Verizon Admits Defeat With $4.6 Billion AOL-Yahoo Writedown (bloomberg.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: Verizon is conceding defeat on its crusade to turn a patchwork of dot-com-era businesses into a thriving online operation. The wireless carrier slashed the value of its AOL and Yahoo acquisitions by $4.6 billion, an acknowledgment that tough competition for digital advertising is leading to shortfalls in revenue and profit. The move will erase almost half the value of the division it had been calling Oath, which houses AOL, Yahoo and other businesses like the Huffington Post. The revision of the Oath division's accounting leaves its goodwill balance -- a measure of the intangible value of an acquisition -- at about $200 million, Verizon said in a filing Tuesday. The unit still has about $5 billion of assets remaining. Verizon also announced yesterday that 10,400 employees are taking buyouts to leave the company. The cuts are "part of an effort to trim the telecom giant's workforce ahead of its push toward 5G," TechCrunch reported.

Comments

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[Daetrin]

So Verizon/Oath announce on Dec 3rd that Tumblr, one of the companies under the banner of Oath, will ban anything "pornographic". By the end of that day their stock has dropped $2 a share. Verizon has 4.13 billion shares outstanding. That's a value loss of $8.26 billion. A week later they cut the value of Oath by $4.6 billion.

Seems like they might actually be underselling(?) the loss?

"Stupid" is making the same mistake 3+ times

[Tablizer]

Mergers of larger tech-related companies seem to always fail. Can anyone name a success in the last 2 decades?

They have to have known Yahoo was worthless

[rsilvergun]

the whole thing stinks. I'm guessing somebody made out like a bandit and left somebody else (probably smaller shareholders) holding the bag.