So he said in an interview to Reuters, ahead of Time Warner’s shareholders meeting. He said the company’s board was examining a possible future stock buyback and other options after just completing a $20 billion repurchase but not spinning off the flagship Time Inc. magazine business. “I like our publishing business, I like the mag business and I like the fact that it’s portable and can be moved into digital,” Parsons said. “I am not an advocate of selling Time Inc.”
Analysts have been circling around trying to float the spinoff balloon for Time Inc...Spencer Wang of Bear Stearns came out with a note earlier this week to that effect. He described the magazine unit “the least-attractive strategic fit” with the rest of what he calls TW’s video-based assets. He outlined the options: A leveraged spinoff, which breaks the unit off into a new, publicly traded entity, or a straight-up sale...could bring in after-tax proceeds of between $7.6 billion and $8.9 billion for Time Warner.