America Online Releases Second Quarter Results

America Online (http://www.aol.com) announced results for the second quarter of fiscal 2000 ended December 31, 1999.

The Company's fully taxed net income totaled $224 million, or $0.09 per diluted share, excluding one-time items, up from $86 million, or $0.04 per diluted share, on the same basis in fiscal 1999's second quarter. Operating income for the quarter, excluding one-time items, climbed more than 155% over the year-ago quarter to $319 million.Second quarter revenues rose to $1.6 billion, or 41% over last year's second quarter, and advertising, commerce and other revenues reached $437 million, 79% over fiscal 1999's December quarter.

Reported earnings per share, including one-time items, increased to $0.10 per diluted share on $271 million of net income, up from $0.05 per share on $115 million of net income in last year's second quarter.

Additionally, AOL added 1.8 million new members worldwide and finishing the quarter with 20.5 million subscribers. The CompuServe 2000 service added 440,000 members during the quarter, bringing the combined CompuServe 2000 and CompuServe Classic membership to 2.5 million, up from 2.2 million last quarter. And, through its October agreement with Gateway to operate its custom ISP, America Online ended the quarter with more than 740,000 subscribers of Gateway.net. As a result, the Company finished the quarter with a total of 23.8 million subscribers in its family of brands.

Steve Case, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer said: "This is a momentous time for America Online, as we're announcing the strongest results in our Company's history. During the quarter, we achieved record growth in revenues, advertising and commerce, operating income and subscriber growth -- attracting more than 2.1 million new AOL and CompuServe members and millions more Web users to our family of brands."

Of course the big news this month is that AOL purchased Time Warner to form a colossal Internet/media company.