Time Warner beats earnings expectations

Time Warner Inc. (NYSE: TWX) reported earnings per share of $0.22 on revenues of $11.184 billion versus estimates of $0.20 EPS and $11.19 billion for revenues. Earnings per share on an an after items net basis was $0.30, but the number to use is $0.22 EPS, which excludes one time gains. The company generated $1.4 billion in cash from operations and free cash flow was $973 million.

As expected, revenues were lower at AOL ($1.458 billion vs. $1.957 billion in Q1 2006), but cable showed the best gains with revenues growing to $3.85 billion (up from $2.385 billion in Q1 2006). Film posted roughly a 1% drop to $2.743 billion, Networks revenues were flat at $2.41 billion and publishing revenues were down less than 2% to $1.048 billion.

One of the uncanny issues is that AOL still carried 12.0 million Internet access subscribers, despite the company's migration away from this model. Its cable operations ended with 13.4 million basic video subscribers, with 6.5 million of those subscribing to two or more primary services and 1.7 million of those subscribing to the beloved Triple Play packages.

The company also reaffirmed full year adjusted OIBDA to be in mid-to-high teens off of a base of $11 billion in 2006, reflecting discontinued operations. The actual guidance for EPS is now $1.05 for fiscal 2007, including gains of roughly $0.10 on after tax gains. If you back this out to $0.95, that is slightly under the $0.99 EPS estimates from First Call, and in the conference call we'll find out how much of that $0.10 gain may be part of the actual earnings.

BloggingStocks will be liveblogging the conference call at 10:30 a.m. EST, and based on that call is probably what will be the largest directional factor from the Q&A Session.

Jon Ogg is a partner at 24/7 Wall St.; he does not own securities in the companies he covers.