Time Warner will be spinning off AOL.
Time Warner Inc. announced this morning in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission that it intends to spin off its ailing AOL division.
“Although the Company’s Board of Directors has not made any decision,” the company wrote in its latest quarterly report to investors, “the Company currently anticipates that it would initiate a process to spin off one or more parts of the businesses of AOL to Time Warner’s stockholders, in one or a series of transactions.”
Time Warner’s net income dropped 14 percent over the same period a year ago, mainly because of dropping revenues at AOL but also because of a suffering publishing business.
Tech industry analysts had, for years, speculated that Time Warner would spin off AOL; the two companies merged in 2001 with the idea that AOL’s strengths as a new media company could benefit an old media company like Time Warner, and vice versa. But few synergies ever arose from the marriage. Even AOL founder Steve Case, who is no longer with the company, has said that he believes the two companies should be separated.