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.
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.
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.
Many companies are struggling through the economic environment with weak earnings or weak outlook. Netflix, the mail-order DVD rental pioneer, is so far managing to sail through on smooth waters. Confirming “strong results” previously hinted, the company announced fourth quarter and year end earnings today ahead of expectations.
Revenue for the fourth quarter was $359.6m, a 19% year over year gain and a 5% sequential improvement. Earnings, at 38 cents a share, were up 65% year over year. Analysts had expected EPS of 34 cents on revenues of $354m.
Admitting the kind of mistake many are happy to accept, CFO Barry McCarthy said on the conference call, “Our October forecast of slowing growth turned out to be wrong.”
UK gamer Eidos is starting off 2009 on one crazy rollercoaster ride.
Two weeks ago, following poor U.S. holiday sales for its much anticipated new Tomb Raider title, the company laid off 30 employees and trimmed its forecast. Full-year sales were reset to fall between £160m and £180m, down from previous estimates of between £180m and £200m.
Last week, the company’s shares jumped after a revelation an approach was made with a preliminary takeover offer. The company emphasized “that discussions are at a very early stage and that there can be no assurance that an offer will be forthcoming." Still, with takeover rumors lingering for months, an official statement was enough to cause a boost in trading. (A survey of potential Eidos buyers and a detailed corporate history is available here)
Now it’s just the third week in January and Eidos is back to trimming staff again. Click to Read More
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%.
"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:
