AOL CEO Armstrong Leading Verizon's (VZ) Potential Bid for Yahoo
NEW YORK (TheStreet) --AOL (VZ) - Get Report Chairman and CEO Tim Armstrong joined CNBC's Julia Boorstin on "Squawk Box" this morning to comment on the Allen and Company Conference, which is underway this week in Silicon Valley. The conference brings together some of the biggest moguls in the media and technology industry.
A critical topic, the bidding for Yahoo (YHOO), remains at the forefront of the conference. Armstrong, whose company is owned by Verizon Communications, is leading the telecommunication company's potential bid.
"I won't comment on Yahoo specifically. I know you want me to, but, you know, we're really focused on our strategic plan. Our business is to focus in on the 2 billion users and creators. So I think keeping the focus on AOL and Verizon remains our biggest concern,"Armstrong said. However, Armstrong did note he looks forward to productive meetings in terms of a potential bid this week.
Mergers and acquisitions have been a strong topic of discussion at the conference as well. "It's hard to imagine platforms which everyone is investing content won't end up in more content deals. Overall users migrate to high quality content, and all major players are migrating towards higher quality content," Armstrong said. The CEO solidified his belief that this trend will continue to manifest itself between tech and media companies.
Armstrong was later questioned on the upcoming presidential election and its potential impact from a business perspective. "I'm not here to make any endorsements, the only endorsement I'm going to make is that it's great to be here at Allen and Company again," Armstrong added. However, he did point to the election as being great for his business as AOL owns the Huffington Post and continued web traffic is always welcomed.
Shares of Verizon are trading lower by 0.64% at $55.60.
Separately, TheStreet Ratings rates Verizon as "Buy" witha ratings score of "A". This is based on the convergence of positive investment measures, which should help this stock outperform the majority of stocks that TheStreet Ratings rates.
The company's strengths can be seen in multiple areas, such as its solid stock price performance, revenue growth, increase in net income, expanding profit margins and growth in earnings per share. TheStreet Ratings feels its strengths outweigh the fact that the company has had generally high debt management risk by most measures that TheStreet Ratings evaluated.
TheStreet Ratings objectively rated this stock according to its "risk-adjusted" total return prospect over a 12-month investment horizon. Not based on the news in any given day, the rating may differ from Jim Cramer's view or that of this articles's author.
You can view the full analysis from the report here: VZ