According to a report from Bloomberg, Verizon will make a bid for Yahoo next week, part of the first round of offers for the ailing web giant. Other interested parties that have been reported this week include Verizon's big rival in the wireless business, AT&T, Google's parent company, Alphabet, and former AOL partner Time Inc..
AOL CEO Tim Armstrong has been looking into the acquisition, and would most likely end up running most of Yahoo's assets if the company is acquired by Verizon. The goal is to combine the scale of AOL and Yahoo on the web with the customer and location data of Verizon to create an advertising operation that could rival Facebook or Google. According to Bloomberg, Armstrong and Marni Walden, Verizon’s executive vice president, would run the new combination of AOL and Yahoo.
Bloomberg reports that Verizon may be willing to acquire Yahoo's Japanese assets as part of the deal. Over at our sister site Re/Code, Kara Swisher reported earlier this week that Yahoo's financials are in "free fall," and that it's in danger of losing out on major payments from its Japanese partner Softbank.
Yahoo most recently reported $4.1 billion in revenue for 2015, a drop from $4.4 billion in 2014. According to Swisher, the financial information being shown to potential buyers indicates that the company expects to sink as low as $3.5 billion in 2016. Bloomberg reports that Verizon believes Yahoo's core business is worth about $8 billion, and that Yahoo's Japanese asset could cost another $8.5 billion.
If it feels like Yahoo has been in this state of perpetual crisis for the better part of the last decade, well, that's not entirely wrong. It has lurched from one CEO to another, trying to regain the glory it earned in the dot-com days. As one anonymous source put it to Re/Code, "It’s like a dilapidated house in Silicon Valley — you walk in and are overwhelmed by the work that needs to be done and how bad it has gotten," said one potential buyer. "But then it’s in a good neighborhood, the market is nuts and there’s not many like it anymore, so you have to hope you can fix it."