Yahoo is quietly looking to sell a massive piece of land once slated for its big, expansion offices (YHOO)
REUTERS/Ruben Sprich
After years of turning down potential offers, Yahoo has reportedly changed its mind and is quietly looking to sell a huge parcel of land in the Valley, Silicon Valley Journal's Nathan Donato-Weinstein reports.
This is a huge 48+-acre site in Santa Clara that Yahoo bought back in 2006 for $106 million, according to Donato-Weinstein.
Yahoo had planned to use the land to host a corporate expansion.
Meanwhile that area, not far from the new home of the San Francisco Giants' Levi's Stadium, has grown up.
So this could merely be Yahoo putting out feelers to find out how much that land could bring it if it found a buyer.
Then again, selling this land could also be a clue about Yahoo's workforce. Until Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer can find a new big hit to get the company growing again, she is under tremendous pressure from investors to manage expenses. At least one investor suggested that Yahoo needs to trim its workforce down to about 3,000 people. (That would mean laying off about 9,000 employees.)
It's a leap to say that selling this land indicates anything that dramatic for Yahoo. However, the company did recently announce that it was killing its plan to spin off its hugely-valuable stake in Alibaba and will instead spin out its core Internet business, the part of the company where just about all of its employees work.
Meanwhile, there have been ongoing rumors that Yahoo also plans to sell itself, though its board has been denying that talk, saying the company has not decided to put itself up for sale.