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Yahoo! Has Gotten Too Cheap to Ignore

Jim Cramer

09/23/05 - 08:34 AM EDT
This column was originally published on RealMoney on Sept. 22 at 8:51 a.m. EDT. It's being republished as a bonus for TheStreet.com readers.

Is Yahoo!(YHOO Quote) getting too cheap?

The whole (sickening) way down to $31 for Yahoo! while Google(GOOG Quote) has climbed to well above $300, I have watched the leveling process at work. They both now sport identical multiples on next year's earnings. Any appreciation from Google beyond here I believe will accrue to Yahoo!'s benefit. And I believe that Yahoo!, which I own for ActionAlertsPLUS, is getting "too cheap" -- relative term, I know -- to ignore for the growth guys.

I say this because when I read about all of the problems that the newspapers are having, I keep coming back to the fact that they are being challenged not so much by Google on the ad side -- they are on the content side, because Google is taking mindshare away -- but by Yahoo!.

Look, Yahoo!'s never going to be cheap. It still has a giant market cap of more than $40 billion, but it is now down for the 15% for the year. That seems extreme. It's even down year-over-year.

Yahoo!'s been penalized because it didn't guide up enough when it reported and because many funds sold Yahoo! to buy Google, because at $295 for Google and $34 for Yahoo!, it was a bit of a "no-brainer," as the insiders say.

But not anymore, at least from here.

Yahoo! deserves another look.

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