Time Warner Will Split AOL
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Jeff Bewkes, the new chief of Time Warner, said he planned to separate AOLâs online access and advertising businesses and possibly spin off the rest of the companyâs cable division.
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America Online Inc. and Time Warner Cable finally overcame their differences yesterday, putting in place a partnership to connect computer users to the Internet that was cited five years ago as a key reason for the &#36;112 billion America Online-Time Warner Inc. merger.
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Time Warner CEO Jeffrey Bewkes plans to split AOL into separate businesses, one for access involving its dial-up Internet service, and the other on its audience unit, which would cover its portal and advertising business.
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AOL and a group of entertainment entrepreneurs who created a venture to produce and distribute live concerts on the Internet and elsewhere have dissolved their partnership after just 14 months, executives in the venture said yesterday.
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Time Warner plans to split up the Internet access and audience businesses of its AOL segment to run them each independently, Time Warner CEO and President Jeff Bewkes revealed Wednesday.The move comes as little surprise, as former CEO Dick Parsons acknowledged in September that Time Warner would at some point divest itself from the AOL access business, though he made no commitment to do so at the time.On Bewkes&#39; first quarterly financial conference call Wednesday since taking his position as CEO on Jan. 1, he said Time Warner&#39;s plans to split AOL&#39;s businesses will help hasten the segment&#39;s business-model transition from &quot;a declining ISP subscription business to a growing Internet ad business.&quot;&quot;This should significantly increase AOL&#39;s strategic options for each of these main business sectors,&quot; Bewkes said on a call to reveal Time Warner&#39;s fourth-quarter 2007 earnings. He made a distinction between AOL&#39;s for-fee Internet-access service and its ad-supported audience business, which includes AOL&#39;s online services and content.Bewkes did not give a specific timeline or other details for when and how the split will occur. AOL&#39;s Internet-access business, which still provides for-fee service, continues to decline in subscribers even as Bewkes noted that Time Warner has reduced operating expenses at AOL by &quot;well over a billion dollars.&quot;Still, even as AOL&#39;s goal is to become a viable online advertising competitor against Google, Yahoo and Microsoft -- the latter two of which may soon become a single and more formidable rival -- advertising revenue for AOL has been growing less than the industry average for several quarters.In the fourth quarter, ad revenue at AOL grew 18 percent, less than the current International Advertising Bureau&#39;s industry average of 25 percent. As a point of comparison, Google&#39;s ad revenue grew 51 percent in its fiscal fourth quarter.AOL&#39;s ad revenue growth was below industry average for both its 2007 second and third quarters as well. It grew 13 percent in the third quarter, which ended Sept. 30, and 16 percent in the second quarter, which ended June 30. The industry average was around 26 percent for those time periods.Time Warner&#39;s financial results for the quarter overall met Wall Street expectations, but net income was down for the quarter. The company reported $1.03 billion, or $0.28 a share, for the fourth quarter, down from $1.75 billion, or $0.44, last year. However, the results for the fourth quarter of fiscal 2006 were bolstered by an income-tax benefit as well as income from the sale of AOL Internet access businesses in the U.K. and France.Quarterly revenue rose 2.4 percent, from $12.34 billion in the year-ago quarter to $12.64 billion, reported Wednesday.Bewkes on Wednesday also outlined other cost-cutting and strategic measures that Time Warner plans to take to make the business run more effectively. The company&#39;s AOL business is not the only one that will be affected; the company also is considering reducing its investments in its Time Warner Cable business, he said.(Juan Carlos Perez in Miami contributed to this report.)
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Time Warner Inc. said Wednesday it agreed to sell AOL France's Internet access business to Neuf Cegetel, a French telecommunications network operator, for about $365 million in cash.
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Time Warner Inc. will pay $210 million to settle charges that its America Online unit fraudulently inflated its revenue figures. Separately, it is expected to pay about $300 million to settle SEC charges related to its buyout of a stake held by Germany's Bertelsmann AG in AOL Europe.
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AOL has agreed to make it easier for its remaining customers to leave as part of a $3 million settlement.
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Time Warner Inc. and Comcast Corp. on Monday said they have agreed to allow Comcast to cut its interest in Time Warner Cable Inc. to 17 percent from about 21 percent.
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Time Warner Inc. said yesterday that it is creating a $500 million reserve in response to the federal investigations of its America Online unit and that it also will restate AOL Europe&#39;s financial results for 2000 and 2001.
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America Online, the world&#39;s largest Internet service provider, plans to lay off more than 700 employees early next month, or 5 percent of its US work force, to cut costs and meet financial goals, a source close to the company said on
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Time Warner Inc is working on  splitting AOL's audience and access businesses and running the  two as independent entities, Chief Executive Jeffrey Bewkes  said on Wednesday.
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Time Warner Inc. has agreed to pay more than $500 million to settle allegations that its America Online division improperly pumped up revenue and engaged in other unlawful practices before and after the two companies merged.-The Washington Post
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As an ad medium, America Online has struggled to compete with rivals Yahoo! and Microsoft's MSN. But nine-month AOL Me-dia Networks president Michael J. Kelly declares the Time Warner unit has turned the corner--and some advertisers and agencies agree.
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Time Warner Inc. said Thursday it agreed to sell AOL France's Internet access business to Neuf Cegetel, a French telecommunications network operator, for about $365 million in cash.
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Time Warner plans to split up the Internet access and audience businesses of its AOL segment to run them each independently, Time Warner CEO and President Jeff Bewkes revealed Wednesday.
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AOL stepped up its transformation from Internet access provider into an ad-driven business Monday as it announced plans to move its corporate headquarters and consolidate its advertising operations.