They'll net $8 billion after taxes:

“What do you do with that money?” asked Robert S. Peck, an analyst with SunTrust Robinson Humphrey, who estimates that Yahoo will end up with about $8 billion after taxes.

Yahoo was required to sell half its stake under an agreement it reached with Alibaba in 2012. The agreement was amended last year to require Yahoo to sell less than half its stake — or 9 percent of Alibaba.

Yahoo executives aren’t saying much about what they will do with the proceeds, citing a regulatory quiet period surrounding the I.P.O. But they dropped a few hints during an April conference call to discuss the company’s first-quarter financial results.“We intend to be good stewards of our capital and we have been to date,” Ms. Mayer said in the call, in response to a question about what she might do with a sudden influx of cash.

“When we look at the investments we need to make in the business, you’ll see the same type of mix we’ve been making to date. Some strategic acquisitions, some tuck-in acquisitions, and we really need to see what opportunities arise in terms of the ways we could deploy the cash at that time.”

And some loyalty-buying dividends to Yahoo investors.

Right, that buys management some time.

Must-read NYTimes.com article, but my brain locked on this:

When Alibaba begins trading as an independent stock, many investors who bought Yahoo as a proxy for the fast-growing Chinese company will simply buy Alibaba directly.

I wonder how many would be Alibaba investors there are who used Yahoo as a tracking stock.