You can get the link to the company’s 10-Q, filed this morning, over here. But here’s the nugget you want:

“Although the Company’s Board of Directors has not made any decision, the Company currently anticipates that it would initiate a process to spin off one or more parts of the businesses of AOL to Time Warner’s stockholders, in one or a series of transactions. Based on the results of the Company’s review, future market conditions or the availability of more favorable strategic opportunities that may arise before a transaction is completed, the Company may decide to pursue an alternative other than a spin-off with respect to either or both of AOL’s businesses.”

Yup, there’s a to-be-sure caveat there. But this is about as clear as a publicly traded company can get about this stuff. Time Warner (TWX) wants to cleave this thing off and that’s why it brought on Tim Armstrong.

Other good nuggets from the filing: Time Warner intends to buy back the five percent stake that Armstrong’s former employer, Google (GOOG), owns and wrote down earlier this year.

I missed the company’s earnings call this morning, but sounds like there weren’t lots of other details released. But PaidContent’s David Kaplan does have a breakdown of AOL’s (lousy) ad performance on a sector-by-sector basis:

• Display: Down 17 percent to $158 million
• Paid Search Down 12 percent to $152 million
• Third party Down 29 percent to $133 million

My bloggy brethren are hopped up about Apple’s disclosure, via its most recent quarterly filing with the SEC, that its retail group had “approximately 14,000 full-time equivalent employees” at the end of March. Three months earlier, that number had been 15,600.

But let’s be clear: Those aren’t 14,000, or 15,600, employees. Those are 14,000, or 15,600 full-time equivalents–basically, an accounting term that measures the number of man-hours Apple (AAPL) is paying for, not the number of men (or women) it employs. So the very strong likelihood here is that Apple cut a lot of workers’ hours, but not workers themselves.

I asked Apple officials for a definitive statement on this, but they referred me back to their 10-Q.

Still, there’s no denying that sales have slowed at Apple’s 252 retail stores. Just ask CFO Peter Oppenheimer, who said this week that average revenue per store in the last quarter was $5.9 million, down from $7.1 million a year earlier, and that margins for the retail unit had shrunk accordingly. From the company’s earnings call, via Seeking Alpha:

“We believe that the year-over-year decline in average store sales and segment margin is a reflection of the continued weakness in the spending environment, coupled with third party channel expansions relative to the year-ago quarter.”

So the cutbacks make sense, as did the fact that the company only opened one store in the last quarter. It says it still intends to open 25 this year. That’s down from 50 a year ago, though that disparity may be a bit deceiving since Apple opened 17 stores in September–the last month of its 2008 fiscal quarter. Had a few of those opened a week later, the numbers would have evened out a bit.

[Image credit: Victoria Peckam]

It is, as Forbes notes, “a rare look at Jobs in his own words.”

Alas, Steve Jobs in his own words–at least when he’s being deposed in an options-backdating lawsuit–is mind-numbingly boring. “Just like us!” as they say in the celebrity gossip magazines.

Forbes has taken what it says are the highlights of the transcript and assembled them into an online slideshow, but the best stuff appears to be this bit, where Jobs explains why he asked his board for a giant options grant:

At some point in 2001 Jobs went to his board and asked for a big option grant. In the deposition Jobs said he had simply wanted a pat on the back. “It wasn’t so much about the money,” The Forbes 400 member told an SEC lawyer. “Everybody likes to be recognized by his peers. … I felt that the board wasn’t really doing the same with me.” With all of his prior stock options underwater from the dot-com bust, “I just felt like there is nobody looking out for me here, you know. … So I wanted them to do something, and so we talked about it. … I thought I was doing a pretty good job.”

Wouldn’t it have been nice, he was thinking, if the board had come to him and said, “‘Steve, we got this new grant for you,’ without me having to suggest anything or be involved in anything or negotiate anything. … It would have made me feel better at the time.”

Takeaway: Even billionaires need a back-pat occasionally. But if you’re looking for insight into the psyche of the world’s most famous business leader, that’s about all you’re getting here.

I haven’t seen the deposition myself, so it’s possible that there are other great nuggets buried in the 119 pages, and that Forbes is hoarding them in order to wring out as many stories as possible.

Then again, 119 pages of boredom is exactly what Jobs was trying to produce here in order to avoid further legal trouble with the SEC. Bad for headline writers and voyeurs. Good for him.

One smallish change: Eric Schmidt’s friends and families spent a lot more time with him on the company jet last year.

At least that’s the conclusion I’m drawing from a footnote to the SEC document, which notes he was paid a total of $508,763 in “other compensation.” The breakdown: $402,562 for personal security costs, plus another $106,201 “paid by Google on Eric’s behalf for costs related to aircraft chartered for Google business on which family and friends flew in 2008.”

Google has consistently been shelling out about a half-million dollars in “other compensation” to Schmidt each year, so this is nothing new. The only difference is that Schmidt seemed to bring more friends and family on the Googleplanes last year, or having them take longer flights, than before.

In 2007, friends and family-related flight costs only totaled $4,000. And in 2006, Google shelled out $22,456 for “tax gross-ups” related to those flights, plus another $531 in “aggregate incremental costs.”

So what prompted Schmidt’s pals and relatives to take to the skies that much more this year? I’ve asked Google for more information, and will update if I get anything.

Mark Wattles, who founded onetime Blockbuster (BBI) rival Hollywood Entertainment, has bought up a 5.7 percent stake in his former rival. And he says he thinks the company will be able to pay off its debt, $150 million of which comes due in August.

The SEC filing describing the purchase doesn’t disclose the price that Wattles paid for the shares. But he bought them on March 4th, the day after the stock plunged on reports that it was considering Chapter 11.

Blockbuster later said that it simply hired a law firm to help it with financing issues, and since then shares have rebounded. News of Wattles’ purchase pushed them up a tad more–by the end of the yesterday they were trading at $0.76, up 17% from the day before.

Wattles bought 6.8 million shares on March 4. If he paid 50 cents for each one–the midpoint of the trading range that day–he would have spent some $3.4 million. That same investment would have been worth about 100,000 shares in red-hot Netflix (NFLX).

But if Blockbuster does file Chapter 11, Wattles has some protection: He already owns a slug of the company’s 9 percent senior notes, which means he’ll have a voice in any restructuring that takes place.

Wattles’s SEC filing comes with a mini testimonial to current Blockbuster management. That’s unusual for a disclosure form, so make of that what you will. Here’s the relevant part:

The Class A shares of Common Stock were acquired… because of his belief that the Issuer does not have a motive to reorganize under Chapter 11..  Given the operating fundamentals of the Issuer combined with the short term of its real estate leases (typically five years) and the aggressive and proactive manner in which the Issuer has managed its store base (including relocations, store closings, reductions in store size and subleases), Mr. Wattles does not believe that the Issuer has a motive to reorganize under Chapter 11.  … Mr. Wattles believes the Issuer will be successful in refinancing its revolving bank line of credit, or if it cannot, that it will be able to use cash flow from operations to meet its August repayment obligations and 2009 liquidity needs.

Time to start “getting our house in order,” Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz declared today.

One of the first steps: Sweeping out CFO Blake Jorgensen.

Here’s the two-sentence update Yahoo filed with the SEC this morning explaining the move:

“On February 26, 2009, Yahoo! Inc. (the “Company”) announced that Blake Jorgensen, Chief Financial Officer of the Company, will be leaving the Company. The Company has initiated a search for a new Chief Financial Officer. Mr. Jorgensen will remain with the Company as its Chief Financial Officer through a transition period.”

Jorgensen, you may recall, was the Yahoo (YHOO) executive who was signaling the company’s interest in a Microsoft (MSFT) search deal just yesterday.

Each month, the paper has been dutifully providing a fairly detailed revenue update. And for the past year or so, each one of those reports has gotten progressively more unpleasant–unpleasantness that is dutifully reported by the likes of me.

I’ve never understood why the Times does this, because it’s not a SEC requirement. And while I’m not complaining–the numbers provide great insight into the business–I can’t really see the upside for the company.

Turns out that the company agrees. Today’s monthly update is the last one the paper will deliver, chief financial officer James Follo announced this morning during the paper’s earnings call.

Bummer. But again, understandable. At least the paper is fairly forthcoming on its earnings calls–there was plenty of interesting stuff discussed today, and I’ll report back on that later on.

1. Things are brutal! We’re about to see companies falling like flies this year as they run out of money. And those that are able to get money are getting it on terrible terms.
2. Things are great! We’re about to see companies falling like flies this year as they run out of money. Which means that the remaining ones will be worth investing in–at reasonable valuations.

Put Mark Cuban in the second camp. More or less: The billionaire investor claims he’s never been that interested in valuations, period–just whether or not the companies he’s looking at can make money.

The SEC might argue with that, but Cuban didn’t talk to me about that when I saw him last week at the Consumer Electronics Show, where he was promoting a live 3-D broadcast of the BCS college football championship.

He did explain his start-up investing philosophy, though. Key takeaway–if you’re pitching Cuban for an investment, don’t tell him that you plan on flipping your company.

Bonus advice from Cuban, who prominently posts his email address everywhere he can, and consequently gets 500 to 5,000 emails a day: How to manage a full inbox using Gmail and a Sidekick. He’s got some (off-color) advice for Google (GOOG) CEO Eric Schmidt, by the way: That kicks in around the 3:30 mark, if you’re interested.

But my favorite is this one: In 2007, the company had one million advertisers, each of whom spent around $16,000 a year. That’s not a shocking number–Google posted revenues of $16.6 billion that year, so the math checks out–but like YouTube’s audience data, it’s still useful to see it in print. More from the New York Times’s Bits blog:

The number of advertisers on Google has grown at a steady clip, from 89,000 in 2003, to 201,000 in 2004, 360,000 in 2005 and 600,000 in 2006.

Ben Schachter, an analyst with UBS, said he expects the current number is likely to be between 1.3 million and 1.5 million. Google declined to comment on the current size of its advertising base.

‘It is a number that people have wanted to know for a long time,’ Mr. Schachter said. More advertisers means more revenue–and more revenue, on average, for every search query–for a couple of reasons: a larger number of queries will have ads matched against them; and on popular queries, competition for placement will be more intense, and as a result, ad prices, which are set by auction, will be higher.”

Federal prosecutors say they’ve broken up an insider trading ring that scooped up some $4.8 million in illegal gains over a four-year period–some of which came from trades made before EA’s bid for Take-Two became public knowledge. That’d be very lucrative information to have in advance, given that EA was offering a premium of more than 50 percent when it offered to buy the company behind Grand Theft Auto in February.

The quick version (longer summary here): The SEC says that Matthew Devlin, formerly a Lehman Brothers. broker, gained information about secret takeover bids from his wife Nina Devlin, who works for the Brunswick Group, a PR firm that specializes in M&A work. He then passed the tips on to his clients, the SEC alleges.

The SEC hasn’t charged Nina Devlin with anything. In a statement, her employer says she was unaware of what her husband was up to: “This is a violation of trust between husband and wife. Our employee was the victim of a criminal act by her spouse which made detection extremely difficult despite our high standards of confidentiality.”

Electronic Arts’ (ERTS) $2 billion offer for Take-Two (TTWO) was one of 13 deals the trading ring profited on, the SEC says. Unlike most of the other deals, however EA’s proposed purchase never went through. That’s much to the chagrin of ordinary Take-Two investors, who were offered as much as $25.75 per share for stock that’s now trading at less than $9–and just reported dismal results.

But I’m quite glad I’m wrong. Cuban can’t help himself, and has already begun waging a high-profile campaign against the regulators who are suing him.

Yesterday, someone in Cuban’s camp gave the New York Times what is purportedly an email from a SEC lawyer to Cuban; the letter seems to indicate that Cuban and the SEC had already been feuding over “Loose Change,” a documentary Cuban had funded that is critical of President George Bush.

Today, Cuban uses his personal blog to sound off against the SEC once again. Here’s the complete text, in case Cuban (or his lawyers) has second thoughts about carrying this on in public. But we don’t think he will:

November 18, 2008

On behalf of

Mark Cuban

RE: SEC Civil Action in the United States District

for the Northern District of Texas, Dallas Division

The SEC knows their case centers on one telephone conversation between two individuals–4 years ago. The SEC claims there was an agreement between these parties to the conversation to keep certain information confidential. We interviewed Guy Faure, the former CEO of Mamma.com Inc., with whom the SEC claims Mr. Cuban made an agreement. We had a court reporter transcribe the interview. There was no agreement to keep information confidential. Here is a relevant excerpt from the interview with Mr. Faure:

CHRISTOPHER CLARK :

1) Q- We spoke earlier about you were telling Mr. Cuban in words or substance : “I have confidential information for you”.

A- Right.

2) Q- Do you recall anything Mr. Cuban said in response or reply to that statement by you ?

A- No, I do not.

The SEC knows this-they have the transcript, yet they brought the case anyway. Why? Do they have a different statement from Mr. Faure ?

Why did the SEC end their multi-year investigation of Mamma.com Inc. for alleged securities laws violations days before interviewing present and former Mamma.com Inc. executives about this matter? Was the timing a coincidence? We think not.

Any inquiries respecting this release should be directed to Stephen Best at Dewey & LeBoeuf LLP (202) 346-8735.

——————————

——————————Stephen A. Best

Partner

Dewey & LeBoeuf LLP

1101 New York Avenue, N.W., Suite 1100

Washington, D.C. 20005″

[Disclosure: I once bought Mark Cuban an Amstel Light.]

That’s because the SEC has filed insider trading charges against Cuban, alleging that he “avoided losses of $750,000″ by dumping shares of search engine Mamma.com after learning about a secondary offering. The SEC’s complete complaint is embedded below (to make legible, click icon on top right of document, then on the “+” key to increase document size).

And Cuban, understandably, is biting his tongue, very hard. Here’s his complete nonresponse, published on his personal blog:

The SEC

Nov 17th 2008 1:20PM

RE: SEC Civil Action in the United States District for the Northern District of Texas, Dallas Division

November 17, 2008

Mark Cuban today responded to a civil complaint filed by the United States Securities and Exchange Commission in the United States District for the Northern District of Texas, Dallas Division. In its complaint, the Commission charges that Mr. Cuban engaged in violations of the federal securities laws in connection with transactions in the securities of Mamma.com Inc.

I wish I could say more, but I will have to leave it to this, and let the judicial process do its job.

This matter, which has been pending before the Commission for nearly two years, has no merit and is a product of gross abuse of prosecutorial discretion. Mr. Cuban intends to contest the allegations and to demonstrate that the Commission’s claims are infected by the misconduct of the staff of its Enforcement Division.

Mr. Cuban stated, ‘I am disappointed that the Commission chose to bring this case based upon its Enforcement staff’s win-at-any-cost ambitions. The staff’s process was result-oriented, facts be damned. The government’s claims are false and they will be proven to be so.’”
——————————

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