Yahoo and AOL are sold to a private equity firm.
Yahoo and AOL, trailblazers for the internet, sold, again, for $5 Billion, by Michelle Chapmanap, Business Writer The Associated Press.
This time Yahoo and AOL are being sold to a private equity firm.
Verizon will sell Verizon Media, which consists of the pioneering tech platforms, in the $5 billion deal to Apollo Global Management.
Verizon said that it would keep a 10% stake in the new company to be called Yahoo.
At the end of the last century, Yahoo was the face of the internet, preceding the behemoth tech platforms such as Google and Facebook to follow.
The portal in the early days, AOL brought nearly everyone logging on to the internet.
Verizon spent about $9 billion buying AOL and Yahoo over two years starting in 2015, hoping to jump-start a digital media business that would compete with Google and Facebook. It didn’t work — AOL and Yahoo were already fading even then — as Google, Facebook, and Amazon dominate the U.S. digital ad market.
Verizon wrote down the value of combined operations, just the year after buying Yahoo, called “Oath,” by more than the $4.5 billion it had spent on Yahoo.
As part of the deal announced Monday, Verizon will receive $4.25 billion in cash, preferred interests of $750 million, and 10% of the minority stake. The transaction includes the assets of Verizon Media, including its brands and businesses such as Yahoo and AOL.
The deal is expected to close in the second half of the year.
Based in New York, shares of Verizon Communications Inc rose less than 1% before the opening bell Monday.