Time Warner Makes It Official: AOL Spinoff Is Coming

It’s hard for Time Warner (TWX) to have been clearer about this, but there’s still a bit of confusion out there about the company’s plans to spin off AOL. Maybe this will clear it up: Time Warner told the SEC today that it intends to spin off AOL.

You can get the link to the company’s 10-Q, filed this morning, over here. But here’s the nugget you want:

“Although the Company’s Board of Directors has not made any decision, the Company currently anticipates that it would initiate a process to spin off one or more parts of the businesses of AOL to Time Warner’s stockholders, in one or a series of transactions. Based on the results of the Company’s review, future market conditions or the availability of more favorable strategic opportunities that may arise before a transaction is completed, the Company may decide to pursue an alternative other than a spin-off with respect to either or both of AOL’s businesses.”

Yup, there’s a to-be-sure caveat there. But this is about as clear as a publicly traded company can get about this stuff. Time Warner wants to cleave this thing off, and that’s why it brought on Tim Armstrong.

Other good nuggets from the filing: Time Warner intends to buy back the 5% stake that Armstrong’s former employer Google (GOOG) owns and wrote down earlier this year.

I missed the company’s earnings call this morning, but sounds like there wasn’t a lot of other details released. But PaidContent’s David Kaplan does have a breakdown of AOL’s (lousy) ad performance on a sector-by-sector basis:

• Display: Down 17 percent to $158 million.
• Paid Search Down 12 percent to $152 million.
• Third party Down 29 percent to $133 million.

Original post

Comments

[coloneldebugger]

Which was worse? Time Warner taking on AOL or Daimler taking on Chrysler?

2009 Apr 29 04:01 PM

[nobby73]

I think you'll find it was actually AOL that acquired Time Warner.

It's stunning to consider the market cap of AOL was once almost twice that of Time Warner - oh, the glories of pre-Enron accounting!


On Apr 29 04:01 PM coloneldebugger wrote:

> Which was worse? Time Warner taking on AOL or Daimler taking on
> Chrysler?

2009 Apr 29 05:13 PM

[Stone Fox Capital]

AOL still exists? Does it stand for America Off Line???

2009 Apr 29 06:29 PM

[Archman Investor]

I still have a very old AOL account I first stared back in 1995.
I still use it sometimes for old business clients who continue to use that email address.
What a difference a decade or so makes.
AOL is now complete and utter garbage. Their service is slow.
They cater to the mostly stupid of our country with their awful concentration on "hollywood" new non-sense and sensationalism.
It still amazes me that AOL was once the top site on the internet used for email and socializing.
Anyone receiving shares in a spin off should be dumping them on any run up in price.

2009 Apr 29 09:46 PM