It’s round two for Yahoo.
At the moment, telco operator Verizon appears to be the leading contender to buy Yahoo with a $3 billion bid for Yahoo’s core business, reports the Wall Street Journal.
At first glance, that’s a fraction of the $6 billion to $8 billion analysts thought Yahoo’s business would fetch. On closer examination, it’s not far off.
Verizon’s bid reportedly doesn’t include Yahoo’s patents and real estate, two major assets for the flailing search company. Yahoo’s intellectual property is reportedly worth $3 billion, according to an estimate from SunTrust Robinson Humphrey, but some believe the IP portfolio, which has about 6,000 patents, to be worth even more, closer to $4 billion.
Meanwhile, analysts peg the value of Yahoo’s 1 million square feet of real estate at $1 billion to $1.8 billion.
Of course, these are just numbers on a sheet. The math, totaling near $9 billion in the best-case scenario, is comforting—if only to show Yahoo isn’t the fire sale that many thought it would be.