Investing in Time Warner: AOL for Sale?
By Ian Cooper
It’s been more than a year since Carl Icahn failed to successfully nudge Time Warner to break itself up. But that was last year. This year, analysts, including one at Bear Stearns, just upgraded TWX, believing something could happen soon.
And that something, we speculate, could include unlocking further value with AOL (a sale perhaps?). But as with most rumors and speculation, nothing is set in stone.
But even UBS seems to agree. As quoted by Yahoo News, UBS says, “We believe that the prospects for an outright sale of AOL this year are high as the Internet company tries to go global. The best way to do this is through a partnership or merger.”
But ask Time Warner’s COO Jeffrey Bewkes and he’ll tell you that Time Warner has no such plans to sell AOL. Instead, Bewkes has said (as quoted by Yahoo News), “It could be a perfectly reasonable and beneficial thing for AOL to create a separate currency to use to go out and acquire companies.”
Like I said with rumors and speculation, nothing is set in stone. But something’s happening behind the scenes. We’re not exactly sure what that “something” is yet, but we’d keep Time Warner on radar.
Take care,
Ian L. Cooper, Editor, Early Alert Trader
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