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The valuation is almost completely unrelated to "Yahoo" the core business. Yahoo the publicly traded company owns ~$40 billion worth of marketable securities (Alibaba and Yahoo Japan mainly).

Imagine if you owned a convenience store that had a vault with $40 billion in gold bars inside. Your business would be worth $40 billion, despite being a convenience store.

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> Imagine if you owned a convenience store that had a vault with $40 billion in gold bars inside. Your business would be worth $40 billion, despite being a convenience store.

Not if you owed $12 billion in taxes on those gold bars.

It's a very special, magical vault that confers tax-free status as long as you never open it. There's one gold magnate buyer who has expressed interest in buying your store for nearly the full value of the gold because he never intends on opening the vault.

(I think the metaphor has been stretched to the limit...)

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