Last month AOL announced a plan to rid itself of Patch, its ill-fated local news play. But up until last Wednesday, when AOL’s deal with Hale Global closed, Patch employees were still on AOL’s books.
AOL Gets Its Final Patch Bill
Last week’s layoffs cost $5.8 million.
Asa Mathat
Peter Kafka covered media and technology, and their intersection, at Vox. Many of his stories can be found in his Kafka on Media newsletter, and he also hosts the Recode Media podcast.
Which means that last week, when Patch underwent mass layoffs — announced via conference call — those cuts were on AOL’s books, too.
AOL still won’t say how many people it laid off last week. But it did say that it spent $5.8 million on restructuring charges connected with the deal. For comparison: Last summer, when AOL went through an earlier round of mass layoffs at Patch, it said it would spend between $14 million and $18 million to fire more than 350 employees.
All of that is old news as far as investors are concerned. They’re pushing AOL shares up more than 5 percent this morning, on news that ad sales, revenue and profits are up.
This article originally appeared on Recode.net.
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