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Verizon Sells AOL and Yahoo to Apollo for $5B

nytimes.com

161–170 of 366 posts

Re: Verizon Sells AOL and Yahoo to Apollo for $5B

#161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Define "gut up". Why would Apollo want to destroy the asset they just bought?

The same reason a scrapyard buys broken cars?

Or maybe Apollo bought this in the same way some people buy fixer-uppers and flip them?

Analogies are great for illustration, but not for arguments. They don't really prove anything.

Re: Verizon Sells AOL and Yahoo to Apollo for $5B

#162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Define "gut up". Why would Apollo want to destroy the asset they just bought?

Venture Capital firms love to use throw debt at an asset so that they can have a cash windfall. The result is that the assets can never pay off the debt and end up declaring bankruptcy. See K-Mart, Sears, Toys R' Us, and anything that a vulture capitalist touches.

Venture Capital firms are early stage private investors. They don't do LBOs with dying companies, since that would naturally be a late stage investment. You're probably thinking of private equity.

Re: Verizon Sells AOL and Yahoo to Apollo for $5B

#163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would it be final? It seems to be quite successful, and any new owner would want to keep it that way

Acquisitions often result in downsizing, aka "rightsizing" due to newfound efficiencies and synergies.

Right, and they presumably do that to create value rather than destroy. How is that going to hurt Yahoo Finance again?

Re: Verizon Sells AOL and Yahoo to Apollo for $5B

#165

I'm really surprised that Yahoo Finance has not been spun out as an independent company at this point. I think as a stand-alone company it could easily be worth in the billions of dollars. Reportedly Yahoo Finance has revenue between $100M and $250M annually. With the increase in retail interest in investing it seems like a property that could have some growth potential behind it if they did things right and separate…

Yahoo Finance is so good that when I'm trying to find information about a company, I'll type the company's name into Google, do a bit of reading, then... go over to Yahoo Finance and manually type it in again to look at their stock performance. It says something that someone as lazy as myself will actually hop out of Google's flow and perform a manual step to go Yahoo Finance.

You go there to look at charts? That's what Trading View is for.

Re: Verizon Sells AOL and Yahoo to Apollo for $5B

#166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yahoo Finance is so good that when I'm trying to find information about a company, I'll type the company's name into Google, do a bit of reading, then... go over to Yahoo Finance and manually type it in again to look at their stock performance. It says something that someone as lazy as myself will actually hop out of Google's flow and perform a manual step to go Yahoo Finance.

Sigh. Remember when Google Finance was great with easily the best charting software and easy lookup of key stats for a company? Then they decided a couple years ago to destroy it for no reason. I wish I knew why they made this horrible decision.

Google seems to get tired of its own products very easily, and just kills them, even if they are popular.

Re: Verizon Sells AOL and Yahoo to Apollo for $5B

#167

I'm really surprised that Yahoo Finance has not been spun out as an independent company at this point. I think as a stand-alone company it could easily be worth in the billions of dollars. Reportedly Yahoo Finance has revenue between $100M and $250M annually. With the increase in retail interest in investing it seems like a property that could have some growth potential behind it if they did things right and separate…

I'm surprised Twitter hasn't been interested in Yahoo Finance and Yahoo sports apps. The onboarding into Twitter, integration with tweets would be worth billions. A lot of "regular people" use those apps, and Twitter investors are looking for the user growth. Also, if Twitter is going to become a platform for interests/topics, it would be good to have a couple of standalone apps on some core topics.

>Yahoo sports apps

I believe the Yahoo's suite of fantasy sports apps is second only to DraftKings in terms of market size and DraftKings' market cap is $22b. No reason that couldn't be spun off as its own company and be worth a $5b itself with the right leadership.

Re: Verizon Sells AOL and Yahoo to Apollo for $5B

#168

Can someone help me understand this from an investment perspective? AOL and Yahoo were worth a combined $400 billion in the 90s. Was investing in either of those companies essentially a fail? Were all those investors wrong or did they somehow recoup their investment through dividends and such over the last 25 years to justify that market cap? Currently the market is telling me that Facebook is a $900+ billion company…

The stockmarket is like a round robin thingy, putting it lightly.

All those who hold shares in FB, combined, are holding paper that is worth 900B. However, if even 10% of those wanted to sell their holdings at a time, the price would fall and the total holdings would be worth less for all.

Now, why are they holding the shares then? Two things come into play. Firstly, say 5 years down the line, the holders have confidence that FB will still be making money, be profitable and be on the market. Secondly, that five years down the line, there is someone else who is willing to pay for the shares at a premium of what they have originally purchased for. Now what about those who are buying 5 years down the line? They too must have confidence on FB that a further 5 years or more down the line, FB will be profitable and will be in the market and keep earning money. And so on and so forth.

So is FB really worth 900B, yes, if the holders keep holding it and FB keeps earning profits.

Can everyone get their worth from the shares? Not at once. Not in a hurry.

Re: Verizon Sells AOL and Yahoo to Apollo for $5B

#169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yahoo Finance is so good that when I'm trying to find information about a company, I'll type the company's name into Google, do a bit of reading, then... go over to Yahoo Finance and manually type it in again to look at their stock performance. It says something that someone as lazy as myself will actually hop out of Google's flow and perform a manual step to go Yahoo Finance.

Sigh. Remember when Google Finance was great with easily the best charting software and easy lookup of key stats for a company? Then they decided a couple years ago to destroy it for no reason. I wish I knew why they made this horrible decision.

Yes, it really was quite perplexing. I imagine the "reason" was to make it more mobile-friendly or mobile-first or perhaps just to standardize their properties more. However, as you noted, it really degraded the product. I went from a daily user to an almost never user.

Re: Verizon Sells AOL and Yahoo to Apollo for $5B

#170
post #89

A headline with 5G but not a single mention of it in the article. If any insider from Verizon may be could help explain why their insistence on mmWave 5G for Phones. ( And Phone only, not fixed Wireless internet access ) It doesn't make sense to me when the spec (3GPP) were announced, doesn't make sense when Verizon actually announced it, and still doesn't make any sense when they are now up and running. Both from a…

For the same reason Sprint went all in on WiMAX "4G" about ten years back: they think it gives them a value-add.

FWIW I'm bummed it didn't work out. I had a WiMax phone and even with the spotty coverage, back then (~2012?) my speeds were as good as my current broadband speeds (>200 Mbps) which was phenomenal for sprint. I even considered getting a dedicated WiMax internet provider at the time. Amazing how fast that came and went!
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