Exxon bought more oil. Verizon bought ads. One paid off.

Two giant acquisitions. One bought more of what the company already did. The other tried to buy a new identity.

In May 2015, Verizon, owner of the most durable network moat in telecom, agreed to buy AOL for roughly $4.4 billion, then bought Yahoo, spending roughly $8.88 billion in all. In October 2023, ExxonMobil agreed to an all-stock deal for Pioneer, with an enterprise value of about $64.5 billion.

Verizon's goal was to build the third option in mobile advertising, next to Google and Facebook.

In 2018, Verizon took a $4.6 billion goodwill impairment on the combined unit, Oath. In 2021 it sold the media business to Apollo at a $5 billion enterprise value: $4.25 billion in cash, $750 million in preferred interests, and a 10% stake kept. The net destruction: somewhere around $4 billion.

ExxonMobil paid with 545 million of its own shares, worth $63 billion at close. In 2025, its Permian production averaged a record 1.6 million barrels of oil-equivalent a day, and company-wide production reached 4.7 million, the highest in more than forty years.

Exxon's deal was not clean either. A regulator's order barred Pioneer's Scott Sheffield from its board, until the FTC set it aside, 3-0, in July 2025. Then Sheffield said he was no longer interested in the seat, because of actions Exxon had taken.

One pair of deals proves nothing on its own. But test your next acquisition: are you buying more of what you know how to run, or a market you have no structural right to win?