MarketWatch Up on Yahoo! Report
Shares of
MarketWatch.com
(MKTW)
rose 4% Monday on a report that
Yahoo!
(YHOO)
has emerged as the leading bidder in an auction to buy the business news Web site.
MarketWatch was up 55 cents to $13.80 after M&A journal
The Deal
said the auction is "Yahoo's to lose" despite competition from companies including
Viacom
(VIAB) - Get Viacom Inc. Class B Report
and
Dow Jones
TheStreet Recommends
(DJ)
.
MarketWatch was reported to be for sale last week for a price that reflects its $380 million market cap plus a premium. A source cited in the
Deal
story noted that Yahoo! has more than enough cash or equity to complete a transaction and isn't "afraid to pay a premium."
Final bids in the auction, which reportedly is being conducted by the investment bank
UBS
, are due this week, according to
The New York Times
.
Shares of MarketWatch, a competitor of this Web site, remain about 7% below their 52-week high of $14.87, touched last spring, although it has recovered nicely from the summer low of $7.70 hit during a general slump in tech shares. The stock has risen steadily since early September, when Viacom bought out public shareholders of SportsLine.com, a company its CBS unit seeded with capital along with MarketWatch in 1997.
Viacom and Britain's
Pearson
each own about 22% of MarketWatch.
Last Wednesday, MarketWatch reported third-quarter earnings of $949,000, or 4 cents a share, up from $393,000, or 2 cents a share, a year ago. Revenue, which included fees paid under a newswire venture with Thomson Financial, rose 71% from a year ago to $19.8 million.
