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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Seth Gilbert, 01-28-2009
According to a regulatory filing cited on Venture Wire, Slacker, a multi-channel digital music service, has taken an additional $5m in venture funding in a bridge financing from existing investors.
Since opening its doors and publicly launching its product in March of 2007, Slacker has now taken on a cumulative total of more than $58.5m in financing to build out its ambitious plans.
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Seth Gilbert, 01-27-2009
Yahoo rolled into the Carol Bartz era about two weeks ago. Today, the company closed the books on Jerry Yang’s brief executive stint with the release of Q4 earnings. Buried under nearly $603m in one time charges, Yahoo came in with a loss of $303.4m.
$108m in restructuring costs. $488m in Goodwill Impairment from overseas. $7m on the quarter in lingering expenses from defraying Microsoft’s takeover overtures.
It wasn’t the news that was expected, but looking past the one time elements, it wasn’t all bad either.
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Seth Gilbert, 01-26-2009
On December 22nd, Gatehouse Media filed suit against a Goliath charging the New York Times Co. with a host of copyright and trademark violations for practices at Times’ owned Boston.com website and its affiliated properties. At issue was Boston.com’s aggregation and reprinting of headlines and their lead sentences (called “ledes”) from Gatehouse owned local news sites without Gatehouse’s approval. The case was due to begin today with high stakes for the Internet news industry on the line. A settlement was announced instead.
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Seth Gilbert, 01-23-2009
With Microsoft bumping its earnings news to an earlier time slot, after the close of markets Thursday all eyes were on Google. Would worsening ad trends show heavily in the Q4 and full year results? Or like Apple the day before, would Google outperform the economy and best expectations? The numbers tell the tale:
Analysts were expecting EPS of $4.95 a share, excluding onetime elements (non-GAAP). Net revenue was forecast at 4.12b. Paid click growth was estimated to be 17%.
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Seth Gilbert, 01-22-2009
"Nobody loves you when you’re down and out….Everybody’s hustlin’ for a buck and a dime” sang John Lennon. Sony and Microsoft may know exactly what he meant (at least with regard to how shareholders treat their stocks). The two companies were the first to make big earnings announcements today. The news from both was poor. The lead storylines were cost savings and disappointments. Breaking out the two announcements side by side:
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Seth Gilbert, 01-21-2009
Many retailers fell apart this holiday season, their registers ringing up far less of the holiday cheer than they’d have liked. Companies were cutting staff. Cash was being conserved. Spending, especially on premium products was way down. Apple, despite the so called “Apple Tax,” the name sometimes spitefully applied to the higher pricing on Apple’s products, bucked the trend. Earnings for the period ended December 27th, while shadowed with some elements of mixed quality, handily beat expectations.
For the first quarter of Fiscal 2009, Apple reported its best revenue result of all time. Total sales for the quarter crossed past $10 billion to $10.17b. Year over year, the gain was 5.8% compared to last year’s sales of $9.6b.
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