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Hires David Gang, 48, previously executive vice president of AOL Products at America Online, to serve as co-CEO and chief operating officer of WebMD Health.Elmwood Park”s WebMD (Nasdaq: HLTH), a provider of services that connect physicians, hospitals, pharmacies, insurance providers and consumers with health care transactions and information retrieval, plans to spin off its WebMD Health unit as a separate publicly traded company through an initial public offering of approximately 10% to 14% of the businesses” equity. The company made the announcement while reporting first-quarter net income of $9.8 million, or $0.03 per share, compared with $5.7 million, or $0.02 per share a year earlier. Excluding taxes and charges, WebMD earned $38.8 million, or $0.12 per share, compared with $28.2 million, or $0.09 per share, beating analysts” forecast by a penny.Revenue totaled $303.9 million, compared with $271.2 million a year ago. Revenue at the company”s business-services unit rose to $185.7 million from $163.8 million in the prior year, an increase of 13.4%. Practice-services revenue was $73.0 million compared with $71.0 million in the prior year, an increase of 2.8%. WebMD Health revenue was $33.6 million, an increase of 27.6% from the prior year”s $26.3 million. Porex revenue was $19.9 million compared with $18.4 million last year. WebMD plans to file a registration statement with the Securities and Exchange Commission with regard to the initial public offering of WebMD Health in the next several weeks. WebMD Health is a leading provider of online information, educational services and communities for physicians and consumers. WebMD said it has hired David Gang, 48, to serve as co-CEO and chief operating officer of WebMD Health. Gang previously served as executive vice president of AOL Products at America Online. He will join WebMD Health in June 2005 and will share the title of co-CEO with Wayne Gattinella, 53, who currently serves as president of WebMD Health.WebMD said Roger Holstein, who has served as CEO of WebMD Health since October 2004, has resigned for personal reasons.Looking ahead, WebMD raised its financial guidance for the balance of 2005 by about $40 million in revenue, and by $0.08 per share, or 16%, in income before taxes, noncash and other items, and by $0.07 per share, or 42%, for net income.The company expects consolidated revenue for 2005 to be in the range of $1.26 billion to $1.3 billion; per-share income before taxes, noncash and other items of $0.54 per share to $0.60 per share, and net income of $0.22 per share to $0.25 per share.WebMD expects second-quarter revenue of $315 million to $325 million; income before taxes, noncash and other items of $0.13 per share to $0.14 per share, and net income of $0.05 per share to $0.06 per share.The company said it plans to redeem Its outstanding 3.25% convertible subordinated notes due 2007 in the near future. The notes are convertible at a conversion price of approximately $9.26 per share. The redemption price for these notes is 101.3% of their principal amount plus accrued and unpaid interest. There are approximately $300 million of these notes outstanding.At the close of trading, WebMD shares were up $0.46 to $9.47.