AOL Time Warner Inc said advertising sales at America Online, the biggest Internet service, will plunge by as much as half next year, leading to a drop of at least 15 percent in the unit's profit before some costs.
AOL Time Warner shares fell 14 percent, their steepest decline since July. America Online said revenue next year would be unchanged as money from subscriptions won't compensate for declines in advertising. The forecast came as executives including CEO Richard Parsons met yesterday in New York to outline a plan for reviving the business.
America Online is asking investors for patience as it offers more content and seeks more high-speed Internet customers, saying next year would be a transition period. The decline in shares is evidence investors are growing more skeptical that AOL Time Warner's merger last year, touted as a marriage of a high-growth Web company and old-fashioned media, will bring promised profits.
"I am not hearing any substantive strategies to re-energize the division," said Doug Kass, a hedge fund manager at Seabreeze Partners LP, which sold shares of AOL Time Warner in the past few months. He declined to say how many.
Parsons has said America Online will try to generate more money from existing subscribers and retail partners. The service will offer free content from AOL Time Warner magazines such as People and InStyle. Members will receive access to CNN's pay video news services over high-speed Internet.
Parsons has charged America Online CEO Jonathan Miller and Don Logan, head of the company's media and communications group, with restoring investor confidence at the unit, which also is contending with US investigations into its accounting.
"This is a business that in the fullness of time will become the growth driver" for AOL Time Warner, Parsons told investors.
The government is aiming to recruit 1,096 foreign English teachers and teaching assistants this year, the Ministry of Education said yesterday. The foreign teachers would work closely with elementary and junior-high instructors to create and teach courses, ministry official Tsai Yi-ching (蔡宜靜) said. Together, they would create an immersive language environment, helping to motivate students while enhancing the skills of local teachers, she said. The ministry has since 2021 been recruiting foreign teachers through the Taiwan Foreign English Teacher Program, which offers placement, salary, housing and other benefits to eligible foreign teachers. Two centers serving northern and southern Taiwan assist in recruiting and training
WIDE NET: Health officials said they are considering all possibilities, such as bongkrekic acid, while the city mayor said they have not ruled out the possibility of a malicious act of poisoning Two people who dined at a restaurant in Taipei’s Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 last week have died, while four are in intensive care, the Taipei Department of Health said yesterday. All of the outlets of Malaysian vegetarian restaurant franchise Polam Kopitiam have been ordered to close pending an investigation after 11 people became ill due to suspected food poisoning, city officials told a news conference in Taipei. The first fatality, a 39-year-old man who ate at the restaurant on Friday last week, died of kidney failure two days later at the city’s Mackay Memorial Hospital. A 66-year-old man who dined
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