Synacor poaches AT&T portal business from Yahoo

Content platform provider Synacor has announced it has been awarded AT&T’s $100 million per year portal services contract.

While AT&T hasn’t made a formal announcement itself, the WSJ reported that the deal marks an unwinding of a 15-year hosting partnership with Yahoo. AT&T confirmed the deal to the WSJ with a generic comment and Yahoo insisted AT&T is still a valued partner.

“We are honoured to have been selected from among the contenders AT&T considered in their evaluation process,” said Synacor CEO Himesh Bhise. “We are thrilled that AT&T will be using our managed portal services, mobile apps, and advertising solutions in this important initiative to deepen engagement with their customers. We already are developing initial products for deployment in 2016, and have started working on a next-gen product for 2017.”

The news comes at a critical time for Yahoo, which is reported to be looking for buyers of its web business, for which AT&T competitor Verizon is considered to be a front-runner. Synacor’s share price had more than doubled on the news, at time of writing, but Yahoo’s shares were up 3% too, implying investors don’t consider it to be much of a loss for Yahoo.