AOL Time Warner's loss came to $44.9 billion, or $10.04 per share, in the fourth quarter and a corporate record $98.7 billion, or $22.15 a share, for the full year. While the company had signaled it would see another charge in the quarter, the announced charge was more than twice as large as expected.

**************************************

Why lose millions when you can lose Billions!!!!! :)

Yeah things are so bad I get 2-3 spams from AOL a day to my HiRise e-mail address and others. What a bunch of hypocrits!!

Couldn't agree more!!!

LOL I know

My cousin is CGC of AOL LA I e-mailed him this morning and asked if his pay checks were bouncing

:lol:

I guess folks finally realized AOL does not equal internet :D

I also just got 2 of the new 8.0 cd's in my mail box today in their Nifty metal boxes and I already have it on my computer

LOL

they waste soo much money and just charge it off to the investor

I also just got 2 of the new 8.0 cd's in my mail box today in their Nifty metal boxes and I already have it on my computer[/b][/quote]
I think AOL's true mission of surplanting the coaster industry was very successful myself. :matey:

Speaking of which..... is anybody able to get mail INTO aol??? NickyBoy???

Where there is a Will their is an inheritance! :)

hehe

:okthumb:

auth me. I'd like to rap with you.... icq #77941052

LOL

CNN founder Ted Turner is stepping down as vice chairman of AOL Time Warner, the parent company of CNN and CNN/Money, in order to spend more time on philanthropic endeavors, AOL's chairman announced Wednesday.

http://money.cnn.com/2003/01/29/news/compa...urner/index.htm

Ahhhh...sure Ted. Right.
:rolleyes:

Please note: The AOL losses have to do with writedowns of goodwill, and not actual "loss on operations"... removing these writedowns, the thing still makes money.

The problem stems from the massive over value of AOL at the time of the merger, along with it's declining subscriber base caused most likely by a compbination of MSN, earthlink, and local high speed services.

45 billion writedown this quarter, a total of almost 100 billion in the last 12 months... someone was really out to lunch when this deal got valued.

Alex

I posted a topic about this very subject. You could hear a pin drop afterwords. :rolleyes:

I got the feeling many an accomplished email marketer was reading the thread, and laughing out loud that I would even ask about getting legit mail into AOL. I think it's not something anyone is going to tell how to do, unless you are a REALLY good friend of theirs.

Boy am I glad I work for a division that actually MAKES money... fucking AOL is our ball-n-chain, dragging us down in their mire.

Share price dropped like a freakin' rock. My 401k is now a 101k. Christ-on-a-crutch!!!

Did any of you see the CNBC special "The Big Heist: How AOL Took Time Warner"?

Good show, here is an article recap. Basically it really was a big heist in a lot of ways.

http://moneycentral.msn.com/content/CNBCTV...orts/P37444.asp

I posted a topic about this very subject. You could hear a pin drop afterwords. :rolleyes:

I got the feeling many an accomplished email marketer was reading the thread, and laughing out loud that I would even ask about getting legit mail into AOL. I think it's not something anyone is going to tell how to do, unless you are a REALLY good friend of theirs.[/b][/quote]
If you'll be the ball you can get into hotmail aol you name it.

First getting ride of spam, then getting ride of popups... now see where they are :D

Write off or not... those numbers are bigger than many countries national budgets... :zoinks:

numbers can be misleading:)

this was a huge merger, and they had a lot of bad debt that had to be covered on their Q1 statement, as a combined sum.. adds up to roughly half the losses


http://www.wired.com/news/ebiz/0,1272,57475,00.html

Noted technician sees gruesome sell-off ahead
Friday, January 31, 2003 10:42 AM
- CBS MarketWatch.com
By Thom Calandra, CBS.MarketWatch.com
Last Update: 10:42 AM ET Jan 31, 2003

SAN FRANCISCO (CBS.MW) -- A pioneering market technician says a fresh bout of intense stock market selling is on its way.

Lowry's Reports' Paul F. Desmond is revered for his examinations of supply and demand forces that shape stock market activity. His work on identifying bear-market bottoms and new bull markets coined the term "90-90 downside days" and won the prestigious Charles Dow award.

Desmond's work demonstrates that severe downside days, in which 90 percent of all volume and total points gained and lost on the New York Stock Exchange (NYA) are in the red, must precede a bear-market bottom.

Essentially, Desmond says the three-month party is almost certainly over for stock-market optimists.

None of the rallies that lifted the spirits and net worth of investors in September 2001, and July and October of last year, followed a series of intense selling days, he says. "Downside days serve to exhaust the desire to sell, and drive prices down to the kind of bargain levels that attract sustained investor demand," Desmond says.

"It looks like we are in for a new round of 90 percent downside days," Desmond tells me.

Buying demand, an indicator that measures the so-called breadth of the stock market, last week sank to its lowest point in almost six years. Just as ominous: Selling pressure -- when investors become frustrated "with a prolonged lack of gains and begin to aggressively dump stocks in a desire to beat everyone else to the exit" -- is soaring.

Investors -- and fat-cat executives -- eyeing their "disgust meters," need look no farther than entertainment company AOL Time Warner (AOL). If I owned the shares -- and I don't -- I would by now be wondering if this 1990s wunderkind is the next WorldCom, or Enron, or Tyco.

"I am struck by the stubbornness of the various analysts quoted in today's Wall Street Journal Heard on the Street column," Bernie Schaeffer of Schaeffer's Investment research told me Friday morning. "There is certainly a parallel here to WorldCom, on which most of Wall Street did not bail until the stock plunged below $5."

Schaeffer, a longtime market technician who catalogs investor sentiment, the options market and the financial press, says the popular AOL theme seems to be, " 'AOL is a value as long as there are no more shocks to the system.' This is despite a reported loss larger than the GDP of Chile and the tried-and-true cockroach theory on Wall Street that negative revelations beget further negative revelations."

Slowly, market observers are beginning to see AOL as it should be seen, as not as the flash-in-the-pan might want to be seen in Harry Potter's Mirror of Erised.

"If a company that has both 'Harry Potter' and 'The Lord of the Rings' in its arsenal of properties can't figure out how to make a profit, and how to clean itself up, then it suggests that something more than bad management and bad decisions is afoot," says Joseph Duarte, a Dallas fund manager and author of two books on stock-market strategy. "Ted Turner's resignation suggests that all is not well, and that it could be worse than anyone expects it to be."

Back in Desmond's world, the few industry groups showing strong so-called "power ratings," the term Lowry's uses to rank sectors by their level of investors' buying demand, include precious metals and non-ferrous metals shares and the defensive areas of electric utilities and drug companies. See:

I fully expect that Desmond, when the stock-market's relentless fall from grace has run its course in several years' time, will gain recognition as one of the most prescient financial prognosticators in modern history.

Desmond team offers subscribers data on indicators that measure buying and selling demand, the relative strength of stocks, NYSE moving averages and an exhaustive range of proprietary gauges. The Florida-based firm has been serving research to Wall Street clients since 1938.

What's actionable in the increasing wreckage of the North American stock market? In the view of this writer, any investment with a pure exposure to hard assets, especially livestock, certain crops, gold and silver.

On Jan. 9, I explained the story of Cresud SA (CRESY), a deeply undervalued Argentine rancher and holder of cattle and land. The shares were neglected at $5.80 each, and now, at $7.80 in U.S. trading, Cresud's stock still sells for about the equivalent of the company's tangible book value.

Shares of Cresud Sociedad Anonima Commercial Inmobiliaria Financiera y Agropecuaria, as the company is called, are still dirt cheap. Read my clips:

The only other must-have investment for the coming storm is gold, which, like commodities, has been turning heads as its price logs daily and weekly gains. At present, the easiest way to buy the metal, and its industrial soul-mate, silver, is through shares of Central Fund of Canada (CEF), whose shares trade on the American Stock Exchange.

Central Fund is a repository for precious metals. It holds 261,000 ounces of gold and 13.06 million ounces of silver. The company is a closed-end fund whose shares sell at a roughly 18 percent premium to the $368-an-ounce price of gold. Central Fund recently completed a private placement of $15 million.

"This enlarges the fund by 10 percent, and more importantly, another 22,400 ounces of gold and 1.12 million ounces of silver are going underground again, into the CIBC vaults, for CEF shareholders, never to see the light of day again in my lifetime hopefully," Ian McAvity, a director of the company and a co-founder, tells me. "That is true physical investment demand of the sort we need for the

precious metals markets."

Central Fund shares are flirting with $5, their highest point since May. At 10 a.m. New York time Friday, spot gold was down $2 at $367.88 an ounce.

You can get free delivery of Thom Calandra's StockWatch every trading day. Sign up for Thom Calandra's StockWatch newsletter at MarketWatch.com. For faster service, sign up for the Thom Calandra's StockWatch alert, also free. Coming soon: an all-new, actionable newsletter from Thom Calandra, available by subscription. Stay tuned.

Thom Calandra's StockWatch is in its seventh year at CBS.MarketWatch.com. Thom Calandra owns gold, Central Fund of Canada (CEF) and shares of several miners, including Bitterroot Resources, Almaden Minerals and Altius Minerals.

Grimm,
you'll be one of those who bails out under $5
;-)))

Randal Boe is your cousin??

The good thing about Forest is that he always has a family member involved in every bit of news. It makes everything so much more personal for me.

Forest, which one of your family members was on the space shuttle?

serge... i dont buy AOL, only mini futures:) are you nuts?

mini futures?
what kind of animal is that?
;-0)

did you mean mUni futures?
;-)))

Alpackas:)

Maybe the auditors finally pointed out that just because an account has 5 different usernames, it doesn't mean you have 5 different subscribers :biglaugh:

More bad news from AOL, today they announced a DECLINE in total membership:

http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/internet/02/0...s.ap/index.html

The jackels sure are on this one quickly... funny to see CNN posting such a negative reading article about another part of it's parent company... no infighting there!

Alex

The course of business continues to change. Unfortunately old foundations are ripped apart to pave a new way of doing things.

We all know the lawsuit against JoeE and the old CEN days was the reason AOL lost bazillions.

They are saying Ted stepped down in an attempt to independently buy back is baby CNN and separate from this disasterous AOL merger. Apparently his has the bucks to buy his toys back if he wanted too.

Gee maybe AOL may become more friendly with adult, and open up their own porn sites, great lost leader to up their subscriptions, they can place a free condom in that mailer can too!

yeah, mail out condoms instead of stupid CDs that everyone uses as coasters or trashes...

Alex