Yahoo's earnings announcement was ghastly in two ways. The bad news: Its revenues were flat and earnings down 64 percent. The worse news: It is only cutting 10 percent of its workforce, or 1,500 employees, which will reduce expenses by $400 million. The cuts are not nearly deep enough. Yahoo is forgoing immediate pain…
This is what we've been reduced to: Guessing at how much Apple will underestimate its forecasted December-quarter earnings in today's earnings call. No one actually believes Apple's "guidance." For years, it's been shown to lowball the actual number so it can surprise Wall Street, a maneuver that no longer surprises…
Downturn? What downturn? Strategically placed sources are whispering that MySpace is likely to hit $1 billion in annual revenue, a jump from its $850 million in revenue last year. The milestone is impressive since MySpace is joining the $1 billion club in only five years, a year faster than Google. Facebook,…
Not too cold, not too hot: Google's third-quarter earnings have come in at a level that will neither feed the ongoing panic nor calm people's jitters. Shareholders are enthused, though, with the stock up to $380 in after-hours trading. Look for the stock to drop as soon as Larry and Sergey start talking about their…
You rarely see a photo of John Donahoe, eBay's Dennis-the-Menace lookalike CEO. But today's a good day to pull him out from under Meg Whitman's shadow. The auction deathstar's Q3 net income was $492.2 million, or 38 cents a share. Much better than last year, when chirpy little upstart Skype — a Whitman acquisition —…
Intel's revenues for the most recent quarter were flat, but its profits were up 12 percent on expense cuts. (Read: layoffs!) Intel CEO Paul Otellini says the company expects to "outpace" its competition. Right: That would be AMD, the chipmaker which is trying to shed its chipmaking facilities. Outpacing AMD is like…
The world's largest computer services company pre-announced Q3 earnings with profits beyond analysts' forecasts. Even the Nasdaq is up on the news. Quick, ask your parents for that iPhone now.
"Financial issues are going to affect both business spending and consumer spending, and particularly ... spending by the financial services industry," Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer told reporters at a news conference in Oslo earlier today. That's a reversal from his claim last week that tech sector worriers were…
"Nearly half of consumers are delaying purchases due to uncertainty in the economy, while 42 percent are planning to decrease their usage of credit cards," Lazard Capital analyst Colin Sebastian wrote this morning. Don't make too much of it yet: Lazard's lowered Amazon.com earnings estimates only a sliver, from $1.58…
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer told a meeting of Silicon Valley civic leaders yesterday that despite Wall Street's woes, the tech sector continues to thrive. "Our industry is not immune to what goes on in the global economy. And yet as I travel, given the current circumstances, people still see a certain buoyancy in the…
Larry Ellison's database peddler saw profits in the most recent quarter jump to $1.08 billion, up 28 percent from the same period last year. As recently as 2006, Oracle got 12 percent of its revenues from banks, brokers, and insurers. Some of its best customers are bankrupt, while others are merging, a move which…
Damn it feels good to be a gamer: The Financial Times has calculated that Nintendo will make $1.6 million per employee in 2008. That beats Goldman Sach's 2007 record — impressive when you consider Goldman's average salary was $660,000 per year, versus only $90,900 for Nintendo. (Photo by Geek on Stun)
Google is celebrating its tenth birthday this month — so how is it doing compared to Microsoft, which is a ripe old 33? Microsoft is still the big dog, earning three times the revenue in the last year. But Bill Gates and company had only booked $140 million in revenue by its tenth year. Google employees are also…
The New York Times Company's total revenue dropped 10 percent in July, to $235.9 million. Total Internet revenue, which now makes up 12 percent of the Times's roughly billion-dollar annual business, was up 2.6 percent — which only looks good compared to the rest of the newspaper industry. [PaidContent]
Napster — or rather, the pathetic music store which picked up the famous file-sharing service's brand — reported a drop in quarterly revenues to $30.3 million, despite the launch of an MP3 store. Subscribers fell from 760,000 to 708,000 in a quarter's time. Here's Napster's latest commercial, obviously not effective…
In a statement filed with the SEC late today, Google stated that its 2005 purchase of 5 percent of AOL "may be impaired." Analyst guesstimates of AOL's value peg it at about $10 million, or half the value at which Google bought in. It's a blow to Google, but not a big one — a couple hundred million in paper value…
Time Warner beat second-quarter earning estimates, posting revenues of $11.55 billion against Wall Street's guess of $11.45 billion. But AOL, the company's online division, which is strangely coveted for acquisition by both Yahoo and Microsoft, didn't do nearly so well, reporting a 15 percent revenue decline to…
Sprint Nextel just can't stop the bleeding, losing $344 million and 901,000 subscribers last quarter. This was actually better than Q1, when they lost $505 million and 1 million subscribers. Qwest — communications provider to Bill Gates country and the rural Midwest — meanwhile earned $188 million, which was a 24…
News Corp. reports earnings tomorrow — but no one's worrying about how many copies of The Simpsons Fox sold on Blu-ray. Wall Street's worries are centered on how ads are doing on MySpace. After months of denials, a Fox executive has conceded the obvious to the Wall Street Journal: Google's keyword-pegged ads are…
Nortel Networks lost $113 million last quarter. Nortel CEO Mike Zafirovski told analysts that orders for CDMA cellular gear — both in Norta America and through a deal with South Korea's LG Electronics — didn't meet expectations. In CEO-speak, "The macro environment in the U.S. and the U.S. carrier spend continues to…
