AOL, the owner of the Huffington Post and TechCrunch, has reported a more than fourfold jump in first-quarter profit as online advertising revenue increased.
Net income advanced to $21.1 million, or 22 cents a share, from $4.7 million, or 4 cents, a year earlier, the company said. Excluding some items, per-share profit was 31 cents. Analysts had predicted 17 cents, the average of estimates compiled by Bloomberg.
Chief executive officer Tim Armstrong is transforming AOL into an ad-based digital- publishing business, as customers of its legacy dial-up internet-access division switch to broadband offered by cable operators.
The company bought the Huffington Post for $315 million last year and expanded Patch, a local news division that Mr Armstrong said he expected to command about $50 million in sales this year and to become “run-rate profitable” by the end of 2013. AOL is looking to expand the technology sites Engadget and TechCrunch by working with another company and had no “appetite to sell them”, Mr Armstrong said.
The technology blog PandoDaily earlier reported that AOL was looking to offload those properties. – (Bloomberg)
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