Verizon Communications Inc. is an American multinational telecommunications conglomerate and a corporate component of the Dow Jones Industrial Average. The company is headquartered at 1095 Avenue of the Americas in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, but is incorporated in Delaware.
The telecommunication conglomerate Verizon announced it will sell its media group to Apollo Global Management, a private equity group, for US$5 billion. The sale includes all the properties that once belonged to AOL and Yahoo, bought in 2015 and 2017 by Verizon.
However, the interesting thing in the deal is that Verizon bought both the companies for a whopping of $4.4 billion and $4.5 billion, respectively. The deal on the other hand marks the sale of all the properties for only $5 billion, which marks a significant loss for Verizon.
According to sources, the sale will be completed in the latter half of 2021 and the telecommunication conglomerate will receive $4.25 billion in cash and a 10% stake in the properties sold.
The properties include popular websites like TechCrunch and Engadget. They were conglomerated as Oath in 2017 and rebranded as Verizon Media Group in 2018. They will continue to operate at Apollo Global Management under the Yahoo brand.
Apollo Global Management is not a small name in the business and the management also owns Michaels which is a prolific crafts retailer and the Venetian resort in Las Vegas. The properties are now undertaken by Apollo once belonged to the internet giant who was a leader in the worldwide web. And Time will tell spin them back into gold. At their peaks, AOL and Yahoo boasted market capitalizations of $200 billion and $125 billion, respectively.
