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Yahoo, an early trailblazer of the Internet boom, is “very profitable,” and ready to return to public markets via an initial public offering.
That’s according to Chief Executive Jim Lanzone, who made the comments in an interview with the Financial Times that published Tuesday. Yahoo soared to prominence in the 1990s, along with its share price during the dot-com boom.
Apollo Funds purchased the Yahoo business from Verizon Communications Inc.
VZ,
in 2021.
The web services provider, which has been competing with Google parent Alphabet Inc.
GOOGL,
and Facebook parent Meta Platforms Inc.
META,
said earlier this year that more than 20% of its workforce would be laid off. At the time, Lanzone reportedly said the cuts would be made in an unprofitable area of its business, but that they would be “tremendously beneficial” to the company overall.
“Whether it’s finance, or sports or news, that’s still what we do, and why we’re number one, or number two, in all these important categories all these years later,” Lanzone told the FT. “While the company has had struggles in different points in time, we’re still huge in traffic, and we have our best days ahead of us product wise.”
He said Yahoo would be aggressively looking at the chance to build businesses in related sectors via M&A — it recently bought Wagr, a sports betting app. While Yahoo is still “too small” to take on Google and Microsoft’s
MSFT,
search engine Bing, Lanzone said he’s optimistic, and also sees AI offering up new opportunities for the company.
