AOL posts largest annual loss in US history ($100B), Ted Turner resigns

[JohnT]

You work for TW? My empathies, man.

[Tolls]

Look at my eamil...I work for Turner...

I've been bought out twice since being here (just).

Turner's good...TW's not so bad...and I'll keep quiet about that other lot.

[Saras]

--Diversification will prevent you from losing money, but it will not make you rich."

Amen, Brother JohnT (btw, my avatar is way more cute than yours! )!

And you are arguing about capital markets with Sava. Wait until that dude learns something.

[Imran Siddiqui]

You know, the combined financial wisdom in this thread, if contained and used as a force for good, would be able to toast bread... lightly.

Time Warner executives got whooshed when they agreed to let AOL buy them out

I still can't believe that one. I know it has been a while, but God, what a dumb move! It's like when the Cubs traded Lou Brock for a couple of nobodies.

[JohnT]

"And you are arguing about capital markets with Sava."

I know Saras, but I can't help myself for some reason.

You know, AOL-TW merged at the top of the market and here it is, 3 years later, and they are finally paying the price for that decision... given their sense of timing, could it be that the market has now bottomed-out, that all the hype money has finally been driven from the large majority of internet/media/telecom stocks? I'm thinking that this might be considered a bellweather event, the sort of story that, in time, might put closure on the negative spiral of the above industries. In short, I'm picturing hearing a future Imran state (in 2012, have you) that the tech turnaround started when the market bottomed out with the AOL-TW write-offs of 2003.

Tolls: What are the rumors around your place? Any thoughts/dreams as to getting rid of AOL somehow?

[DanS]

AOL isn't a dead weight by a long shot. It's a good business.

However, it should never have been given 2/3rd of the merged pie. In this respect, TW has nobody to blame but themselves, and Case is a hero to AOL's old shareholders.

[Tolls]

I wish I had some rumours, but we don't get diddly out here in the sticks (AKA London)...we didn't get Steve Case's resignation email until after we saw it on the Beeb.

My personal hope is they will find a way to cut them loose, but then I didn't like them to begin with and their internal shenanigans IT-wise (which have been reported elsewhere) have done little to endear them to me.

The TW merger was relatively smooth, with nary a procedural ripple...but then along comes this lot and all of a sudden we get a bunch of absolutely pointless corporate BS.

**cough** sorry...I just get a tad annoyed by it all.

[JohnT]

"The TW merger was relatively smooth, with nary a procedural ripple..."

Well, that's because you had Michael Milken working it behind the scenes. Mike will take care of you: the man knows how to finance a takeover.

You didn't have him with the AOL thing and it showed. Too bad for y'all: the SEC discovered his role a few months later and fined Turner/TW (it's been a while and the details are a bit hazy) some crazy amount - like $50,000,000 or something. Mike would've never gone along with this deal.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by JohnT
Urban: "Too bad, Glonkie, the losses are write-offs, not operating losses. The former is just funny money game, the latter is the one that hurts."

The point is, Urban, is that AOL's operating losses are huge, that their 2000 market valuation was WAY out of proportion to the real worth of the company then, and that Time Warner executives got whooshed when they agreed to let AOL buy them out - this quarter alone, to the tune of $10+ a share that they'll never get back, with more losses on the horizon and in the past (AOL-TW lost $8billion last year, if y'all recall). There are a lot of embarrassed, poorer TW executives who are now wondering how they ever allowed their once-great company be bought out by those over-valued, over-hyped hicks in Virginia**.

Hm, I am not aware that AOL-TW has/had operating losses. Most of the loss came from the stock coming down after the dotcom bust. With Steve Case gone, the senior management in AOL-TW is pretty much old TW people anyway.

Originally posted by JohnT
Write offs are real losses; they represent value that the stock will never get back. AOL-TW is telling analysts that their company is worth $100 billion less today than yesterday and to lop that money off the stock price. If that's not a loss in your book, then I am at a loss.

Market cap is just funny money. It's not money that the company uses to run day to day business, it doesn't hurt the company even if they lose all of it. The company still operates and still makes money from New Line Studio and Warner Bros Studio, among other assets.

Stock value is potential money, sure, but only for investors. It only matters to the company if it wants to issue more stocks.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui
I still can't believe that one. I know it has been a while, but God, what a dumb move! It's like when the Cubs traded Lou Brock for a couple of nobodies.

Ask yourself, why on earth would Amazon.com's shares once were traded at $300+?

[Saras]

because there were greater fools than the seller?

[Provost Harrison]

Are AOL going to be flushed down the sh*tter of history? One can only hope

[HazieDaVampire]

Ha, that'll teach'em for making software that takes a whole 5 mins to realise its lost connection!

I work out i've lost connection before it does, its infact faster for me to restart using ctrl alt del!

[Caesar the Great]

aol is a pretty miserable company, i'm happy to see them fall