Time Warner posts flat third-quarter performance

Time Warner posted flat revenues and an earnings dip in the third quarter, as its AOL unit continued to post a weakened performance.

The media giant generated $11.71 billion in revenues during the quarter, compared with $11.68 billion the same time last year. And its net income dropped to $1.07 billion in the quarter from $1.09 billion a year earlier.

Time Warner, which posted earnings of 30 cents a share in the quarter, beat analysts' expectations of earnings of 27 cents a share, according to Thomson Reuters.

That gave Time Warner's stock a 2.49 percent lift in early-morning trading to $11.10 a share.

Time Warner noted that it posted growth in its networks, cable, and filmed-entertainment segments, offsetting declines at its publishing and AOL units.

Revenues decreased 17 percent ($207 million) to $1.0 billion, due to a 26 percent decline ($165 million) in subscription revenues and a 6 percent decrease ($33 million) in advertising revenues.

The decline in subscription revenues reflects mainly a decrease in domestic AOL brand subscribers, related primarily to AOL's strategy to offer its e-mail and other products free of charge to Internet consumers.

Driving the decrease in advertising revenues were declines in display advertising on AOL Network sites and sales of advertising on third-party Internet sites, offset partially by an increase in paid-search advertising.

Google and AOL have an arrangement for Google to provide paid-search advertising to the media company.

[monkeyhouse]

Time Warners treatment of cable customers, at least in my Charlotte, NC area, is diabolical at times. They've been fined by the FCC for charging customers for channels they can't receive and hopefully that will continue in my state too. The FCC are also looking into cable companies over charging. TWC is certainly a poster for that (they recently sneaked in some price increases without even announcing it)! I'm not alone and that's why so many jump ship to Dish or Direct. I'm only hanging on cos I love my Tivo (which TWC have a hard time understanding).