14 DAY TRIAL // AOL is approaching its final moments at Time Warner, as the companies are heading towards the spin off revealed earlier this year. Time Warner has now officially put a date on when this is going to happen and as of December 10, 2009 AOL will begin to trade as an independent company on the stock market. The spin off comes nine years after what is regarded as one of the most disastrous mergers in history.
“The Time Warner board of directors has approved the final distribution ratio and declared a pro rata dividend of the shares of AOL common stock owned by Time Warner that will result in the complete legal and structural separation of the two companies,” Time Warner said in a statement.
“On the distribution date of December 9, 2009, Time Warner stockholders of record as of 5 p.m. on November 27, 2009, the record date for the distribution, will receive one share of AOL common stock for every eleven shares of Time Warner common stock they hold,” the company added.
What it boils down to is: Time Warner shareholders will get one share in the newly formed AOL for every 11 Time Warner shares they own. For any fractional share they may be entitled to they will receive a cash payment. Based on the $32 per share closing price and Time Warner's market cap of $37.8 billion, AOL is now valued at $3.15 billion a massive loss from its valuation at the time of the merger.
In its heyday, AOL was an Internet powerhouse and Time Warner wanted a piece of the action. In 2000, the two companies merged in a deal which valued AOL at $163 billion, roughly 54 times its current worth. After the dot-com bubble burst, it became apparent that the two companies would never become a single unit and AOL saw its value slide towards the figure we have today. In 2005, Google invested $1 billion in the company, evaluating it at $20 billion. Last summer, Google sold back its stake at a huge loss, putting AOL at just $5.7 billion. Even this was too high, it seems, and AOL will start trading with a value slightly above $3 billion and it remains to be seen if it goes up or down from there.