AT&T-Yahoo Partnership Endangered?

With the brand-sharing alliance between Yahoo and AT&T - the successor of SBC, which first signed the deal with the then-search giant in 2001 - due to expire in just over a year, AT&T may be reconsidering whether, as it expands its broadband services nationwide this year, it needs or even wants the Yahoo name tagging along for the ride. This according to a story in this morning's Wall Street Journal.

The story cites an unnamed source as revealing that AT&T is reconsidering whether it should be the one paying the search giant, instead of the other way around. Yahoo currently receives as much as a quarter billion dollars of revenue annually, the WSJ states, from a licensing deal that has AT&T pre-installing Yahoo-branded software onto the systems of customers of its DSL and other broadband services.

But last year's deal between Google and Dell, where Dell is the one being paid as much as a billion dollars annually for a similar software pre-installation, as well as a deal last August where Google agreed to pay Fox Interactive Media $900 million to be featured on MySpace, may be making AT&T rethink just who is getting the most benefit from whom.

Seeking Alpha blogger and former notorious Merrill Lynch analyst Henry Blodget pointed out this morning that while the partnership helps Yahoo reap about 5% of its total revenue, since it pays almost nothing for that revenue, its loss could actually be devastating for the company.

But ironically, it wouldn't make sense for Yahoo to pay to keep the deal, because that would counteract the whole point of it. So if the two companies are indeed renegotiating, as the WSJ suggests, then the question on the table may be this: How much less is Yahoo willing to be paid in order to continue giving AT&T access to a brand whose marketing power may be becoming more negligible for the company anyway?

A Stifel Nicolaus analyst's predictions, according to this morning's MarketWatch, may not be as dire, saying the loss of the deal could impact Yahoo's total earnings by under 10%.

Speculation is that a renegotiated deal would have Yahoo receiving a percentage of revenue from co-branded software and services, rather than a flat payment every year. Of course, such a deal might have Yahoo wondering whether it would just as ironically receive greater revenue if it sold these services on its own.

The WSJ story triggered a broad selloff of Internet-related stocks Friday morning, with Yahoo stock value down over 5.5% on the NASDAQ by lunchtime.