Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer wants three years to turn company around
Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer wants three years to turn the company around, the executive told Charlie Rose in a PBS interview Thursday evening.
"We have a three-year strategic plan," Mayer told Rose when asked if she will be running Yahoo a year from now. "I can see how it will work and how we can actually get to a successful turnaround of Yahoo, but I think that, you know, it`s about our users and it`s about our employees and what`s happening with all of them, and I certainly hope that our services are here a year from now and that they run even better than they do today. I can see that that should easily be the outcome."
Mayer's comments come after Yahoo announced plans in February to explore options to sell its core assets and cut its workforce, following increasing pressure from investors. Several reports have noted Yahoo is currently shopping a list of forty potential buyers, including Time and Verizon.
Yahoo's strategic review committee is working with Goldman Sachs & Co. Inc., J.P. Morgan and PJT Partners as its financial advisers for a sale. Mayer said in the past that the plan is to work on strategic alternatives at the same time it carries out its turnaround plan.
When asked what Mayer has learned during her time at Yahoo, she harped on timing, according to a transcript from the Wall Street Journal.
"I take one lesson away, I think that pacing and time is always really important," Mayer told Rose. "I think there are some things that we probably did too quickly. I think there are some things that we probably did too slowly. And, you know, not enough. But I think that we learn from all that and are constantly getting better. And I think when I look at the strategic plan we just rolled out, that is the culmination of a lot of that learning, of saying, OK, one of the things we should do is we should walk away from declining revenue more quickly and get more focused on areas of revenue and areas of the business that can grow really substantially to get us to return to growth more quickly."
Some investors have called for Mayer's removal from her position.
In 3.5 years the company went from an Internet pioneer to "the same kind of company that AOL was," Erick Jackson, managing director at SpringOwl Asset Management, told CNBC on Friday. "Other than one hour appearance with Charlie Rose, there's little else to point to," the investor said.
Mayer became CEO and President of Yahoo in 2012, after being Google's 20th employee starting in 1999.