Time Warner (TWX) has long been a media conglomerate difficult for investors to dissect. However, that may be about to change and the moves could finally extract some value for Time Warner shareholders. The company will complete its spin-off of Time Warner Cable at the end of the month, which offloads billions of debt to the cable company and frees up cash flow at TWX.
Time Warner is also making some moves at its AOL division. AOL has hired Tim Armstrong, formerly the head of U.S. sales at Google, as its new CEO. The conventional wisdom is that Time Warner will spin off AOL as well, in order to allow Armstrong to maximize profit and growth potential at the online unit.
All of this should be good news for Time Warner shareholders, whose stock has been cut in half over the last year and sits near its lows. Time Warner retains some very strong brands, including HBO. With less debt from the cable division, coupled with a $9 billion cash infusion from the spin-off and a new strong management team at AOL, investors might finally begin to look at the stock again in the intermediate term.
As a result, bargain hunters who prefer strong large cap companies might be interested in checking out TWX shares at $8 each. Not only do they sit near their lows, but they yield 3% and trade for less than 5 times trailing cash flow.
Full Disclosure: No position in TWX at the time of writing, but positions may change at any time
If people are looking to cut back on discretionary spending, the Netflix (NFLX) mail order DVD service can obviously help. Rather than spending $30 at a theater for a couple to see a movie and order some snacks, a Netflix subscription can cost half that for an entire month. Not surprising, fourth quarter sales and earnings at Netflix (reported last night) were very impressive and the stock is soaring today, trading up near $35 per share.