How AOL Managed To Beat Street's Expectations? CEO Explains

AOL, Inc. AOL reported spectacular first-quarter results earlier on Friday causing its shares to rally more than 10 percent during trade. The company posted revenue of $625 .1 million for the quarter, compared to $583.3 million it reported for the same quarter last year.

Tim Armstrong, AOL chairman & CEO, was on CNBC post the earnings release to weigh in on the numbers.

The Strength

“I would say that first and foremost there are two things that we are really focussed on growing our consumer base and our supply and growing demand,” Armstrong said. “And I think the strength that you see in these numbers are essentially our ability to grow very strong set of supply across mobile, video, programmatic and second of all just seeing ad pricing going up.”

Navigating Platform Shift

He continued, “We are doing a very good job navigating the platform shift in advertising from offline to online and that’s really great and I think there are areas that you probably don’t see in these numbers that we spend a lot of time on and the quarter was really, continuing to structure the company.”

Structural Changes

“[So] we made a pretty large structural change to update the company for where the world is going right now and although you don’t see it in the numbers. I think the team did an unbelievably fantastic job of delivering a great quarter. But also really we made some very, very big changes inside the company, which will be beneficial for a long time in the future,” Armstrong concluded confidently.