What price the fifth most visited website in the US? The sixth, Amazon, has a market value of $315bn. But Yahoo, whose board meets this week to discuss the company’s future, is valued at about a tenth of that despite attracting more visitors. Of course, it is even worse than it seems. Net of its $32bn stake in Alibaba, the Chinese ecommerce company, Yahoo is worth approximately nothing.

For several years, investors have been variously attracted by and frustrated with this conundrum. Spinning off the Alibaba stake was the favoured solution, until fears of a big tax bill became uncomfortable. Alternatively, it could consider doing just the opposite: sell the core internet business. Rumours to that effect triggered a 7 per cent jump in Yahoo’s stock price in after-hours trading on Tuesday. 

Since Marissa Mayer arrived as chief executive in July 2012 she has been looking to solve the conundrum on the operating side. Her aim was to force investors to value the company properly by dint of better results. It has not worked; quarterly earnings show a deterioration in performance and acquisitions have not paid off. And Yahoo has not been able to rejuvenate older, but basically successful, businesses. To take one example, the company had been so slow to adapt its well-established sports games into the new and lucrative daily fantasy games fad that officials — who consider such fantasy games to be illegal gambling — did not initially bother to send it a “cease and desist” notice. Growth opportunities in media content have been grabbed and then abandoned.