To: richardred who wrote (3964 ) 6/14/2015 4:35:26 PM From: richardred Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 7140 An oldie that IMO might be coming to fruition. Levenson snip> "Honestly, I think Twitter should go buy Yahoo," Levinsohn said. "If you separate Yahoo into the two businesses it really is -- a tracking company and an operating company -- if you put Twitter and Yahoo together, it would be the most powerful force in the media business." SunTrust Snip >analyst Robert Peck, who predicted late last year that Twitter CEO Dick Costolo would leave the company this year and named Levinsohn as a candidate to take over the company. Biz Break: Twitter soars after talk of Yahoo acquisition By Jeremy C. Owens jowens@mercurynews.com Posted: 01/06/2015 03:35:22 PM PST 4 Comments | Updated: 5 months ago FILE - A worker walks into Yahoo headquarters in Sunnyvale, Calif., in this July 29, 2009 file photo. (Paul Sakuma/AP photo) Today: After former Yahoo interim CEO talks up an acquisition of his former company by Twitter, the San Francisco microblogging site's stock jumps. Also: Report claims Apple Watch to debut in March. The Lead: Former Yahoo CEO says Twitter should buy Yahoo Twitter stock soared Tuesday after former interim Yahoo CEO Ross Levinsohn suggested that the San Francisco social-networking company should buy Yahoo . Twitter shares gained 6.5 percent to $38.76 Tuesday, easily the biggest jump in the SV150 -- the next largest percentage gain was 2.3 percent by Rocket Fuel, and no other major Silicon Valley tech company added more than 2 percent on the day. Most of Twitter's gains came in the afternoon session, after Levinsohn told CNBC that he believes Twitter should buy the core business of Yahoo. "Honestly, I think Twitter should go buy Yahoo," Levinsohn said. "If you separate Yahoo into the two businesses it really is -- a tracking company and an operating company -- if you put Twitter and Yahoo together, it would be the most powerful force in the media business." The comment came in discussion about a suggestion from SunTrust analyst Robert Peck, who predicted late last year that Twitter CEO Dick Costolo would leave the company this year and named Levinsohn as a candidate to take over the company. Later Tuesday, Peck put out a note in response to Levinsohn's suggestion, calling the idea "intriguing" and offering reasons it would be a beneficial pairing, such as synergies between Twitter and Tumblr. "To be clear, this is merely a hypothetical scenario suggested on a media outlet at this point," Peck noted, before breaking down the convoluted financial mechanics such a move would need. To make such a deal work, Yahoo would have to spin off its Asian assets, Peck wrote, leaving the company's core business plus about $9 billion in cash, mostly from its Alibaba IPO proceeds. After that move, Peck suggests Yahoo could command a $12 billion acquisition price, without accounting for the extra $9 billion in cash the company holds -- combining those two figures comes close to equaling Twitter's full market capitalization, which neared $23 billion with Tuesday's pop."While Twitter could apply a good portion of its cash toward the deal, it would need to raise more debt or a significant component of equity in any potential transaction," Peck determined. Levinsohn played down any interest in the Twitter CEO position, applauding Costolo's work and mentioning Twitter executive Adam Bain as a potential in-house replacement. The Wall Street Journal later reported that Levinsohn had talked with Bain about a Yahoo-Twitter mobile partnership during Levinsohn's short rein as CEO of Yahoo. Levinsohn was passed over for the permanent CEO position at Yahoo for Marissa Mayer, who has faced heat from investors for failing to resurrect the Internet giant in her two years at the helm. Fortune reporter Dan Primack noted that the entire wild scenario laid out by Levinsohn and Peck would result in Levinsohn running Yahoo after all . There is nothing concrete to indicate Twitter is actually considering an acquisition of Yahoo -- it seems to be a fanciful acquisition scenario bandied about by analysts and outsiders, similar to last year's talk of Google purchasing eBay or unsubstantiated rumors of an Apple bid for Tesla Motors . In fact, there is another possible reason for Twitter's big Wall Street jump Tuesday: Rumors that activist investor Carl Icahn will buy Twitter stock and agitate for the company to be acquired by Google or Facebook. Again, there is little actual fire underneath that smoke, as the talk seems to be a result of a baseless 2015 prediction from a writer at The Street. Yahoo also gained Tuesday, adding 0.2 percent to close at $49.21 and give the Sunnyvale company a market cap of more than $46 billion, double Twitter's current Wall Street valuation. SV150 market report: Tech stocks sink as Apple reportedly plots Watch debut Gains from Twitter and Yahoo couldn't boost tech stocks overall, as Wall Street continued to reel from the recent decline in oil prices and the tech-heavy Nasdaq plunged the most out of the three main Wall Street indexes. Apple couldn't help boost Silicon Valley stocks, adding just a penny to close at $106.26 amid reports about its next wave of product releases. 9to5Mac's Mark Gurman dropped two reports of approaching Apple debuts Monday, including a prediction that the Apple Watch will begin selling in March. Gurman reported that representative from Apple's retail stores will visit the company's headquarters in Cupertino or its Austin, Texas, offices to receive training on selling the smartwatch in early- to mid-February in advance of a March launch, mirroring earlier reports of a spring launch . Gurman also reported that Apple plans to redesign its MacBook Air laptop this year and get rid of full-sized USB ports and SD card slots, which would follow the company discarding built-in optical-disc drives. Google dropped 2.5 percent to $506.64 while plotting its future in televisions: The company is working with TV networks to help them sell video ad time through the Mountain View company's system, while completely jettisoning the Google TV effort for the new Android TV offering. Cisco dropped a penny to $27.05 while working with Charter on cloud cable-television delivery, and eBay fell 1.3 percent to $55.02 while naming a new board member from the TV industry. Gilead Sciences gained 0.9 percent to $97.65 after announcing the acquisition of a drug program aimed at liver diseases not caused by alcohol, and Yelp dropped 0.2 percent to $52.44 before declaring that the FTC investigation into its business practices has been closed with no action. mercurynews.com