• CNET News.com, Wednesday, July 2, 2008 12:30 PM

Yahoo shares have nearly come full circle in the five months since Microsoft tabled its offer to acquire the company for $31 per share. On Tuesday, shares traded as low as $19.59, before recovering slightly to end the day at $20.20. On Feb. 1, when Microsoft announced its unsolicited offer to buy Yahoo, shares immediately jumped 48% from $18 per share to $28, a level at which they would hover for the next three months, until Microsoft abruptly pulled its offer on May 2.

Following that announcement, shares dipped back into the $24 range, until billionaire investor Carl Icahn swooped in with a plan to unseat Yahoo's board, a move that sent shares back to around $27. Here, the company's stock price would again settle, until Yahoo announced on June 12 that Microsoft no longer had any interest in buying the company, either at $33 per share or at the initial offering price of $31. Since then, the stock has steadily moved downward to Tuesday's five-month low, unable to be buoyed by the announcement of a search partnership with Google.

On Monday, Yahoo presented a plan to shareholders outlining the company's independent future, a move that further depressed the stock, as a Microsoft deal began to look more and more unlikely. As Jeffrey Lindsay, an analyst with Sanford C. Bernstein & Co, said, "Yahoo's investor plan communicated there is little to no prospect of a deal with Microsoft...but that may change once Carl Icahn puts forth his rebuttal." Indeed, Yahoo's return to its Feb. 1 trading price indicates that investors have also given up on a deal with the software giant.

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