HELSINKI, Finland-Internet portal Yahoo! dropped its stake in TeliaSonera’s Zed wireless data portal, but said it will continue to offer co-branded services with Zed across Europe.
Yahoo! purchased a 15-percent equity interest in Sonera Zed Ltd. in 2002 with an option to acquire the remaining interests. However, Yahoo! decided to withdraw from the transaction and will sell its stake back to TeliaSonera for the same purchase amount. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
“We will continue to source another investor for Zed, which is not included in TeliaSonera’s core operations,” said Kim Ignatius, TeliaSonera’s chief financial officer. “Zed has demonstrated strong growth recently with a positive EBITDA and nearly doubled sales in 2003, which makes it a very interesting investment opportunity.”
Zed has faced a number of hurdles in the past. The portal in 2001 scaled back much of its operations by closing down or selling its portal businesses in Turkey, the Netherlands and the United States, cutting about 130 jobs. The company retained its operations in Finland, the United Kingdom, Germany, Italy, the Philippines and Singapore. Zed now counts around 170 employees.
As of September, Zed had an average of 5 million active customers per month. Zed’s products include ring tones, logos, picture messages, games, chat, sports, directories, stock quotes, traffic reports, pranks, horoscopes, news, finance, movie guides, currency converters and restaurant guides. Zed was launched in Finland in October 1999.
Other European wireless Internet portals have faced similar challenges. Vodafone Group and Vivendi Universal dissolved their Vizzavi mobile-portal venture, and America Online Inc. and Japanese wireless data giant NTT DoCoMo Inc. recently dissolved their widely touted joint venture.
