AOL CEO Weighs In On Verizon Acquiring The Company For $4.4 Billion

Verizon Communications Inc. VZ announced earlier on Tuesday that it will be acquiring AOL, Inc. AOL for $50 a share in a $4.4 billion deal.

Tim Armstrong, AOL CEO, was on CNBC following the announcement to discuss the deal.

The Deal

"AOL has focused in on what I think are the two largest growth markets in the world, which will be video and mobile," Armstrong said. "Both of those are projected to be $40 billion each over the next four years."

He continued, "We have built our systems, our talent and the global scale of what we are doing in that direction, and Verizon has been one of our biggest partners and best partners since I have been at the company.

Related Link: You've Got Buyout: Verizon To Purchase AOL For $4.4 Billion

"And I think there was just a natural set of conversations that have happened overtime, and over the last couple of months it got more serious and I think we share a combined vision and this will be one of the largest scale, most exciting, biggest platform for the future of mobile and OTT content and video [...] and in advertising.

"It's a very, very powerful platform."

Why Now?

Armstrong was asked why AOL has agreed to be acquired now, at a time when content is truly being considered king. He replied, "If you look at AOL over the last five years, AOL is a company that you know."

He explained, "We turned the company around. We outperformed the S&P 500 for the last five years. And when you look at where we are today and where we are going, we have made AOL as big as it can possibly be in today's landscape.

"But if you look forward five years, you are going to be in a space where there are going to be massive global scale networks and there's no better partner for us to go forward with than Verizon," Armstrong concluded.