Verizon Communications is reportedly considering selling its media division which includes brands such as Yahoo! and AOL, according to people familiar with the matter.
Bloomberg reports that Verizon Communications is considering selling its media division, according to people familiar with the matter. Verizon is reportedly attempting to offload once-mighty brands such as Yahoo! and AOL. Verizon Media could be worth as much as $5 billion, according to sources.
The company is reportedly in talks with Apollo Global Management about a deal but details on how a deal would be structured or if other suitors are involved were not clear. No final decision has been made and Verizon could opt to hold on to the unit.
The move comes as Verizon divests tertiary media assets while ramping up its focus on its wireless division and the expansion of its 5G services. Last year the company agreed to sell the HuffPost online news service to BuzzFeed and it sold the blogging platform Tumblr in 2019.
The divestiture could be a sign of Verizon’s final retreat from its foray into online advertising, a business division that was never particularly profitable for the company. Vierzon purchased Yahoo!’s internet properties in 2017 for around $4.5 billion and it acquired AOL in 2015 for about $4.4 billion.
In 2018, Hans Vestberg took over as the CEO of Verizon Communications and the company wrote off more than $4 billion, or around half the value of the media business, and renamed it the Verizon Media Group.
Verizon Media owns a number of online brands including Yahoo!, AOL, TechCrunch, Ryot, Built By Girls, and Flurry.
The division had around $1.9 billion of operating revenue in the three months ending March 31 according to the company’s annual report. That signifies an increase of more than 10 percent from a year earlier.
Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship. Follow him on Twitter @LucasNolan or contact via secure email at the address lucasnolan@protonmail.com