Wednesday, February 09, 2011
Liberal dilution
The public equity markets have taken a long, hard look at the AOL-Huffpo deal, and do not like what they see:
You pay for what you get.
Arianna Huffington and Ken Lerer, co-founders of the Huffington Post, are said to be walking away with a combined $80 million to $100 million from an original $2 million per person investment -- but so far AOL stockholders aren't seeing that kind of return.
Since Feb. 1, the price of AOL shares has dropped from $23.85 to $20.89 at yesterday's close.
With 106.7 million shares outstanding, that means AOL has shed $315 million in value over the last five trading days -- which happens to be exactly the same price AOL agreed to pay to acquire HuffPo.
Oops. But a top 'o the hat to Arianna, who may well have called liberalism's near-term "top."
4 Comments:
By 
astonerii, at
Wed Feb 09, 05:15:00 PM:
its got more room to drop. Not only did they throw 315 million in the toilet, but they have also further damaged their reputation, thus, it could lose triple the 315 million before the end of next week.
By 
Unknown, at
Thu Feb 10, 08:45:00 PM:
what a complete waste of shareholder money
By Gary Rosen, at
Fri Feb 11, 02:38:00 AM:
TH, it's spelled "delusion" ... but yeah, that would be redundant.
By , at
Fri Feb 11, 09:32:00 PM:
Gary must be the pen name of Dennis Miller.
brilliant!
