Ops, they made a little math error, they hope nobody minds, Stan.
AOL Time Warner Earns $57 Million, Restates Results
quote.bloomberg.com
By Adam Steinhauer
New York, Oct. 23 (Bloomberg) -- AOL Time Warner Inc. will restate two years of results, reducing revenue by $190 million, after finding improperly recorded sales at America Online. The world's biggest media company posted a third-quarter profit as revenue rose in all divisions except the Internet service.
Net income was $57 million, or 1 cent a share, compared with a loss of $997 million, or 22 cents, a year earlier, the company said in a statement. Sales at the owner of Time magazine, the Warner Bros. film studio and HBO cable-television network rose 10 percent to $9.98 billion from $9.07 billion.
America Online's accounting is under federal investigation and led some investors to call for the ouster of Chairman Stephen Case after the company disclosed in August that it may have improperly booked some ad sales. The restatement, representing about 1 percent of America Online's revenue in the two years, was smaller than some investors said they expected.
``The magnitude wasn't all that much compared to the total company, but it suggests that under Case and the previous management there were a lot of things going on that shouldn't have gone on,'' said Hal Vogel, chief executive of Vogel Capital Inc. and an independent media analyst. ``It raises the question about the confidence'' investors should have in the company, he said.
Case, as chairman of America Online Inc., engineered the Internet service's $114 billion purchase of Time Warner Inc., completed in January 2001. AOL Time Warner shares have fallen 58 percent in the past year.
The stock rose 79 cents to $14.38 at 7:23 p.m. New York time in extended trading following the company's announcement. The shares earlier rose 3 cents to $13.53 in New York Stock Exchange composite trading. |
