Is the subtext here that by doing well financially, it makes it less likely that MSFT will take over Yahoo? And as a result, the arbs are selling Yahoo now?
No.. Y! actually didn't do much better than same time last year (2007 Q1).
It only seems so large because of their one-time sale of Alibaba stock. The actual profits from normal business were a tad-bit less than that of last year.
Basically, they still beat expectations (which didn't include the one-time event), but not by a lot. (And still less than last year).
What happened in Q1 2007 is not relevant here, and neither is Alibaba, because those are things that analysts would have already taken into account. What is new is that they exceeded the analysts expectations, and usually when that happens the stock goes up.
I'm just saying I find it unusual that because of the circumstances, exceeding expectations, that is, doing better than people thought they would, actually makes the stock go down.
Yahoo's stock price has not had much to do with their fundamentals for a long time. At this point, all of the institutional investors are just placing a bunch of over/under bets on the Microsoft acquisition going through, hence why it's basically at $30 per share.
Is the subtext here that by doing well financially, it makes it less likely that MSFT will take over Yahoo? And as a result, the arbs are selling Yahoo now?