Verizon to sell Yahoo and AOL

Verizon is 2.1% of my Medium Yield Portfolio.

This is good news to me. I don’t know why they bought Yahoo! or AOL in the first place. Verizon had dreams I guess of being a multimedia conglomerate. Regardless neither of those companies would have brought them what they wanted. I wonder what they actually go out of this deal other than wasting billions of dollars. They acquired AOL and Yahoo! back in 2015 and 2017 respectively for $9 billion. They wrote off half of that in 2018 when they finally figured out they couldn’t make it work.

Apollo Global Management Inc. APO -0.30% agreed to pay about $5 billion to acquire Yahoo and AOL from Verizon Communications Inc. VZ +1.19% as the wireless company exits its ill-fated foray into the media business.

The private-equity firm is paying $4.25 billion in cash for a 90% share of the media assets. Verizon VZ 1.14% will keep a 10% stake and $750 million of additional preferred stock in the new company, called Yahoo, that will be formed to operate the business.

Wall Street Journal

Good riddance. This will hopefully provide Verizon with enough cash to help build out their 5G network and make them a stronger competitor.


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