Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO) may be hinting that its $1 billion acquisition of Tumblr might have been a bad investment for the company.
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This comes a month after the company wrote off $230 million from the microblogging platform and now the firm might be planning to write off all the goodwill that it paid in Tumblr’s acquisition. Yahoo claims that the goodwill was approximately $750 million at the time of the acquisition. This means the company acquired Tumblr for the value of the microblogging platform’s assets at the time plus a $750 million premium.
The company made the statement on Monday in a regulatory filing where it stated that the changes in decisions might push the firm to consider slashing some of the goodwill in Tumblr’s reporting unit or perhaps all of it.
The acquisition of Tumblr more than two years ago was seen as Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer’s bold attempt to boost growth in the company by acquiring a microblogging platform with little revenue but strong traffic. The company announced on Friday that it will incur tax charges between $64 million and $78 million, most of which will be in the first quarter as a result of restructuring efforts and job cuts.
Yahoo claims that the write-off has been influenced by different factors including slow cash flow, slow revenue growth, and smaller market share. During the recent earnings call, the company reported that Tumblr had failed to achieve its revenue target of $100 million that was set for 2015. A previous report from Business Insider had stated that the sales shortfall was because of the company’s decision to merge its sales team with Tumblr’s sales team. The combination did not work well for the company and the decision to undo it has been made.
Writing off Tumblr does not necessarily mean that it is the end of the platform. Tumblr is still growing in terms of revenue and Yahoo has already ranked it as one of the three major products that are progressing in Yahoo.