The company said that its subscriber base in the US was down by 289,000 people sequentially. Some 26.2 million Americans subscribed as of March 31. In Europe, 63,000 subscribers jumped ship during the quarter, leaving AOL with 6.3 million.
Despite this, AOL reported that its revenue from subscriptions actually rose 11% compared to last year on the back of an increasing number of broadband users, a year-on-year increase in European subscribers, and friendly currency exchange rates.
But this was, again, more than offset by declines in advertising and other revenues, the company said. Advertising revenue was down 42%, AOL said, and other revenue was down 61%, mainly due to AOL’s strategy of reducing the number of pop-ups it serves.
For the first quarter, the AOL business saw revenue down 4% at $2.19bn. EBITDA, a non-accepted accounting method AOL uses to measure earnings, was up 18% at $404m, an increase attributed entirely to the relative lack of restructuring charges in the period.
The online unit expects revenue to be remain flat at 2002 levels this year. The whole company, AOL Time Warner, reported a first-quarter net income of $396m, compared to a loss of $8m last year, on revenue that was up 6% at $10bn.
Source: Computerwire
