he had a cubicle in softbank in the 1980s. he is clever man. very capable. you've seen him on a acquisition spree over the last two months. so it is possible but i don't know whether it is as logical for softbank to own yahoo! as it would be for alibaba. maria: bottom line, right down the line, who on this panel thinks yahoo! gets acquired by

end of the year? larry, what do you think? >> i think it does. maria: charles? >> i don't think so. maria: you don't think it gets acquired by year-end? >> by year-end? i don't think so. maria: what are you saying? will they be acquired next year. >> short period of time. maria: you're not expecting -- >> alibaba looking at them. they have a bunch of cash. they have a lot of time to look around. someone mentioned how patient they are. they don't have to be rushed. >> john sculley, does the company get acquired? >> i don't think anything will happen quickly. key thing for marisa just not to panic. as long as jerry yang is covering her back. i don't think anybody will happen quickly. if this does happen as we creative scenario which is purely speculative, i don't think it will happen for, at least a year. maria: mark and scott kessler, wrap us up here. >> i think it happens a little faster. i think john's right, they should take their time but i also think there's, nothing like seizing the moment. you have a hot ipo. you have a incredible market opportunity.

i think you have got rapid growth at alibaba in terms it of profitability next year. maria: yep. >> $8 billion plus. the time is right. let's do this and create something special. maria: scott kessler, final word. >> absolutely not. we think yahoo! has a lot of options and a lot of value. maria: thanks everybody on the panel. we appreciate it. john, scott, mark, larry, charles, we appreciate it. see you later on this hour. is i can't's problem an image one? we'll have more on the company's branding struggles. 50 companies in two years, five zero. is marisa mayer trying too hard? go ahead and put your bag right here.

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earnings tonight. for the latest. and we'll bring you more of the contentious moments coming up. yahoo has been on a busy shopping spree buying up 50 different companies. according to a report from tech crunch it seems yahoo has a new acquisition in the works with digital video advertising services. here with more on this is sarah. thanks for being here. >> thanks for having me. i want to say it was both ingrid and i who both broke the story. maria: congratulations on breaking the story. tell us more about it. what is this acquisition? >> so yahoo, there's been a lot of speculation that yahoo needed maybe some other ad -- they launched another advertising platform earlier and it's been struggling. so they it makes a lot of sense for them to acquire. there's been -- from

what i heard my sources, at first yahoo had gone to bright role and offered to buy them for half a million. bright role said the price is a million. and they've been settling for 700 million. maria: the acquisition of tumbler was obviously the biggest acquisition they've done and that once again keeps coming up in terms of whether or not she sort of stuck her head up with too many acquisitions. >> she's defensive right now about the tumbler acquisition. here's what she's saying, she's throwing out numbers to the analyst. she's like, look, we have a billion monthly users when comes to tumbler. we'll make 100 million in revenue in 2015. the analyst seem to be okay, but she's really on the defensive right now. tumbler was a 1.1 billion acquisition. the total startups 1.3 billion just in

three years. excuse me two years. she's kind of trying to defend that tumbler acquisition. we're monitoring what else she has to say. maria: the criticism she acquired all these companies. she's done one big deal, the truth is that was tumbler. based on what you have reported, sarah, has the tumbler deal been a positive one? >> well, that depends on who you ask. they certainly need some help with ad tech. their platform that they released earlier hasn't on. bright role on the other hand has been a strong contender against google ads for youtube. them bringing on some advertising into the mix that's already successful, already making revenue of what's speculated about 100 that's here could actually help boost what yahoo needs in

advertising. maria: good to have you on the program. we so appreciate your time tonight. we'll see you soon. sarah. on the call meyers said that they are sending $3 billion back to shareholders. we know what starboard wants. they want them to sell those stakes and give that money back to shareholders in the form of buy backs. what is she saying on the call in regards to that. >> all they've given us is the initial 8 million buy back. we got that in the release. but as far as if there's going to be a more dividend story or are they going to do more acquisitions that's the next line of questions. they want to know are there going to be acquisitions. 6.3 billion before taxes coming in for the company. what is that money going to be used for? ticht she's got an off the story about mobile. which might have been a good thing. the start started to go down. at this point they're still discussing tumbler

and the acquisition story is about to pick up some steam. maria: we'll look at that. is this company equipped to compete with the big guys. take a look at the advertising business. is it a search engine or a news source or is it a company with an image problem. next after this break.

maria: welcome back. to our special coverage of yahoo's quarterly report tonight. the company was once the most popular search engine in the world. now yahoo is spreading itself into shopping other ventures. does suffering an identity crisis? the chairmen and ceo of nbc partners also tim sanders both join us on the fox business wire. good to talk to you both. tim, let me kick it off with you. why don't you talk to us

a little about the culture at yahoo when you were there and knew it so well and how it may have changed. >> so i show up in 1999 right after they bought -- i got to say the culture is about being fun, being different and figuring how to build products that are essential to people's life. after 2001, it shifted and the culture became one about building relationships with advertisers and content providers. it was sort of fun, but this was the early stage of yahoo getting into the process. maria: so you're saying that the culture changed quite a bit. they're looking at a whole host of businesses now. >> after the dot-com crash, new management was kind of part of an adult organization where a new generation came in that tried to put a sense of accountability on the company. the one thing that terry did that i think carol

wrote down that was terry kept feeding the spirit. the thing i noticed about imroo from day one, they thought they were going to win. that made them more creative and much more attractive to potential customers and partners. it's been a long time since they've had that. she's trying to put that back in the company, messier. maria: let's talk advertising here. does it surprise you that the supply ads are still pressured? does it surprise you that we're not seeing the kind of moneytizing that many people expected at yahoo? >> not at all because program media buying is having a very negative impact on premium display ad inventory and pricing pressures were down another 24 percent. it's shifting marketing dollars of excess inventory to facebook, twitter, et cetera, and it will continue to have an impact on them in a negative way. key thing messier has to

deal with is she has to define her strategy. what does yahoo look like the next three to five years. then define metrics of performance that she can be held accountable to each and every quarter as it relates to performance. the second thing she has to deal with is the pressure from wall street about what to do with the excess cash, the alibaba stock that shshe has. part of the pressure that she has that other firms like facebook, twitter, google don't have is she's being asked to create short-term impact by buying stocks and using the excess cash. she's not getting the benefit that apple and these other organizations have to use the kawsh to be able to reinvent the firm. she'll never outrun that pressure in the short-term unless she defines a long-term strategy and then says here are the metrics of performance i will hold myself accountable to. her core business was up 1 percent in the quarter

which was surprising to most analysts who thought it would be down 3 percent. but that's still really mediocre growth. she has to reinvent the core business. if she can't do that, ultimately she'll come under siege. no matter what she does, including, you know, the idea that she may buy a video content from brightroll, those aren't material to offset the decline in her core business. maria: what about the deal with microsoft? they're not getting enough revenue from that deal. a lot of people want them to get out of that deal because it's not as advantageous for yahoo is that an issue. >> the problem is that there's so much competition that's happening that partners are becoming, you know -- you know, competitors, people that they're collaborating on are becoming competitors. they need to be in their

own position to define their success independent of the other big players. because everybody is trying to, you know, be the next google and be the next facebook. those are the big make up players. microsoft still hasn't been a big player in that space, although by hanging on, you know, and not doing much, they actually gained share and they're in a great position to use their cash to be able to establish themselves. but the big players that yahoo faces really are the googles and facebooks in the world. but there's a litany of other smaller players that are nipping at their yields. maria: the stock has been trading up because people think this company will get acquired. but why do we give messier meyers. meg came out and said here is my five-year plan. and yet marissa mayer doesn't get that

allowance. >> she hasn't put forth a five-year plan. she's been dealing from issue to issue and tactic to tactic. there's no long-term plan that investors can buy into. maria: what should that strategic plan look like? what do you think is her best shot here? >> i don't know the business well enough to say what she should do, but what shems do is define what her highest and best uses of the capital are. how she can reinvent over the long-term the core business and how what she's going to do is reinforce how they've a sustainable force of differentiation and a unique selling proposition long-term without trying to reinvent the wheel completely. she won't have enough time and resources to do that. >> i think that yahoo needs to become a habit, just like google and facebook is. that's the trick. and i believe the opportunity is in mobile around news, weather and

sport. it's taking out tv news. sports news. they have a huge lead on espn on user growth. that's the future for them along with brightroll and fixing this video space out. they need to go on the offensive. people hate facebook. whether it's the habit which is compared to smoking cigarettes and they're fearful of google. yahoo, nobody has a bad attitude about yahoo as a brand. if you set templar aside, i know the founders of a dozen companies they bought, they're innovative. >> one more thing i will say, they are having success in mobile. to reiterate what tim said, i think mobile is a very important of their future. that is a key driver. if you look at what

facebook really went over the resurgence it was in their success of cracking the code on mobile. if they can continue to build on their mobile platform, which is still really an undeveloped territory for most of the other media companies, they can reestablish themselves. maria: i think you make a great point. display ads aren't working well on mobile. facebook figured it out. that was the big criticism around facebook. tim sanders, thanks so much for joining us tonight. and we'll see you soon. gerri willis host of fox business obviously at this hour joins me now. gerri, good to see you. gerri: excellent show so far. amazing discussion of yahoo. i wanted to talk about digital ad sales because that's the game. right? everybody has been talking about it. give you a sense of their share of the market. yahoo was 2.9 percent of 120 billion digital ad market. that ranks in number

three last year. they're falling to number four coming in 2014 according to e marketer which has the forecast of these numbers. maria: the display ad you can say it's not working on mobile. the display ads the screen is a lot smaller. part of it is an economy that is sort of bumping along the bottom. how do they turn this around? gerri: that's a great question. when you look at where they ranked last year, they weren't even in the top ten. they have a long way to go. i know marissa mayer is talking about this extensively, but it's a high hurtle, and it's a tiny part of their business. you're starting at a low point in the curve to try to build that back. maria: who is marissa mayer she has taken the tech world by storm. how she became a lightning rod next. stay with us on this special report.

maria: welcome back. we've been taking a look at yahoo throughout the hour. now, we take a deeper look into the woman spearheading the company marissa mayer. and nicholas carlson. author of a book about marissa mayer. good to see you guys. allen how would you characterize messier marissa mayer's performance thus far. >> obviously there's a lot of opinions. there are always critics and there are always supporters. if you look at what messier has done what ceos have to do she did check the boxes. she established a vision. she talked about becoming basically a part of everyone's daily

habit. she then executed on that with a series of large acquisitions and also acquiring great talent through other means. set a plan to go mobile fast. went after the young demographic was big to her. the quick check the boxes of what a transformational ceo needs to do, she executed well. maria: is that enough. >> enough is a matter of time. how long does it take to win a war, some take a long time, some short. maria: the market has given meg so much time. here's my five-year plan and yet messier two years into it was criticizing and criteria techniquing maybe it's what we said in our earlier segment, maybe it's because she hasn't put together the five-year plan. she needs to put the five-year plan together. (?) nicholas, you wrote the book on marissa mayer and it's coming out. why is she such a

lightning rod? >> the reason she's taking heat right now is that she had two years of air cover from alibaba and she had all this opportunity to really get in there cut a lot of people get a strategy going and she kind of got a great start, and it sort of faded and that's why suddenly alibaba everyone is paying attention to yahoo and they're looking at a company that is barely growing, sometimes not growing, has a lot of employees. and, oh, look at this it's still terrible. maria: alibaba came out as a lightning rod itself. and everyone focused on this chinese company coming to wall street. that put the light on yahoo. do you think they will be selling that stake? >> i think they'll have to find a way to get rid of that stake? a tax efficient manner. i don't think the next jeff smith will stop banking the drum on there's a lot of money to be captured there. that's a huge arbitrage

opportunity, and you're not going to -- wall street will not yelling and screaming about it until something happens. i think what will happen is you'll end up having a small yahoo that's a spun out independent company and some other -- some other way that maybe this investors holding company that holds alibaba and yahoo japan as a separate company. maria: i don't disagree with you. i think alibaba could be a part of it. something has to give at some point. the stock is up. as people buy into the company thinking it will get acquired now. >> right. yeah, when you look at the stock performance, you can certainly say that it's been friendly to shareholders. the question is -- maria: thank you, activities. >> and how much was created around the situation around alibaba and also the anticipation of yahoo being an acquisition target and how much was belief in the potential for this thing to be a big jawinger naught and

executing a strangle. i don't know i think probably the former. quite frankly, there's a real opportunity for this company to execute. maria: the culture is really important. (?) when facebook shot on the scenes, people were saying they're leaving google and going to facebook. you never heard that buzz around yahoo. would you send people to go work at yahoo? is this tomorrow's internet company? >> when you talk about talent. you've got all kinds of dynamics in play. generically they've done a great job attracting talent. she had 40 engineers. they're now over 400. her really cool strategy of what she has labeled aqua hiring. buying companies as much as for the talent they possess as much as for their property. being in the tant business, thank youfully it is not easy to acquire exceptional talent. you can be to put it to

work. build value. i think she's done a good job. maria: has she acquired too many companies. >> she spent $1.3 billion on these companies. that's an unfair number because she spent 1.1 billion on tumbler. no one should pay attention to the money spent on those aqua hires. $200 million for yahoo which is a 5 billion-dollar year revenue business and have profits of nearly a billion dollars. spend the money. that's not the problem for yahoo. the problem with yahoo is it's not growing. it doesn't solve any problems. messier knows that and she's working on it. it's a super hard problem to solve. make the next snapchat. maria: what's her biggest shot to grow this company? >> i think what she needs to do, is i think she needs to go out -- i heard this in the industry, she needs to make a bunch of youtube channels work with

google, make new brands for youtube and then promote them also on yahoo.com so she gets this cross-reference effect. she said outsource adds to facebook and twitter. maria: this is the fifth ceo in five years. what does that do to culture and morale? >> look the next few quarters for her will be critical. no question about it. the installation of a new ceo is not something that happens by flipping a switch. there is time that is a big cost of integration. so changing out ceos is not a manner to be taken lightly and there's nothing that will say that the ceo will do something differently than another ceo. maria: it seems like the board is with her so far. allen good to have you on the program. (?) nicholas, stick around. we'll talk a little more about what you're working on little book. what you to look for in the coming days and

weeks ahead. stay with us as our special report continues. back in a moment.

maria: welcome back to our special coverage tonight as we have been digging deeper into yahoo's earnings. we are about to wrap up the program. mark, nicholas, and larry. nicholas, what strikes you most about this story? >> well, actually i was talking to buzzfeed ceo, and he said something interesting. he said i don't get why marissa mayer is competing -- she's competing in products and media. and she's trying to compete in both realms in ways that the established winners are best at. she's going after stars and media like katy correspond i can. why doesn't she try to avoid that competition and build something new? (?) of course, he's talking about buzzfeed. maria: wait. there was a combination there to be had?

>> i think yahoo would be smart to buy buzzfeed. >> it's not there. we're trying to talk about now what should have happened two years ago. everyone is trying to make a case for yahoo when you're trying to make a case for a company, that's a problem. so the fundamentals are not there. maria: how do they get there? we're talking about an advertising business. we're talking about a search business. how do you compete with the giants like google. >> what if you thens do we want to get there. a couple years ago, two executives of yahoo had a plan to sell the company to private equity and they addn idea to strip out all kinds of costs. they wanted to get rid of the search engineers. then they wanted to outsource the display ad business to google. so i think there's plenty of way to grow. >> we just saw in the call, they're not getting the money for the ads. the revenue is going down. once again we see

facebook next week. they'll blow it out again. this thing will sell off more. and everyone will say, yahoo is in trouble. maria: mark, you're a key shareholder, what do towptz happen? >> you asked earlier on the show, you know, what did wemple on the conference call and i think that's the problem. what i didn't hear is i didn't hear passion. i didn't hear enthusiasm. i actually don't think messier should be reading those is it a advertise particulars. maybe she's never seen it, but simon insec does a ted talk and she needs to go to the why. let's talk about the vision. what does she need? she needs a war chest to go out (?) and build these defenses against some of the things that are falling away, but also offense to go into areas where they have an edge. they have a dynamic and iconic brand. person after person on

your show talk about how she is as a leader. a transformational leader. if you combine with alibaba you get this great war chest, she becomes the dynamic leader in the us and she brings that momentum and that scalability to what i think could be a great why. she's to get the focus on the why. stop talking about the what. maria: that's a great point. she started the call reading bullet points. >> i hate when people read. maria: bottom line what i didn't hear, nicholas, mark, i didn't hear cost-cutting. the wall street journal said to expect this cost-cutting. i would expect, the stock would rally big time. >> people have been asking for it for years. messier even brought it up for her interview for the job and it never happened. >> she kept saying mobile because that's what everyone wants to hear. but there's really nothing for it. maria: does this company get acquired? >> there will be events

that gets a tax efficiency around alibaba. maria: which is why the stock is up since messier took over. thank you so much. mark, nicholas. that will do it for tonight's special report. making money with charles payne begins now. charles: i'm charles payne and you're watching making money. impressing move for yahoo. they posted a wider quarters earnings release. revenues -- so is that enough? straight out to maria bartiromo who hosted an hour long special. and maria you had a great show. thank you for sticking around. your hair looks fantastic. you spoke to a whole lot of experts. you've interviewed the ceo in the past. what do you make of it all? maria: i have to reit rit something that my guest just said. that is mark. and he said, there was no need for messier to be reading bullet points at the beginning of the