Fourfold jump in profit for AOL

AOL, the owner of TechCrunch and the Huffington Post, has reported a more than fourfold jump in first-quarter profit, which it puts down to an increase in online advertising revenue.

Net income advanced to $21.1m (€16.3m), or 22c a share, from $4.7m a year earlier, the New York-based company said in a statement yesterday. Excluding some items, per-share profit was 31c.

Chief executive Tim Armstrong is transforming AOL into an ad-based digital-publishing business, as customers of its dial-up internet division switch to broadband offered by cable operators. The company bought the Huffington Post for $315m last year and expanded Patch, a local-news division that Armstrong said he expects to command about $50m in sales this year and to become “run-rate profitable” by the end of 2013.