Tag Archives: Verizon

Link: Creative ways to encourage the integration of DevOps processes

‘Teams come into the dojo with a backlog of real work they are trying to deliver and are paired with DevOps coaches for six weeks. Some managers expect the teams to deliver these projects faster over the course over this period. Sometimes it happens, but Clanton explained it is really about building the skills that will allow them to deliver faster software and with better quality when they return to the office.’

Training by doing.
Original source: Creative ways to encourage the integration of DevOps processes

Verizon + Yahoo = #3 online advertiser, though distant

Assuming the company still wants to buy Yahoo after a massive hack of 500 million of its email users, Verizon will own properties generating about $4.6 billion a year in digital ad dollars, according to eMarketer research. That’s still just a fraction of Facebook’s $12.1 billion and Google’s $53.1 billion.

And unlike its forecasts for Facebook and Google, eMarketer projects no growth for Verizon’s piece of the pie even while the overall pie is growing—by as much as 20% a year, based on an estimate from Pew Research…. What’s worse for Armstrong, and everyone else competing for ad dollars, is Morgan Stanley’s assertion (paywall) that 85% of every new digital ad dollar in the first quarter of 2016 went to Facebook and Google.

Source: The biggest job in media is at the phone company 

The first time blogging won

Since The Huffington Post was founded 11 years ago, it has become one of the biggest online media organizations, known for its all-caps headlines. In 2011, the publication was acquired by AOL for $315 million, a hefty price tag that signaled the rise of digital media.

The publication won a Pulitzer Prize in 2012 and has expanded globally in the last several years. It has a robust staff that writes original articles, but it is also known for aggressive aggregation, a practice that has at times caused tension in the media industry.

The “HuffPo” and others (many in the AOL/Verizon empire now) formed a sort of apex of blogging, akin to that big wave Hunter Thompson saw out his Vegas hotel window. We don’t really even think of “blogging” much anymore, just publishing.

Source: How the Arab World Came Apart
Arianna Huffington Stepping Down as Huffington Post Editor in Chief

Verizon buying Yahoo!’s core businesses for $4.83bn, a third place .com contender?

Verizon is acquiring most of Yahoo! $4.83bn in cash, to be combined with their AOL purchase. As a wet finger in the wind reckoning, this feels like it’ll put Verizon as a distant third place in eyeballs and ad revenue: that’s probably what the business case is targeting.

  • Yahoo! was at ~$4bn runrate (based on $1.09bn in revenue last reported quarter). Revenue has been declining steeply, down 11% q/q.
  • Valuation here is tricky, since Verizon is only buying “core assets.” One back of the envelop analysis put the “core assets” at $1.7bn, suggesting a valuation of ~2.8x.
  • Combined with AOL and other Verizon properties, the company says this will result in “global audience of more than 1 billion monthly active users — including 600 million monthly active mobile users.”
  • There’s fierce competition from Facebook and Google: “According to data from e-marketer in March, Yahoo’s worldwide net digital ad revenues will fall nearly 14% this year to $2.83 billion, from $3.28 billion in 2015. In contrast, Google will see a 9% increase while Facebook will be up by nearly a third year-on-year (31%).”
  • Despite this small pot of marketshare-by-revenue, at least in the US, the combined company will be in the top three of marketshare-by-eyeballs. If you were an i-banker looking at that in your spreadsheet, you’d think: we just need to increase eyeball-to-cash conversion productivity and – POW! – synergies!
  • As a reminder, AOL includes “The Huffington Post, TechCrunch, Engadget, MAKERS and AOL.com.” Yahoo! Mail has 225m monthly active users.
  • It keeps getting described as an “assets sale,” because Yahoo’s stake in Yahoo! Japan and Alibaba will stay with Yahol! As the NY Times puts it: “a 15 percent stake, worth about $32 billion based on its recent share price, in the Chinese internet company Alibaba and a 35.5 percent stake, worth about $8.7 billion, in Yahoo Japan.”
  • This will create some interesting post-deal structure for the numbers. The entire Yahoo! company is much bigger than that 1.1x valuation: “Yahoo! stock, which is up 18% this year, had a total market value of $37.4 billion at its close on Friday of $39.38.”
  • It’s pretty clear that the company wants to sell the remaining assets.
  • Rival bidders: “Suitors included Quicken Loans founder Dan Gilbert, communications giant AT&T and private equity firms Vector Capital Management and TPG.” AT&T seems to have been the main competitor. More from Kat Hall: “The telco was one of 40 suitors rumoured earlier this year to be interested, including Google parent Alphabet, Time and even Daily Mail parent DMG.”
  • It increases Verizon/AOL’s advertising marketing share, but Facebook and Google still dominate: “Verizon with AOL currently holds 1.8 per cent of the $69bn US digital ad market, according to The Wall Street Journal. Yahoo controls about 3.4 per cent, while Google and Facebook combined make up half of the total.”
  • Timing the sale of a declining asset is everything: “back in 2008, it turned down a $44 billion offer from Microsoft”
  • See some in-depth history and analysis from Timothy Lee over at Vox. The thesis seems to be: the company could adapt beyond it’s initial success in the 90s and never found a new identity beyond being a “media company.”