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With nice weather and incentive to be outside and active, the summer quarter is a cyclic weak point for gaming companies. Wednesday, after the close of markets, Game publisher Electronic Arts (EA)  (NASDAQ: ERTS), reported their fiscal first quarter earnings (for the period ended June 30th). The loss for the quarter, and other results were appropriate to the season, they also easily beat Wall Street analysts expectations, (though expectations were far from lofty.) Click to Read More

If you’re not a preteen, a relative of one, or someone following the media industry, you probably haven’t’ heard of Club Penguin or its rival Webkinz.     The sites provide interactive games and social network like features for preteens. Club Penguin, launched in 2005, was designed to be a fun, safe, game and activity environment for today’s internet enabled children aged 6 to 14; MySpace for the younger set. On the site, kids can adopt and interact with virtual Penguins or chat and play games with other kids on the site.

Wednesday, coinciding with their earnings release, Disney announced they were buying the British Colombia based company for $350m in cash plus revenue performance incentives that could make the kids social network worth as much as $700m. 

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It’s official. Yesterday, as expected, the boards of News Corp and Dow Jones each met to approve News Corps buyout offer. With sufficient support from shareholders secured, the deal will go ahead. It will likely take about four months to transition. Once complete, Rupert Murdoch and his News Corporation will reign over what is arguably the largest single owned territory of business media in the world.

There’s nothing like a map to show how big something is. So here it is, a visual layout of the mammoth that is News Corp. (Click the map and a page will launch with a larger image to display. If that image still is not large enough, a downloadable PDF or MS Word version is hosted on Scribd.)

It was looking like News Corp was getting off its quarter-long roller coaster ride yesterday with a go-ahead vote to buy Dow Jones but elsewhere in media stocks, particularly entertainment, a different roller coaster ride kept going. After the close of market Tuesday,  DreamWorks Animation and CBS both released quarterly earnings.  It was a good day for animators, not such a good day for TV.

DreamWorks Animation(NYSE: DWA:)
DreamWorks Animation reported towering second quarter revenue with net income of $61.8m (60 cents a share) for the quarter ended June 30th.  Even subtracting a one time gain of 11cents a share for a reduction in reserves for home video sales, and another one time gain of 4cents from tax accounting,  it was huge return relative to last years income of 13.7m for the same period. 

Quarterly revenue in the film industry is highly variable and heavily influenced by the volume and quality of titles released at any given time.  DreamWorks strategy is to release one franchise title and one new film every year.  Shrek the Third was the franchise film for this year and it released this past quarter.  They’ll be living off of it for the rest of the year.

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It was long held that to buy Dow Jones (and its Wall Street Journal property) a buyer would have to hit a mythical number above $60 a share called the Hammer Price (named after a longtime Bancroft family lawyer who years ago turned away offers from the Washington Post and New York Times for being too low)

In May, when Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. launched a friendly takeover attempt, they hit that number (and offering it represented a 65 percent premium over the April 30th closing price for the stock).  By legend, it should have been enough to close a deal.   Legend wasn’t reality.   In an up and down roller coaster of on-again, off-again reports, as recently as yesterday, it was looking like even the Hammer Price wouldn’t be enough to take control of the historic media property. Now it’s looking like the tides have changed again.

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For years, Sony’s gaming division helped offset research expenses and struggles elsewhere in the company.  Now, with the Playstation 3 platform aimed toward the future  (at the expense of today), the other divisions are having to carry gaming financially.   So far, it looks like they’re up to the task.

Amidst an earnings season filled with ups and downs, Sony announced earnings yesterday that were, in many ways, better than expected.  Click to Read More

With all the talk about the iPhone, it was almost easy to forget Apple’s product portfolio is one of the treasure chests of industry.  They make great returns on the entire iPod line.  They do a robust business with iTunes.  And of course, there’s the computer line which has a devoted, loyal fan base and a solid profit margin.

Today after the close of market, to the legions of Apple fans, and hungry investors anxious for a benchmark to measure performance of technology and consumer products, Apple announced their earnings for their fiscal third quarter.  The numbers were strong, and buried in the guidance there were hints of new products to come.

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