What's new

AOL loses a staggering $100 BILLION (1 Viewer)

Michael*K

Screenwriter
Joined
May 24, 2001
Messages
1,806
In a corporate freefall that's difficult to grasp, AOL Time Warner announced today that it lost nearly $100 billion dollars last year. The news resulted in the resignation of Ted Turner and cemented the notion that the union of AOL and Time Warner two years ago was due to become a monumental failure. Makes UAL's annual losses look like peanuts.
 

Carl Johnson

Senior HTF Member
Joined
May 6, 1999
Messages
2,260
Real Name
Carl III
If it hadn't been proven otherwise I would have bet that between the two companies they couldn't lose that much money if they tried.
 

Cam S

Screenwriter
Joined
Jan 11, 2002
Messages
1,524
Wow, a colossal failure. I really hope there is no more AOL or COL crap, all these cd's I keep getting in the mail and with computer parts is driving me nuts. Not too mention it is CRAP software!
 

Todd Hochard

Senior HTF Member
Joined
Jan 24, 1999
Messages
2,312
Here's some perspective for you-
It posted a full-year 2002 net loss of $98.7 billion, about the same as the gross domestic product of Egypt and double that of New Zealand.
The whole thing seems like funny money to me. There was NEVER that much intrinsic value in both of the businesses.
 

Justin Lane

Senior HTF Member
Joined
Jan 18, 2000
Messages
2,149
Recent reports say they will probably drop the AOL tagline from the company name soon as well. This merger could go down as one of the worst of all times, even worse then DaimlerChrysler.

J
 

Max Leung

Senior HTF Member
Joined
Sep 6, 2000
Messages
4,611
Hey isn't this old news from last year? Packy, I think this post was made a year ago, and a glitch in the system altered all timestamps on the posts in this thread.

Boy I can't believe I found a bug in the forum software! I mean, what company could lose tens of billions two years running? That's UNpossible!
 

Bill Slack

Supporting Actor
Joined
Mar 16, 1999
Messages
837
But there's a 54 billion and 45 billion dollar right-off of the AOL purchase in that number. They didn't 'loose' that money, per se, that just have to account for AOLs (lack) of value. It's still bad, but it's not as if they are generated that much negative cash flow (otherwise they would be out of business pretty quick!)
 

Dave Poehlman

Senior HTF Member
Joined
Mar 8, 2000
Messages
3,813
I hope they don't go out of business... then I'll have to try and explain local ISP's to my father-in-law when he loses his AOL. :rolleyes
 

Michael Reuben

Senior HTF Member
Joined
Feb 12, 1998
Messages
21,763
Real Name
Michael Reuben
but it's not as if they are generated that much negative cash flow
In fact, all the news reports indicate that the company as a whole is generating positive cash flow, mostly thanks to the Time Warner side. The "loss" is primarily a writedown of the value of AOL, which was grossly inflated to begin with.

M.
 

Jeff Ulmer

Senior HTF Member
Deceased Member
Joined
Aug 23, 1998
Messages
5,582
After dealing with their customer service for the past three weeks trying to get my frikin coupon for signing up, it's no wonder they are losing money...
 

Users who are viewing this thread

Top