Market Currents

• Today - Tuesday, December 1, 2009

• 16:49 PM Time Warner (TWX +1.6%) thinks it's healthier without AOL (AOL -0.1%). WSJ's Heard on the Street sees no reason to believe investors should feel different. Comment!

• Sunday, November 29, 2009

• 17:59 PM Time Warner (TWX) doesn't spin off AOL until Dec. 9, but shares began trading Tuesday at $27 on a when-issued basis, and by Friday were down to $23. That gives the new AOL (or Aol.) a market cap of under $2.4B, which Barron's Eric Savitz thinks looks cheap, considering AOL is seen cranking out Ebitda of $1.1B this year, has no debt, and trades at less than one time next year's revenue. 1 Comment
• 15:59 PM Top-five Thanksgiving weekend movies: 1) The Twilight Saga: New Moon ($42.5M, #1 last week, Summit). 2) The Blind Side ($40.1M, #2, TWX). 3) 2012 ($18M, #3, SNE). 4) Old Dogs ($16.8M, n/a, DIS). 5) A Christmas Carol ($16M, #5, DIS). 1 Comment

• Wednesday, November 25, 2009

• 14:33 PM Clearwire (CLWR +5%) gathers another $920M in financing for a recent total of $2.8B, more than enough to reach its goal of providing 120M people with wireless 4G Internet by the end of next year. The funding adds fuel to an ambitious bet on WiMAX by Clearwire backers Sprint Nextel (S), Google (GOOG), Intel (INTC), Comcast (CMCSA), Time Warner (TWX) and others. Comment!
• 10:13 AM Sources say a consortium of magazine publishers including Time (TWX) and Conde Nast are in talks to jointly build an online newsstand - an "iTunes for magazines." Comment!

• Tuesday, November 24, 2009

• 13:51 PM Time (TWX), Hearst and Conde Nast's "iTunes for magazines" consortium - a digital storefront for online content - has to lead to online paywalls, Derek Thompson says, because there's too much already out there for free, and what's the incentive for people to register for a new way of what they've already been getting? 1 Comment

• Friday, November 20, 2009

• 16:34 PM Bonds - $4B in bonds. Suitors including News Corp. (NWS), Time Warner (TWX), Sony (SNE) and Qualia Capital are beginning to circle around the MGM film studio - owner of the "James Bond 007" franchise as well as a 4,100-film library - which considers a sale among its options to get out from under $4B in debt. 2 Comments

• Thursday, November 19, 2009

• 08:58 AM AOL will slash its workforce by 1/3 after its December spinoff from Time Warner (TWX). AOL is seeking 2,500 employees to voluntarily take severance, and hopes to reduce annual operating costs by $300M. (8-K) Comment!

• Monday, November 16, 2009

• 17:03 PM AOL returns to the New York Stock Exchange Dec. 10, under the symbol "AOL," as Time Warner (TWX) will spin off the unit on Dec. 9, with one AOL share for every 11 TWX shares. CEO Tim Armstrong's job by then: Draw institutional investors' attention to the media business and away from the declining ISP business. Comment!

• Thursday, November 12, 2009

• 11:08 AM Time Warner (TWX -0.4%) will take up to $200M in charges on its planned spinoff of AOL. In an SEC filing, TWX said the charge relates to "additional restructuring activities" it expects to begin shortly after the spinoff. "Substantially all" of the charges should to be taken through H1 2010. Comment!

• Wednesday, November 4, 2009

• 06:34 AM Time Warner (TWX): Q3 EPS of $0.61 beats by $0.08. Revenue of $7.13B (-5.9%) in-line.(PR I, II) 1 Comment
• 00:05 AM Notable premarket earnings: ABK, ADP, AGU, BDX, BHI, CMCSA, DVN, FWLT, GRMN, HUN, IAG, LIZ, MFA, MMC, PHM, PWR, RDN, RIG, RRD, TAP, TEL, TOT, TRW, TWX, WTR, XTO 1 Comment

• Monday, October 26, 2009

• 14:12 PM AOL (TWX) names the board that will be working around CEO Tim Armstrong in the unit's upcoming spinoff from Time Warner, and it's stacked with media and tech names as well as former FCC Chairman Michael Powell. Silicon Alley Insider profiles the most boring board they've seen. 1 Comment

• Sunday, October 18, 2009

• 18:12 PM Top weekend movies (last weekend's ranking in parentheses, *=new): 1) Where the Wild Things Are (TWX, *, $32.5M). 2) Law Abiding Citizen (LINTA, *, $21.2M). 3) Paranormal Activity (VIA, 4, $20.2M). 4) Couples Retreat (GE, 1, $17.9M). Comment!

• Wednesday, September 30, 2009

• 12:01 PM JPMorgan analyst Imran Khan, a noted maven on AOL (TWX), pegs the internet company's worth at $4.2B, a "pittance" of its worth during the dot-com boom, and significantly lower than the $5.5B value Google (GOOG) assigned it earlier this year in writing down its 5% stake. In 2005, Google valued AOL at a cool $20B. Comment!

• Saturday, September 26, 2009

• 15:36 PM Gordon Crawford, managing director of Time Warner's (TWX) largest shareholder, says the media giant will sell off its magazines (Time, SI, People, etc.) in order to focus on its core business - Warner Brothers, HBO and the Turner Networks. It could use the money, he says, to go shopping in TWX's niche - movies, TV shows, and networks. Here's the video. Comment!