Reports: Yahoo! Seeking Acquisition Of Cable Networks With Alibaba Cash

(RTTNews) - Search giant Yahoo!, Inc. (YHOO) is mulling the possible acquisitions of cable networks with the riches it reaped from sale of its stake in Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd (BABA) through the initial public offering, according to media reports on Monday.

Yahoo! sold 140 million American Depositary Shares of the Alibaba in the IPO, and retains 383.57 million ordinary shares of Alibaba, representing about 15 percent of Alibaba's outstanding ordinary shares. Yahoo! invested a mere $1 billion for a 40 percent stake in the Alibaba way back in 2005.

Sunnyvale, California-based Yahoo! has already been engaged in acquisition talks with Scripps Networks Interactive, Inc. (SNI) for sometime and is now reportedly showing interest in acquiring Cable News Network or CNN, from Time Warner, Inc. (TWX).

Yahoo! was initially talking to Scripps to buy Food Network, but then it ended up showing interest in acquiring all of Scripps that included HGTV and Travel Channel. Scripps is the parent company to seven cable channels which has a market capitalization of about $10.3 billion.

Meanwhile, there were also strong rumors of Yahoo! wanting to buy CNN, which could cost its in the range of $5 billion to $6 billion.

Yahoo! CEO Marissa Mayer is looking at these assets as a diversification to save the company. However, many of Yahoo's large investors are pushing for returning capital to shareholders instead of going for big acquisitions.

Another plan being put forward by the investors is to split Yahoo! into two separate, publicly-traded companies, with one holding its core business and the other its Asian assets.

Under Mayer, Yahoo! has gone through some refurbishing and introduced a suite of web, mobile, and video ad products. Mayer has been under pressure from Starboard Value LP, which had acquired a significant stake in Yahoo!

The hedge fund has been urging the company to seek a combination with AOL, Inc (AOL), cut costs and monetize its non-core equity investments. However, Starboard says more remains to be done to spur growth.

In Friday's regular trading session, YHOO is currently trading at $50.23, down $0.28 or 0.55% on a volume of 1.89 million shares. In the past 52-week period, the stock has been trading in a range of $32.15 to $52.62.