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AOL zooms up share ladder but Huffington Post disappoints

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By Noel Young, Correspondent

February 14, 2013 | 2 min read

AOL share prices have jumped more than 17 per cent after last week's SEC filing for the fourth quarter of 2012, which showed the company’s ad revenues zooming.

AOL: Huffpo disappoints

But the company’s success seems to have been driven more by advertising success and less by domestic content providers like the Huffington Post, said US website Money News.

Operating income grew 24 percent year over year. Ad revenue,was up 13 percent .

The company, led by CEO Tim Armstrong, "seems to have engineered a strong turnaround", said Money News. Last year AOL sold 800 proprietary AOL patents to Microsoft for $1.06 billion .

Over the past year, AOL shares have surged 94 percent.

However AOL's 2011 acquisition of the Huffington Post for more than $315 million has provided " little bang for the buck,"said Money News.

In 2010, the year before the Huffington Post buy , AOL 's network of content web sites, captured an average of 111 million domestic unique visitors each month.

In 2012, the year following the Huffpo buy , the company saw online traffic remain flat – at 111 million average unique visitors to their sites. And there was little impact on revenues from the Huffington Post deal.

AOL Properties brought in $940 million in revenue in 2010. By 2012, with the Huffington Post, that number grew by less than 1 percent to $946 million.

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