The American multinational telecommunications conglomerate Verizon communications Inc, to sell its digital media assets Yahoo and AOL to a private equity firm Apollo Global Management.
This is a part of Telecom’s giant, Verizon to exit from its investments from digital media, this deal is could be worth $4billion and $5 billion.
In the year 2015 Verizon had purchased Yahoo and AOL in 2017 for a sum of more that $9 billion as it wanted to make its mark in the market of online media.
Previous year, Verizon’s digital media segment, including yahoo mail, yahoo finance news sites like Engadget, TechCrunch, brought in revenues worth of $7billion, down 5.6 percent.
This is mainly due to fall in advertising revenues due to COVID-19 pandemic.
The Chief Executive Officer of AOL and Oath, Tim Armstrong said:
“We’re building the future of brands using powerful technology, trusted content and differentiated data. We have dominating consumer brands in news, sports, finance, tech, and entertainment and lifestyle coupled with our market leading advertising technology platforms,”
“Now that the deal is closed, we are excited to set our focus on being the best company for consumer media, and the best partner to our advertising, content and publisher partners.”
The Equity firm has been on a purchasing spree in past few months, announcing deals to acquire the crafts retailer Michaels and the Venetian resort in Las Vegas.
There was a shake-up in its senior ranks, with its co-founder, Leon Black, announcing in late March that he was stepping down as chairman after the revelation he had paid more than $150 million to the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein.
This deal signals the strategy of Verizon heralded in 2015 when it acquired the faded internet giant AOL for $4.4 billion.
The purchase was meant to give Verizon a pathway into mobile, with the goal of using AOL’s advertising technology to sell ads against digital content.
