Time Warner Suffers Massive Loss, Cuts Jobs
Time Warner announced a quarterly loss of $16 billion after writing down tangible assets. The company said they lost $4.47 a share for the quarter. Time Warner, which is based in New York City, had earned 28 cents per share in the last three months of 2007.
Revenue was also down for the quarter, slumping 3% to $12.31 billion.
Most of the loss was related to a $15 billion writedown on the value of its cable franchise rights as well as its stake in a wireless joint venture with Clearwire Corp. Excluding this loss, earnigs would have been 33 cents a share.
"We're making progress at Time Warner toward our goals of becoming a more content-focused company and delivering increasing returns to our stockholders. Last year, our priorities were to rationalize our structure and improve our operating performance," Chairman and CEO Jeff Bewkes stated.
Time Warner saw revenues slump at their AOL unit, from $1.25 billion to $968 million.
As a result of lower revenues, Time Warner Cable announced they'd be cutting 3% of their workforce. This will result in 1,250 jobs lost. They cited strong competition and the global recession as the key factors in their struggles.
Time Warner has seen an erosion in subscriber counts, including 119,000 during the quarter.
Time Warner Cable (TWC) will soon be a completely separate company from TWX.
Copyright 2007-2009 by Times of the Internet. All Rights Reserved.
