Verizon to acquire Yahoo for $4.83 bn

New York, JulY 25 

Verizon Communications today said it will acquire Yahoo’s operating business for about $4.83 billion in cash.

Yahoo, which was the entry door to the internet for an early generation of web users, will be integrated with AOL under Marni Walden, EVP and president of Product Innovation and New Businesses organisation at Verizon.

The sale does not include Yahoo’s cash, its shares in Alibaba Group Holdings, its shares in Yahoo Japan, Yahoo’s convertible notes, certain minority investments, and Yahoo’s non-core patents (called the Excalibur portfolio), it said in a statement.

These assets will continue to be held by Yahoo, which will change its name at closing and become a registered, publicly traded investment company, the statement said.

The deal with Verizon, which is subject to approval by Yahoo’s shareholders, regulatory and other approvals, is expected to close in the first quarter of 2017.

Till then, Yahoo will continue to operate independently, offering its products and services to users, advertisers, developers and partners.

“The acquisition of Yahoo will put Verizon in a highly competitive position as a top global mobile media company, and help accelerate our revenue stream in digital advertising,” Verizon chairman and CEO Lowell McAdam said.

Founded in 1994 by Stanford graduate students, Jerry Yang and David Filo, Yahoo was one of the last independently operated pioneers of the web.

Yahoo chief Marissa Mayer, who joined Yahoo four years ago, failed to halt its decline as it lost ground to larger rival Google. It has a global user base of over one billion monthly active users, including 600 million monthly active mobile users, through search, communications and digital content products. — PTI