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Institutional investors in Yahoo and members of the Board of Directors are showing increasing impatience with the lack of a turnaround at Yahoo under CEO Marissa Mayer.

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Yahoo's uncertain future as Board members differ with CEO Marissa Mayer on the right strategy. Mayer sees Yahoo's turnaround as taking more time and this not being the right time to look for a buyer. And the Board saying Mayer has run out of time for the turnaround.

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With layoffs starting in August 2014, employee morale is steadily declining at Yahoo. Employees are losing faith in CEO Marissa Mayer by Jan. 2016, according to this article in the NYT. Hedge fund Starboard Value is pursuing change of management in the company.

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According to analysts Yahoo's 24% stake in Alibaba and its stake in Yahoo Japan is what gives its share price momentum. U.S. Yahoo operations are estimated by Topeka Capital Markets to provide only about $10 of Yahoo's value per share. Alibaba's operations as a retailer in China account for $30 of the value per share, and Yahoo Japan $7 per share in value. Yahoo's current share price in Jan 214 is $40, having doubled in the past year. Analysts say there is not much CEO Marissa Mayer can do to reverse the slow decline in Yahoo revenues as it competes with Google, Facebook and other competitors for premium display advertising.

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Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer launched a series of acquisitions after becoming CEO in 2012. Tumblr was acquired for $1 billion. Yahoo has disclosed in a regulatory filing that it plans to write down the entire value of that acquisition. A number of other acquisitions have also failed to deliver value as Yahoo struggles in ad revenues- mobile ad revenues for Yahoo in the 1st quarter of 2016 were $250 million compared to $4.5 billion or 17 times that for Facebook. Yahoo has 200 million visitors each month, but its display ads are not strong on mobile and its mobile apps have not done well with users. As advertising shifted to mobile Yahoo stumbled badly. The failed acquisitions investment could have been better utilized in retaining talented mobile engineers, but Yahoo's CEO resorted to cost cutting when the strategy of looking at consumer trends for news content through digital magazine investments failed. As a result Yahoo suffered from slumping morale and a brain drain.

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Henrique de Castro, chief operaing officer, leaves Yahoo after only one year on the job following poor performance in generating advertising revenue in 2013. He was hired from Google by CEO Marissa Mayer. Yahoo's share of display ad revenue in the U.S. declined in 2013 to 5.8% from 6.8% in 2012. Google's increased to 39% and Facebook's share increased to 7% in the U.S.

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Activist investors such as Starboard Value hedge fund are pushing Yahoo to sell its Yahoo businesses and keep its investment in Yahoo Japan (35% stake valued at $8.6 billion) and Alibaba (16.5% stake valued at $35 billion). This would mean the sale of the Yahoo brand with 210 million visitors to its website each month. Yahoo's board has tried changing CEO's, and Marissa Mayer in office for 4 years has tried different strategies including acquisitions but failed to make a difference. Yahoo is not able to generate profits from its business the way Google and Facebook have done, and large investors are losing patience with Mayer. Mobile's importance has grown in recent years benefitting Facebook and Google but not Yahoo in generating more advertising revenues. Yahoo's content is seen as commoditized not commanding the advertising revenue of sites that help navigate the internet (Google) or social media sites (Facebook) that offer unique value to users.

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Vindu Goel provides an exceptional indepth account of the efforts inside Yahoo to reverse ad revenue decline using magazine content of Yahoo Food,Yahoo Tech and other magazines. These efforts are part of a new strategy of CEO Mayer to get Yahoo's user base of 800 million users to visit the site daily.

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Yahoo's acquisition of reading app Summly developed by a youngster D'Aloisio with help from SRI's artifical intelligence lab.

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Yahoo CEO Mayer defends the progress made by the company especially in getting mobile users to the site. About 400 million users accessed the site on smartphones and tablets in Jan 2014, about half its users. Ad revenues are in steady decline.