Shares of Yahoo (YHOO) are sliding following yesterday's news that a copy of its user account information was stolen in late 2014. Commenting on the possible impact of this data breach, Bank of America Merrill Lynch analyst Justin Post told investors he believes the Verizon (VZ) deal will remain on track, an opinion shared by his peer at SunTrust.

DATA BREACH: Yahoo announced on Thursday that a recent investigation by the company confirmed that information associated with "at least 500 million" user accounts was stolen from its network in late 2014 by what Yahoo believes is a state-sponsored actor. After the announcement, Verizon told The Wall Street Journal it was notified of the incident within the last two days but currently has "limited information and understanding of the impact." The wireless carrier, which has agreed to acquire Yahoo in a $4.8B deal, added it "will evaluate as the investigation continues through the lens of overall Verizon interests," according to the report.

DEAL TO STAY ON TRACK: Bank of America Merrill Lynch analyst Justin Post noted that Yahoo's massive data breach is clearly a negative for the company that could result in email account closures, but he does not anticipate a major impact on its business, citing as evidence the fact that he is not aware of any significant business impairment or financial liability related to security breaches at LinkedIn (LNKD) in 2012 and at eBay (EBAY) in 2014. Post believes the Verizon deal will remain on track despite the breach. For Verizon to back out of the deal, it would have to assume Yahoo acted in bad faith during negotiations and that the Yahoo asset is impaired or comes with significant liability, he noted, adding that neither seems to be the case. The analyst reiterated a Buy rating on Yahoo's shares.

IMPACT UNCLEAR: SunTrust analyst Robert Peck voiced a similar opinion, saying he thinks the announcement is probably not a material adverse change, or MAC, that would jeopardize the company's acquisition by Verizon. Peck noted that the sales contract says that a MAC will not be triggered by "any failure by Yahoo to meet its internal or published projections, budgets, plans, or forecasts of its revenues, earnings, or other financial performance or results of operations," and pointed out that Verizon could likely accept this as "a cost of being in business." Furthermore, the analyst believes the hack "may be manageable," since a majority of the victims could be e-mail users who are "sticky" given email is an integral part of their online identities. He reiterated a Neutral rating on Yahoo's shares.

PRICE ACTION: In late morning trading, shares of Yahoo have dropped more than 2% to $43.24, while Verizon's stock is fractionally up to $52.46 per share.