Holy Smokes! AOL Is Up 25% In Two Weeks

via businessinsider.com

AOL stock was already up huge year-over-year, when it reported earnings on February 8.

Since then, it's up 25%.

Ken Sena of Evercore Partners has a theory on why.

On February 8, AOL reported its quarterly financials in a new way – breaking its business into three segments: Membership Group, Brand Group, and AOL Networks.

Doing so has provided investors greater clarity into which parts of the business are growing, and which provide baseline, dependable value.

Wall Street loves to bet on companies that are showing accelerating momentum.

By segmenting its revenue reporting in this new way, AOL has exposed these investors to the part of its business that is achieving those things.

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Meet Alto, The Gmail Replacement You Won't Believe Was Made By AOL

via businessinsider.com

AOL's problem is it largely depends on two declining sources of traffic, people who use AOL to get online and Web-based AOL.com email users.

The numbers seem to show declines in Web-based email aren't worth fighting. Teens don't like to use email and older adults check their email in apps on their phones.

Across the entire Internet, Web-based email was up a mere 1% in September 2012 over September 2011. AOL Mail is down 8%. Yahoo Mail is down 16%. Hotmail is down 18%.

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This Kid Spent Two Months Secretly Living in AOL's Offices

via gizmodo.com

It turns out there is at least one person who likes AOL—enough to even eat, sleep, shower, and live out of their Palo Alto HQ like some sort of Silicon Valley hobo for months. Meet Eric Simons.

Eric was a crappy high school student with bad grades. Eric turned this failure into an idea for a startup, ClassConnect, which he says makes it easier for teachers to find and improvise interesting new lesson plans. Cool! Eric got a little cash from and the opportunity to work on his project at AOL over a summer—then that cash ran ou and all of his friends went away to college. So, like any normal 19-year-old, Eric decided to live in AOL.

The two month luxury squat sounds pretty harrowing, as recounted to CNET...

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Facebook Paying Microsoft $550 Million for Former AOL Patents

via allthingsd.com

Facebook and Microsoft are about to announce a deal where the social networking giant pays Redmond $550 million for access to more than 600 patents, AllThingsD has learned.

The deal comes as the social network prepares for its initial stock offering and looks to protect itself in an increasingly litigious intellectual property environment. Yahoo sued Facebook last month, alleging infringement of 10 patents.

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REPORT: AOL To Fire Hundreds

via businessinsider.com

PandoDaily's Sarah Lacy reports that AOL will fire hundreds people in the next week.

We're reaching out to sources to confirm.

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How To Turn $667 Million Into $0 - The AOL Story

via businessinsider.com

Tim Armstrong has spent $667 million on AOL acquisitions since 2009.

And yet, right now, the company's market cap is $1.4 billion. This market cap is made up of a 1.1X multiple on AOL's Internet Access business revenues plus AOL's $400 million in cash.

What this means is that, in the market's opinion, the companies acquired by AOL are no longer worth $667 million on the aggregate. In the market's opinion, they are worth $0.

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The Executives Behind The AOL-Time Warner Merger

via businessinsider.com

At the end of 2000, with AOL's stock at a dizzying high, CEO Steve Case decided to merge his company with media giant Time Warner.

It was, in a word, a disaster.

We're talking a loss of more than $150 billion in paper money. Not good.

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Microsoft, AOL, And YAHOO Really Want You To Know They Aren't Selling Crap Ads

via businessinsider.com

AOL, Yahoo, and Microsoft signed their ad-selling deal earlier this week, and some people criticized the partnership because it deals with leftover portions of the companies' inventories.

Executives from the three companies, however, say that's not a bad thing.

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AOL posts loss in Q3 despite ad sales jump

via digitaltrends.com

Despite a rise in display advertising revenue, AOL posted a 6 percent drop in total revenue during the third quarter of 2011, the company announced today. The company’s total revenue came in at $531.7 million, which is still higher than a consensus of some Wall Street analysts, which estimated AOL would earn $524 million in revenue. AOL boasts that the drop in revenue was the lowest decline in five years.

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AOL chief hopes to sell investors on Yahoo deal

via theglobeandmail.com

While Yahoo’s own strategic review has bumped AOL to the back burner for many on Wall Street, Armstrong is still trying to drum up shareholder support for a deal with Yahoo, presenting it as an alternative to going it alone as an Internet media company.

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Microsoft, Yahoo, AOL to sell one another's ads

Microsoft, Yahoo, and AOL are teaming up to sell one another's online ads.

Hoping to grab more of the ad dollars now spent at Google and on online advertising networks, the three companies will start selling ad inventory on one another's sites, according to AllThingsD's Peter Kafka. Specifically, the three will sell one another's "Class 2 display" ad inventory, or graphic ads that they either can't sell on their own or typically turn over to ad networks to handle.

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AOL, Microsoft, Yahoo in Ad Deal vs. Google

via allthingsd.com

AOL, Yahoo and Microsoft compete for ad dollars. But a new pact calls for the rivals to cooperate on ad sales, too.
The three companies are going to start selling ad inventory on each others’ sites, in a plan they hope will make them more competitive with Google.

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Yahoo Says No Way Is It Merging With AOL

via businessinsider.com

Moments ago, Bloomberg reported that AOL CEO Tim Armstrong has asked Yahoo's advisors (who also happen to be AOL's advisers) if Yahoo would like to buy AOL and install him as CEO.

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AOL - Going to be bought out?

via digitaltrends.com

AOL is reported to be mulling a sale or spin-off, but is it the end of an era, or merely a ploy to buoy stock values?

AOL has been in a state of flux for awhile now, attempting to keep its brand alive with mergers and new platforms. But nothing’s been able to stick, and profits and subscriptions haven’t been anything to brag to investors about. This is enough cause for speculation regarding a sale or yet another HuffPo sized merger – especially given AdWeek’s (the site shares a building with AOL) inside scoop that AOL is meeting with a prestigious M&A team.

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Could AOL Get Bought Out?

via allthingsd.com

In the last month, the stock of AOL has declined just over 50 percent.
But that drop is not just due to the turbulent markets of late. AOL stock had a 50 percent drop over the last six months, a 57 percent decline since the beginning of the year and 56 percent plunge since it went public in late 2009.
Which is why some in the industry at both private equity firms and bigger companies have noted to me that the price of AOL might have gotten low enough for a very cheap takeover.
“You have to look, even with all the problems they have been struggling to fix,” said one person, who also underscored the advertising and other challenges the AOL faces. “But it is so inexpensive, it’s also an interesting idea.”
Said another large investor: “It’s almost free, given its cash on hand.”

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