Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO) is expected to release its quarterly earnings report on Tuesday, the day after bidding on its core internet businesses closes.
Analysts of the troubled firm expect Yahoo to post earnings of 7 cents per share which will be down from the 15 cents that was posted during the same period last year. Most investors, however, do not care about the earnings reports as they are most interested in knowing who might be the winner of the bidding process of the company.
Monday will steal Tuesday’s show when we see who the suitors are and maybe get a preview of what they think this is worth,” said Max Wolff, chief economist at Manhattan Venture Partners.
News earlier this week showed that the British version of the Daily Mail’s parent company was also a potential suitor of the Sunnyvale company’s core business. Other possible suitors according to reports are Verizon, CBS, Interactive Corp, and Microsoft.
Verizon by far and away is the leading bidder here,” said Robert Peck, Internet equity analyst at SunTrust, in an interview on Monday. Mr. Peck expects Yahoo’s core business to sell for a figure around the $6 and $8 billion mark. He considers the core business, intelligence property and any real estate holdings the company might be holding.
Another analyst, however, Scott Kessler says the firm is less likely to give investors any knowledge of potential suitors and winners. He said he would not be surprised if Yahoo did not mention any word at all about the bidding process on Tuesday during its earnings call.
Investor optimism about the potential sale has been one of the driving forces behind the push of Yahoo share prices, up by 9 percent this year, as of last Friday.
Kessler’s company, S&P Global Market Intelligence, downgraded Yahoo shares to ‘hold’ from the ‘buy’ position it was in particularly because of the uncertainty of the sale. Kessler has put a 12-month price target on Yahoo shares at $38.
“We see the potential for related disappointment, given continuing fundamental challenges and questions about company leadership,” Kessler wrote in a research note released Friday.
In a further phone interview, he said, “There’s no reason for me or anyone else to be more optimistic about Yahoo’s business than we were days, weeks or months ago.”
Yahoo declined to comment.
 is expected to release its quarterly earnings report on Tuesday, the day after bidding on its core internet businesses closes.){kind=link}