Seth Gilbert, 04-22-2009
In the second quarter, despite the economy’s effect on consumer sales, Apple’s train continued to roll ahead with plenty of steam. Wednesday, the company announced the best non-holiday earnings in its history.
After the close of market, Apple reported net income of $1.33 a share ($1.21b), up 15% year over, on revenue of $8.16b. Both numbers bested Apple’s own conservative guidance, and expectations.
On a non-GAAP basis, adjusted as Apple’s begun doing, adjusted sales totaled $9.06 billion for quarter. That’s $900 million higher than reported revenue. Adjusted gross margin was $3.62 billion and adjusted net income was $1.66 billion.
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Seth Gilbert, 04-21-2009
While Silicon Valley and the rest of California suffered under an unprecedented spring heat wave, Yahoo announced earnings today that were anything but hot. Largely in line with expectations, but off 78% year over year, net income dropped to 8 cents a share, or $118m, down from 37 cents a share ($536.8m) last year. Revenue fell 13% year over year to $1.58 billion.
Markets found reassurance lingering behind the digits in comments that showed new CEO Carol Bartz knows what she wants to do, even if the challenges are substantial.
"We have a lot of people running around here telling engineers what to do, but no one is f***ing doing anything,” she colorfully said during the earnings call, and that’s going to change. That, and a whole lot more, as she continues to guide the company’s restructuring after her first full quarter on the job.
Yahoo will cut another 5% of staff, about 700 jobs, in the next two weeks, and refocus its efforts on core areas of the site including the home page, news, finance, sports, entertainment, mail and mobile.
From Bartz perspective, it’s all about the “wow” factor and user experience. “If we are a hot site, advertisers follow.” she said during the analysts call.
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Seth Gilbert,
Google kicked off the earnings season for media and tech companies last week, sending a mixed a message with numbers nearly in-line, or ahead, of analyst expectations but showing net revenue down sequentially for the first time since the company went public in 2004. This week and next, the earnings pace will pick up steam. A number of key reports are likely to act as a barometer for the state of different sectors. Yahoo, Microsoft, Apple, Netflix and more are all on the calendar.
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Seth Gilbert, 04-13-2009
Ask an accountant or economist to define the value of an iPod Shuffle, or what it’s worth, and you might get a few dissertations in reply. Ask what it costs? That’s a little easier to peg.
Market research firm, iSuppli, has done a teardown of the device and estimates the diminutive MP3 player is made from a minuscule $21.77 in parts.
Business Week reports in its summary that nearly half of that comes from two Samsung parts: the controller chip and flash memory.
The price is purely hardware, and it is merely an estimate. It doesn’t include development costs or sales and marketing expenses but even so, it suggests the gross margin on the player should Click to Read More
Seth Gilbert, 03-10-2009
A year ago, all eyes watched as Take Two Interactive began to fight off EA’s hostile takeover bid. Today, stock watchers checked back in to see how the company was performing months removed from leaving that challenge behind. The result was mixed.
In earnings announced after the close of markets, the game publisher reported higher than expected sales for the first quarter but set second quarter guidance below analyst targets.
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Seth Gilbert, 02-5-2009
Analysts expected 19 cents per share in earnings. They got 12 cents, and that’s not taking into account an $8.4b writedown. So much for expectations.
Like other major media companies (Time Warner (PDF), and Disney (article) to name a pair), it’s currently a struggle to balance ad inventory against reduced spending. In the face of this, News Corporation reported weak earnings Thursday.
In a statement Rupert Murdoch explained saying the “downturn is more severe and likely longer lasting than previously thought.”
Revenue for the company’s fiscal second quarter came in at $7.87b, down 8.4% and below Wall Street’s expected draw of $8.35 to $8.38b. Factoring in the pre-tax onetime charge related to goodwill and intangible assets, the net loss was $6.4b, or $2.45 a share compared to net income of $832m (27 cents a share) for the same period last year.
The result was News Corps. First loss in more than three years.
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Seth Gilbert, 02-3-2009
The game industry as a sector has been riding out the recession with reasonable success but the performance of individual companies within the industry has been less consistent. Some companies are faring well while others are announcing subpar sales. Electronic Arts announced its Q3 Fiscal 2009 results today and fell in to the category of the latter. EA’s performance was dismal.
Based on GAAP standards, the net loss reported for the quarter was $641m, or $2.00 a share, in the red. That compares to a loss of $33m, or 10 cents a share, for the same period a year ago. Sales, including deferred revenue, would have totaled $1.74b.
Excluding the onetime charges, EA said they would have earned $179m , or 56 cents a share. Analysts had projected 88 cents on revenue of $1.9b; both targets EA failed to hit.
The news wasn’t entirely a surprise. EA reset expectations in early December after Thanksgiving period sales turned out worse than expected. Even so, the shortfall was worse than many anticipated.
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