Why Verizon Wanted It All
By
ANNA BERNASEK
Published: September 28, 2013
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IT didn’t come as a complete surprise when Verizon Communications agreed earlier this month to pay $130 billion for the 45 percent of the Verizon Wireless unit that it didn’t already own. What’s startling, though, is the parent company’s dependence on its wireless unit’s operating profit. Without Verizon Wireless, the value of the old Verizon — the giant telephone company that provides dial-tone service as well as Internet and fiber optic TV to millions of customers — is vanishingly small.
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In the first six months of this year, Verizon’s nonwireless business made only $87 million in operating profit. That’s less than the profit of many successful law firms — and it’s positively paltry compared with the business’s roughly $20 billion in sales. In the same period, Verizon Wireless had roughly twice as much revenue,%2
via Why Verizon Wanted It All – NYTimes.com.