Tim Armstrong interview

Arrington interviews AOL CEO Armstrong at Disrupt SF:

You have tripled the stock price of AOL when everyone, me included, was calling this company dead a year ago. How did you do it?

Armstrong:

We basically had a three-pronged approach, one was operationally, you’ve seen us do a lot better, improve and beat expectations the last four quarters in a row, the second thing is really focus on products…the traditional AOL businesses as well as the new businesses [like Disrupt], the third thing was on the financial engineering side, we did a patent transaction, we bought back a significant amount of companies, we did a huge buyback last summer.

He says the company is focusing on consumers, advertisers, publishers, and subscribers, and making sure investors get a high return.