New to the Mac? Check out TUAW's Mac 101

AOL Money & Finance

Time Warner beats expectations, but stock falls as investors wonder where growth will come from

More

The Associated Press reports that BloggingStocks' parent, Time Warner (NYSE: TWX), beat Wall Street expectations by a penny a share. But its profit was still down -- 26% thanks to declining subscriber fees at AOL and lower advertising revenues at magazines like Time and Sports Illustrated.

But after adjusting for one-time gains, Wall Street was expecting Time Warner to make 23 cents a share and it actually earned a penny more. In addition, revenues rose 5% to $11.6 billion, 1.2% more than expected.

The bad news is that AOL's subscription revenue fell 29% which drove a 36% decline in operating income. As I posted, the 2006 change in strategy to emphasize advertising over subscriptions has not been able to make up for $2 billion in lost revenue. Advertising revenue rose a mere 2% to $530 million -- not enough to make up the difference.

What does the future hold? Time Warner is selling the 84% of its cable operations that it still owns to shareholders later in 2008. Cable's revenues grew 7% on "increases in cable, Internet phone and video-on-demand fees." And it is trying to sell the dial-up portion of AOL to Earthlink (NASDAQ: ELNK).

It remains to be seen whether Time Warner can reinvest the capital from these deals into businesses which generate faster revenue and profit growth.

Time Warner stock is down 2% in early trading.

Peter Cohan is President of Peter S. Cohan & Associates. He also teaches management at Babson College and edits The Cohan Letter. He has no financial interest in the securities mentioned.

Symbol Lookup
IndexesChangePrice
DJIA-36.658,146.52
NASDAQ+3.481,756.03
S&P 500-3.55879.13

Last updated: July 11, 2009: 01:06 PM

BloggingStocks Exclusives

Hot Stocks

DailyFinance Headlines

Latest from BloggingBuyouts

TheFlyOnTheWall.com Headlines

BioHealth Investor Headlines

WalletPop Headlines

My Portfolios

Track your stocks here!

Find out why more people track their portfolios on AOL Money & Finance then anywhere else.

BloggingStocks Partners

More from AOL Money & Finance

WalletPop Headlines