What Is Altaba Anyway?

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Altaba (AABA

), the remnants of Yahoo after its sales of its core Internet assets to Verizon Communications Inc. (VZ ), which started trading under its new symbol earlier this week, is seeing its stock march higher Wednesday, raising the question: What is this company all about anyway?

 

In a recent SEC filing, the company is described an investment firm that is tasked with overseeing what’s left of its patent portfolio and its positions in Chinese ecommerce giant Alibaba (BABA

) and Yahoo Japan, as well as smaller investments in other companies. The name is a play on the word "alternate" combined with the name Alibaba. (See also: Revised Deal: Verizon to Pay $350M Less for Yahoo.)

 

A Big Delicious Stake

With shares of Alibaba surging on any given day, investors may be betting that they can get a better deal on the Chinese ecommerce giant via Altaba which is why those shares are moving higher. Altaba holds a 15% stake in Alibaba, which, according to media reports, is valued at around $341 billion.

 

While the former Yahoo basically looks like a holding company for a stake in the Chinese retailer, Yahoo warned in a regulatory filing last year that Alibaba could get hit with a massive tax bill of as much as 36.5% if it tried to buy back the shares. As a result, Altaba’s stock will likely rise as shares of Alibaba do, which was the case Wednesday. Recently, shares of the main Chinese ecommerce company were up 2.6k%, or $3.58 to $141.99. Meanwhile, Altaba was trading up 1.7% or $0.93 a share to $54.74. (See also: Alibaba Revenues Leads MKM to Up Price Target.)

Investors also get access to a stake in Yahoo Japan valued at $7.7 billion by owning shares of Altaba. The company also has $12 billion in cash and marketable debts, $130 million in minority investments including in Snap Inc. (SNAP

), the marker of the app Snapchat, and a $740 million stake in Excalibur, which is a unit of the new company that holds patents of Yahoo that were not sold to Verizon. Leading the new company is Yahoo board member Thomas McInerney. McInerney, formerly the chief financial officer for IAC/InterActiveCorp. (which owns Investopedia), has been a board member since 2012 and sat on the independent board committee charged with selling Yahoo’s core internet assets. McInerney will get base salary of $2 million annually and incentive pay based on performance goals.