Thread regarding Verizon Communications Inc. layoffs

After today's $4.6b write off Oath is now virtually worthless "on the books". That's not a great place to be in the Verizon world. Remember VZ shut down Go90 virtually overnight. Right now I'm wondering how long it will be until I wake up and find out VZ pulled the plug on Yahoo, and my oldest e-mail address (20years) went POOF over night. It's more likely they will try to sell it to some other s---er... but if there is another Security hack... I would not be surprised one bit if Verizon pulls the plug and turns off the lights within hours of finding out it happened again. Who knows, with the current level of writing on both Yahoo & Huff Post articles (copy & paste tweets, with a few comments & calling it an article) it might not be a bad thing to finally put them to bed.

Media isn't getting buyouts, from the sounds of it, after a $4B write-off, they're just unceremoniously going to get dumped. Either they're going to get sold to the highest bidder if they can find a buyer (like the Washington Post being sold for $1 a few years back), or they're simply going to all be laid off.

I suspect @WzIfs6r has a hidden agenda in that silly post, that of provocateur. Yet the rank and file didn't fall for it.

Nice try troll.

New York (CNN Business)Verizon just admitted that the value of its media brand, Oath, is essentially worthless.

Verizon (VZ) announced Tuesday that it would take a $4.6 billion writedown on its the media unit, which includes Yahoo and AOL.

Oath's brand value is now worth just $200 million, according to Verizon. That's a stunning decrease in value since it formed in 2017. Verizon said Oath's brand was worth $4.8 billion when it last accounted for the company's goodwill valuation.

Verizon snapped up a number of legacy media brands in recent years to create Oath. It bought Yahoo for $4.5 billion in 2017 and AOL, which owns HuffPost, for $4.4 billion in 2015.

With virtually no goodwill brand value, Oath's overall value (assets and goodwill) is now worth half of what it was a few years ago.

The telecommunications giant said the integration of Yahoo and AOL didn't meet expectations.

Oath "has experienced increased competitive and market pressures throughout 2018 that have resulted in lower than expected revenues and earnings," according to a filing with the SEC Tuesday. Facebook, Google and Amazon are s---ing up ad dollars, forcing publishers to search for other streams for revenue.

The Verizon media unit's poor performance led the company to make "unfavorable adjustments to Oath's financial projections" for the next five years.

Verizon plans to focus more on wireless technology and less on content and distribution.

This summer, Verizon replaced CEO Lowell McAdam with Hans Vestberg, the telecom company's former chief technology officer.

In September, Oath CEO Tim Armstrong left. He was a driving force behind Verizon's media acquisitions. Armstrong was replaced by K. Guru Gowrappan, Oath's president and former chief operating officer.

Verizon announced Monday that 10,400 management employees had accepted voluntary buyout deals, out of 44,000 who were eligible. The buyouts are part of a plan to cut costs and shift investments into wireless and 5G.

Writing on the wall? https://www.cnn.com/2018/12/11/media/verizon-oath-valuation/index.html

Wireless and wireline paid for AOL and YAHOO.

Yearly report to stockholders will tell the truth.

These layoffs/buyouts are a result of Oath not earning what is supposed to be.

Here's the real asymmetry, the decaying husk of media vs consumer interest in the dreck they hustle.

Don't you have a top 10 listicle to pump out, preferably separated over 12 clicks with 2 ads in between?

"Media purchase debit is killing Verizon.

Media outlets do not reflect my values.

Face it your division is a waste of shareholders money and cost us our jobs."

Right. Verizon never had RIFs or VSP before purchasing the media companies. And the $140B Vodafone buyout (at the peak) was much less damaging than the less than $10B on AOL/Yahoo? To say nothing of other great purchases such as Terramark.

And because media outlets don't reflect your values, um, what? They are not good businesses for a company to pursue? Big Pharma produces lots of d--gs for conditions I don't have so why are they wasting their time and money on those?

1. Media purchase debit is killing Verizon.

2. Media outlets do not reflect my values.

Face it your division is a waste of shareholders money and cost us our jobs.

Not really sure what anyone who isn't Google or Facebook or a major legacy like Time/NYT/WaPo is trying to do in digital print media these days. Since they gave up the one competitive advantage they had, p--n, they're basically the new MSNBC, or perhaps still the same old AOL/Yahoo, a dying relic of the 90s that people are dimly aware isn't extinct yet.

@gal "the information asymmetry" what the heck....

I'd say it'd be fascinating to read things like this in real time - honestly, layoffs used to be super opaque and you'd hear rumors here or there but the mgmt always had full control. now with every single person having a phone in their pockets, we know almost as much as they do - in some cases, since we can feel the pulse of the folks on this site we can know even more than the management knows. i guess the information asymmetry is not as strong as it used to be just a few years ago

Are y’all hiring over there? What’s your contact?

@jzh, maybe the OP is Mr. Spock?

Fascinating is not a word i would use to describe the last few months. Glad it was entertaining for you.