Yahoo! (YHOO) Shares Jump on Japan Exit

Shareholders and investors in Yahoo! (Nasdaq:YHOO) like what they heard with the company's announcement they're looking to exit the Japanese market, as they've been hovering around a 4 percent increase in price throughout the trading day so far.

A number of sources has said Yahoo! is talking with Softbank Corp. to sell their 35% stake in Yahoo! Japan. The overall stake was valued at about $6.88 billion as of Tuesday's closing prices. Softbank already owns 42 percent stake in the unit.

The Yahoo! Japan search unit is the largest one in the country, getting a billion hits a day.

Others Asian Yahoo! assets possibly coming into play would be Alibaba'ss Taobao.com retail site or its Alipay.com. Yahoo! has a 40 percent stake in Alibaba, one of the premiere Internet companies in China.

Yahoo! was trading at $16.74, up $0.64, or 3.98 percent, as of 11:39 AM EST.