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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.
Oath, which houses AOL, Yahoo and other businesses like the Huffington Post ... [has a $4.6 Billion Writedown.]
Oath? More like Ooof.
.*? *I* didn't know that. But I can't lose them -- how will I know what my default position is on anything? (BTW, My default position is exactly 180 degrees from them. If they say the Earth is round I'm immediately starting out a Flat Earther. And that's only when I hear about them from echos.)
And V now owns the Huffington
If the universe is someone's simulation -- does that mean the stars are just stuck pixels?
And I've known of the pending workforce reduction (aka voluntary firings) for a bit now, as one of my friends took the offer and was talking about it. I already smelled a major loss on the horizon. Whatever happened to telecom companies focusing on telecom services?
If they have asked anyone on this forum we would help them save $4.6B for a minimal fee long time ago.
...some people at Verizon were swearing mighty... oaths? LOL
Our reign has gone on long enough. Indeed. Summon the meteors.
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?
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
Much like the Time Warner-AOL deal some 20 years ago, I don't know a single person that thought that was a good idea. At least it took 5-6 years for it to unravel.
Wasn't it just last year VZ completed their deal? And does anyone know anyone who thought it was a smart thing to do? Cuz I sure don't, everyone I talked to said VZ were idiots.
Makes one wonder what goes on in those CXX suites while the worker bees wonder who will lose their jobs.
Because there're loads of people who want their opinions formed for them (regardless of what their political ideology is) and are more than happy to lap up content like this, which is also conveniently cheap to produce since you can just hire a bunch of low cost recent graduates who will work for chicken scratch because of the dearth of jobs in news media at respectable publications.
I'm surprised they even need staff at any of these places. It seems like you could train a bot to trot out the same old talking points article after article.
Fucking Brilliant!
Mergers of larger tech-related companies seem to always fail. Can anyone name a success in the last 2 decades?
Table-ized A.I.
How many out of the money puts did you buy?
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
yeah - they need something like a citation for us programmers
If you have internet, you can get the equivalent of a landline over internet (e.g. OOMA) for about 1/10 the cost.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
the whole thing stinks. I'm guessing somebody made out like a bandit and left somebody else (probably smaller shareholders) holding the bag.
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Leftist version of Breitbart
Literally. Huffington Post was co-founded by Ariana Huffington and ... Andrew Breitbart.
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How many out of the money puts did you buy?
I'm not sure how to answer that. Mostly because I'm not sure what you're asking.
An out of the money put option is (more or less) a bet that a company will lose value. If you know a company is going to tank and you can point to publicly available information that told you that, you're golden.
An out of the money put will allow you to sell the stock at a 'strike price' (below the current price...'out of the money') at some future date. You pay a premium up front for that. That premium is calculated using 'bookie methods'.
Short answer: Legal high odds gambling on stock prices with a fixed downside. Better than owning 'shorts'.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
If only I had money to gamble like that. Alas at the moment I don't. If I did I would have looked into that. In the meantime, I have to wait for Eyegore gets back with my normal brain and takes back Abby Normal's....
It's called 5G they get to be ISP's and content creators if they can get the government to foot most of the $11 Trillion price tag to blanket the USA in massive MIMO towers.
Ah yes, 5G is the panacea. And surely they only want $11 trillion from the gov't in order to not cover the entire country.
It might be close, but it's not the equivalent. During an electrical outage landline phones still work. They're self powered. During an electrical outage your internet isn't going to work.
Unless it's preferred stock, they don't have to let you speak about anything. They don't even have to let you attend.
With this big write off, Verizon might not be paying any taxes, yet again!
During an electrical outage landline phones still work. They're self powered.
They are not self powered. They are powered by the telco exchange switch which is also on battery back up should they lose power. If you have even a modest Internet set up you should have the modem, router, and switch on UPS. Put the Ooma on that UPS and your phone works as long as the internet does. Even the telco exchange will eventually go down unless they have a generator.
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
Yeah who couldn't see that a bunch of zombie corpses were worthless? Oh wait, anyone with half a brain did.
I wouldn't say worthless. You have a decade's old company that has millions of active email addresses. That's a captive audience you can advertise to. AOL/Time Warner biggest mistake was getting rid of their chat service. That is what was keeping them alive.
AOL already had created communities that could be accessed by keywords. If those were standardized a bit the platform could have have created and AOL Timeline. So you had AOL Groups. You had an AOL Messenger. Restrict who could see or send you messages and you would have had AOL Facebook.
You say things that offend me and I can deal with it. Can you?
They are not self powered. They are powered by the telco exchange switch which is also on battery back up should they lose power. If you have even a modest Internet set up you should have the modem, router, and switch on UPS. Put the Ooma on that UPS and your phone works as long as the internet does. Even the telco exchange will eventually go down unless they have a generator.
Do you know what self powered means? I worked for the telcos. They have batteries (you were correct there), LOTS of batteries. They also have generators. Usually quite large generators. (megawatt) The telco generates its own power during a mains outage. That's what I meant when I said self-powered. I suspect you know that...
Cable TV nodes / switches / hardware, in my experience, are NOT self powered. Case in point, down here every time SDG&E has an outage Cox cable will go offline in the same area. I will not profess to know how the cable companies run things, but from what I have experienced they are dependent on mains power. Maybe I'm wrong and something else is happening, but I don't think so. I am more than happy to be educated on the subject though.
Lastly, you say "the telco will go down if they don't have a generator", well what the hell do you think is going to happen to that UPS? It's life is measured in minutes.. maybe hours if you have a really good one..
Lighten up Francis...
I've worked with my fair share of telco as well. AFAIK the substation's generators will not help the VRAD once its battery packs are depleted. I'd be happy to be educated if this is not the case. As for how cablecos do it...as cheap as possible and still avoid a class action lawsuit. After TS Allison my next door neighbor who had Comcast was without service for six months! And we weren't even in a flooded area. Can't say enough bad things about cable.
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
If you do it right, it's not gambling. But you need to pass a test (proving you understand what you are doing) and have a couple of thousand dollar balance with your broker.
Keeps the riffraff from using the option market as a lottery, which might undercut the state run tax on people bad at math.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
They are not self powered. They are powered by the telco exchange switch which is also on battery back up should they lose power. If you have even a modest Internet set up you should have the modem, router, and switch on UPS. Put the Ooma on that UPS and your phone works as long as the internet does. Even the telco exchange will eventually go down unless they have a generator.
Both the FTTN DSL and cable ISPs where I am fail during power outages even though my modem and local network are completely backed up which is especially annoying because my POTs phone connection comes through the modem.
When I had DSL over POTs, then the self powered POTs phone still worked.
I assume the FCC regulation is that services which are required for POTs are suppose to be backed up but who wants to change the batteries in the cabinets every year? U-Verse had a bunch of cabinet fires when it was first installed.
I wouldn't say worthless. You have a decade's old company that has millions of active email addresses. That's a captive audience you can advertise to. AOL/Time Warner biggest mistake was getting rid of their chat service. That is what was keeping them alive.
AOL already had created communities that could be accessed by keywords. If those were standardized a bit the platform could have have created and AOL Timeline. So you had AOL Groups. You had an AOL Messenger. Restrict who could see or send you messages and you would have had AOL Facebook.
Yahoo was destroying their chat services before they were purchased. It was big talk in the groups I participated in and they all moved to alternates many of which specifically implemented ways to transfer the contents off.