Shareholders of Time Warner (TWX) are starting to get restless as the stock has been languishing since 2003 ... although there has been a 25 percent move up since the last shareholder meeting.
At the recent annual meeting shareholders took steps to be more actively involved in the direction of the company, putting forth and approving of two proposals that would allow more input from them.
One of the proposals was to simplify the process where all it would take would be a majority of stockholders to change the company's bylaws. At this time it takes an 80 percent majority of cast votes to make these bylaw changes.
Another measure they put forth was to empower larger shareholders to call for special board meetings. In both cases Time Warner was in opposition to the proposals. The company has no legal obligation to institute the changes.
CEO Dick Parsons said the key to the stock price rising a lot higher is connected to its AOL unit.
This could be a problem for the short-term as it's taking awhile for the broadband market to grow, which is the impetus behind online video advertising growth.
Shareholders may be mad at one of the highest performers of the company - a portion of their cable unit - being spun off into a separate publicly traded company: TWC.
Over the long haul, AOL will continue to grow and add strength to the company and its share price. It is interesting to think of where the company may now be if they hadn't bought AOL, as it was considered, and was, a disaster at the time.
The thing that could disrupt the growth plans connected to AOL are the notoriously cyclical marketing industry. But if that can hold solid for awhile, AOL should start to help the stock of the company start to finally grow. If the online ad industry slows down, it could be a long time before Time Warner stock moves much at all.
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