Verizon to acquire Yahoo in $4.8 billion deal

Verizon Communications on Monday announced plans to acquire Yahoo for USD 4.8 billion, ending months of uncertainty after Marissa Mayer's battered internet giant company said it would review strategic alternatives. Share prices of both companies moved slightly higher in premarket trading after the announcement. Marni Walden, Verizon president of product innovation and new businesses, said on CNBC's "Squawk Box" that the deal included Yahoo's core operating business and patents. The acquisition lends scale to Verizon's efforts to build a media company, she said. "Yahoo gives us scale and that's what's most critical here. We go from being in the millions of audience to the billions. We want to compete and that's the place that we need to be, so we're very pleased with where we are today," Walden said. The transaction is seen boosting Verizon's AOL internet business, which the company acquired last year for USD 4.4 billion, by giving it access to Yahoo's advertising technology tools, as well as other assets such as search, mail, messenger and real estate. It also marks the end of Yahoo as an operating company, leaving it only as the owner of a 35.5 percent stake in Yahoo Japan, as well as its 15 percent interest in Chinese e-commerce company Alibaba. In December, Yahoo scrapped plans to spin off its Alibaba stake after investors worried about whether that transaction could have been carried out on a tax-free basis. It instead decided to explore a sale of its core assets, spurred on by activist hedge fund Starboard Value. Five bidders submitted offers in the final round, CNBC reported last week. Also last week, Yahoo reported quarterly earnings that slightly missed analysts' expectations, and revenue that beat projections — in part due to what CEO Mayer called "disciplined expense management."