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From key earnings announcements to days significant in takeover battles like Yahoo/Microsoft and EA/Take Two, the next month is littered with influential events, especially for companies at the crossroads of media, entertainment and technology.  There’s so much to keep track of:  On April 17th Google releases earnings.  April 22nd, Yahoo follows suit. Then there’s Microsoft on the 24th, Nintendo (also the 24th), DreamWorks SKG, Viacom, Disney and a host of others. It’s easy to lose track.

For quick and easy reference to stay on top of it all, we’re trying out a new feature: The Metue Event calendar.  The new page takes our internal calendar and puts the key dates in a simple, sortable table for all to use.  Looking for a company, click the headings for the appropriate column and the table will resort to list the companies. Click to Read More

There may be plenty of buzz about next generation iPhones, or Apple’s efforts to capture the smartphone market, but Research in Motion doesn’t seem fazed.  Wednesday, when the phone maker released Q4 earnings, the numbers were strong.  Even amidst a slowing economy, RIM (Nasdaq: RIMM) easily beat guidance and doubled year over year results.

For the three months ending March 1st, RIM earned $412.5 million (72c a share) on revenue of $1.88 billion.  Both numbers are more than double year ago results when RIM reported earnings of $187.4 million (33c a share) on revenues of $930.4 million.   The Wall Street consensus was for fourth quarter earnings of 70c a share on revenue of $1.86 billion (Thompson).

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Despite a burgeoning market for smart-phones and a voracious consumer and corporate appetite for Blackberry’s and iPhones in the US, once leading player Palm continues to struggle.   Their market share is hovering around nine percent (Apple took approximately 28 percent of the U.S. Smart Phone market in less than one year.  RIM’s Blackberry has 41%. (via Canalys)).  Since October,  Palm’s stock price has fallen more than 60%.  Since Elevation Partners purchased a 25% stake in June, the company’s market cap has shrunk to just above $500m 

(Palm’s shares were up about 10% to $19.57 per share following the deal but optimism was short-lived as Palm continued to lose business and see cash reserves erode.)

Thursday, Palm announced their earnings for the third quarter.  After two quarters of lowered guidance, there was again little to get excited about.  Click to Read More

Jim Keyes cut his teeth squeezing profits out of quickie marts and low cost snacks.  After about eight months trying to get Blockbuster back on track, the former 7-11 chief  and his management tactics may finally be working.

Thursday Blockbuster (BBI) reported earnings of $38.1m, or 18 cents a share on revenue of $1.57b.  Less severance related charges and other onetime costs, earnings came in at $54.9m (26 cents a share).  The numbers are a drastic improvement over the $8.3m (4 cents a share) earned during the same period last year.  The results also outpaced consensus analyst estimates of about 19 cents a share.

Much of the near term improvement is the result of cost cutting measures including scaling back advertising expenses (decreased about 26%) and closing down about 750 stores.

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After another quarter, profitability still remains elusive for TiVo but extending a trend the Digital Video Recorder (DVR) pioneer inched ever so slightly closer to the black.  Wednesday the Alviso based company reported a net loss better than expectations.

For the 4th quarter ended January 31st, TiVo reported a loss of $6.34m, or 6 cents a share.  The result generously beat consensus analyst expectations (via Thomson Financial) of a loss of 11cents a share.  The loss was a significant improvement over a loss of $19.5m, or 20cents a share for the same period last year.  The result was also an improvement over the company’s own November guidance (which called for a net loss of $9m to $12m). Adjusted EBITDA was $1.0 million, compared to an Adjusted EBITDA loss of ($15.0) million in the year-ago period.

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Wednesday at Jeffries annual Internet Conference, Netflix CFO Barry McCarthy delivered the most unusual of things for this earnings season: a positive announcement.  On the back of a $100m stock buyout program, and decreasing competition from Blockbuster, Netflix raised their prior earnings guidance.

In his report, McCarthy said the company is now expecting first quarter earnings of 15 to 22 cents a share, up from prior forecasts that fell in the 13 to 21 cent range. Click to Read More

It’s been a good year for video games and the holidays were especially good for game publisher Activision.  Much like a movie studio with two huge summer blockbusters in the theaters at the same time, Activision’s Guitar Hero and Call of Duty sequels powered the company to record results (thanks, in part, to strong November and December sales.)

In what may be the company’s last earnings report before the completion of their merger with Vivendi Games, Activision reported stellar third quarter results.  This is now the 16th consecutive year that sales are up for the company.

CEO Bobby Kotick said “broader audiences are responding to products like Guitar Hero, and we expect that the demographics for video games will continue to expand.”  He also added in the conference call with analysts that the company, and game industry, are “taking mindshare away from traditional forms of entertainment like movies and television.”

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