American Group Yahoo! is negotiating to purchase from France Télécom-Orange 75% of online video platform Dailymotion, announced Wednesday the Wall Street Journal, citing sources close to this case. The deal would allow Yahoo! to compete with Google, which owns YouTube.
This will be the first major acquisition for Yahoo! since the appointment last summer Marissa Mayer as CEO. The deal would help the U.S. group to strengthen its position in the online video outside the United States, on a segment in which the group hopes to grow more, says the same publication.
The acquisition, which is said is not imminent, would be based on an assessment of the market value of the Dailymotion platform at about $300 million (€233 million). Yahoo! may in the future acquire the remaining stake in the company.
France Telecom-Orange has increased its stake in the Dailymotion platform in January, from 49% to 100%, but, according to sources, the French group is looking for a U.S. partner to share the capital of the online video platform.
If the deal goes through, the transaction would mark the return of the Yahoo! on the market for mergers and acquisitions. It would also be the first acquisition for the U.S. group since Marissa Mayer, an ex-employee of Google, is at the helm of Yahoo!
Neither Yahoo! nor Dailymotion had any comment for the moment.
Dailymotion is a small competitor of YouTube, which belongs to the American giant Google. According to comScore, 2.5 billion videos are viewed on YouTube each month. Dailymotion is the twelfth largest video platform with 116 million visitors a month. Yahoo! is tenth in this top.
The company was not publicly traded and therefore is not required to communicate its financial results, but said that its benefits grew by 55% last year.
France Telecom-Orange has paid a total of $168 million to acquire Dailymotion.
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