Dallas, Texas 12/19/2013 (FINANCIALSTRENDS) – Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO) is the original don of the Information Technology era and has had lived its days of glory over the past decade before more nimble footed and new age technology companies came along and pushed this $41 billion market capped firm to the lower echelons of the hierarchy among the tech firms.
Commissioning Tech Firm To Develop New Talking App
In a move that is designed to be as much a show of strength to its own employees as to its competitors, Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO) has been in talks to contract a small but niche tech firm Robin Labs to develop a new voice based application which when fully developed is expected to rival the offerings of its competitors like Apple Inc Siri.
What Does The App Do ?
Ilya Eckstein who is the co-founder and is also the Cheif Executive Robin Labs has explained what Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO) is attempting to accomplish by commissioning the building of this new voice based app in his statement quoted below. “The idea is that brands could offer their content to their audiences, wrapped in voice-interactive UI.” The big difference between Apple Inc own offering in comparison to this new app under development by Robin Labs, is that this new app will be compatible with across the platform operating systems like Android and Windows OS.
Stock Performance
In the past one month the stock of this original internet behemoths has posted strong growth amounting to 14.4 percent. At current price points it is trading at $40.04 per share which translates to a 104 percent increase in its valuation by the market in the past one year. In fact this appreciation is quite commendable given the scepticism that investment community and the trade gurus had displayed about the firms prospects over the long term. To put this growth of Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO) in context one has to track the stock performance of its rival Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB). In spite of all the glowing press reports about the social media networking major has managed a 107 percent increase in its market value in the same period. At current extended valuations the stock of Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO) is trading just half a percentage point shy of its past 52 week high price points.
Rating Agencies Agree
Not just the paying investors but even the trade analysts seem to be coming around to appreciate the recovery in the fortunes of this S&P 500 index tracked stock. In a glowing commendation of the direction in which its CEO Marissa Mayer has been leading Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO) along, rating agencies UBS, RBC Capital Mkts and MKM Partners have upgraded the stock in the past one three weeks. The consensus is that the stock is now worth to be pegged in the outperformer category and has attracted a consensus price target of $46.
Other Related News
If news reports that are cropping up in the online media are to be believed, Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO) has acquired a small tech firm PeerCDN which is supposed to help content distributors by reducing the bandwidth required to transfer and store digital content on company servers and is also instrumental in reducing the delivery response time in transferring content. This news was first reported by online tech journal Techcrunch.
