Q1 2012
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Amazon's Q1 2012 earnings: net income down 35 percent to $130 million, net sales at $13.18 billion
It's no Apple-sized quarter, but you'd need to be on HGTV's Million Dollar Rooms a handful of times over to scoff at Amazon's Q1 2012 earnings. After reporting $177 million in net earnings last quarter (on $17.43 billion in revenue), the online sales behemoth has today registered $13.18 billion in net sales -- proudly reporting that said tally was up from the $9.86 billion in its Q1 a year ago. Excluding the $56 million unfavorable impact from year-over-year changes in foreign exchange rates throughout the quarter, net sales would have grown 34 percent compared with first quarter 2011. As for operating income? That checked in at $192 million (compared to $322 million Q1 2011), with the outfit noting that the "unfavorable impact from year-over-year changes in foreign exchange rates throughout the quarter on operating income was $4 million." Net income also sank 35 percent from $201 million a year ago, but it still left Amazon with $130 million more in the bank than it had just three months ago. It's important to note that the outfit didn't have "the holidays" here to help out, but it's still a bit worrisome to investors when profit margin shrinks. Focusing on more positive things, CEO Jeff Bezos noted that Amazon has "over 130,000 new, in-copyright books that are exclusive to the Kindle Store," again reminding the world that Amazon Prime members can "borrow them for free with no due dates." We're also told that the Kindle Fire remains the top, most gifted and most wished for product across its entire store, while pointing out that the North American sales segment was up 36 percent from Q1 2011 (reaching $7.43 billion). Our overseas comrades -- specifically, Amazon's UK, German, Japanese, French, Chinese, Italian and Spanish sites -- accounted for $5.76 billion in sales, up 31 percent year-over-year. Worldwide media sales saw a 19 percent uptick to $4.71 billion, while global electronics and "other merchandise" saw sales grow a whopping 43 percent to $7.97 billion. Notably, the company continually banged on unfavorable exchange rates, so if you're looking for a place to heap blame... well, there you go.
MetroPCS announces Q1 2012 results: total revenues up, new subscriber growth shrinks
Regional network MetroPCS has announced total revenues of approximately $1.3 billion for Q1 2012, up from $1.2 billion in the last quarter and up seven percent from the same period in 2011. Users on contract now total 9.5 million, with 16 percent of them making the move across to a smartphone. Net income has, however, dropped 63 percent since Q1 2011, with cost per user up 16 percent compared the same period last year. MetroPCS puts down to "retention expense" and the roll-out of its 4G network. The fifth biggest US carrier added over 131,000 new subscribers, but growth continues to slide -- it's down from 190,000 in Q4 2012. On the positive side, users are creeping onto the carrier's 4G network, with 580,000 LTE subscribers nowmaking up six percent of its total subscription base -- regardless of those creeping costs for unlimited data.
Sprint reports Q1 2012 results: 1.5 million iPhone sales but a $255 million operating loss
Sprint Nextel has just deployed its Q1 2012 financials and it's a bit of a mixed bag, with a five percent net revenue growth over this time last year and a whopping 1.5 million sales of that iPhone it paid so dearly for -- twice as many as it sold last quarter and, of those, 44 percent were new subscribers. That helped to drive an overall postpaid subscriber growth of 263,000 but, despite some good news, the company is still suffering a $255 million operating loss and a $863 million net loss. Sprint reaffirmed its LTE plans, a pilot launch of six cities sometime in the middle of this year, with 12,000 sites going online before 2012 turns a year older. Will it be enough? Tune in next quarter to find out.
LG's Q1 2012 earnings show greater profits on strong TV, phone sales
LG has released its Q1 2012 numbers, and there's plenty of good news to go around, with TV profits that nearly doubled and profit from cellphones for the second quarter in a row following six straight quarters of losses. Despite slightly lower sales, more of the units that did sell had higher prices and made more profit. In its press release, the company claimed to have "turned the corner" with a net profit of $215 million, blaming the slower sales of TVs on the European economy and cellphones on declining featurephone sales. We don't have specific numbers, but it called out the popularity of the Optimus LTE and Optimus Vu as part of the reason for increased revenues. Of course, the year is only just getting under way, and the company is expected to introduce its first 55-inch OLED HDTV soon, as well as quad-core smartphones and a new L-style series of phones. Before that however, it will have to deal with the competition from fellow Korean giant Samsung which will report its earnings later this week and has a few high profile releases up its sleeves as well. There's more details in the press release after the break, and PDF linked below.
AT&T reports Q1 earnings: $31.8 billion in revenue, 5.5 million smartphones sold
Sure, there was no new iPhone to boost its smartphone sales this quarter, but the carrier still managed to push 5.5 million of the devices out the door, while activating 4.3 million Apple-branded handsets. The company beat analyst predictions by raking in $31.8 billion in revenue and pocketing $3.6 billion of that as income, up from $3.4 billion over the same time period last year. Things are looking good for the company as both U-Verse and its wireless business grew revenues dramatically -- by 38.2 percent and 19.9 percent, respectively. Growth on the cellular side is in large part thanks to the 726,000 net subscriber adds. Of particular interest is the growth in so-called "branded-computing" subscriptions, which includes tethering plans and tablets. There, AT&T has seen a growth of 70 percent over last year, reaching 5.8 million customers (including 460,000 added last quarter). For more financial fun check out the PR after the break.
ARM reports revenues up 13 percent, bicep-curling profits up 22 percent
UK-based chip designer ARM just announced another booming quarter, with revenue up by 13 percent to $209.4 million. Pre-tax profits were even stronger, growing 22 percent year-over-year to $100 million. Not a bad profit margin by anyone's standards, and due to entirely to the Cambridge outfit's business model, which has seen 22 new processor licenses signed this quarter. That includes everything from the smallest Cortex-M class chips for use in the "Internet of Things" right through to the mini-monster Cortex-A15. There were also two new signings for the Mali graphics core, which is still proving its worth in some of the latest Samsung Galaxy devices. Overall, the number of chips that went into mobile phones and mobile computers remained steady, but the shipment of chips for other types of consumer and embedded devices grew by 15 percent year-on-year, proving that ARM not only has muscle, but also fingers in pies.
Netflix Q1 results: 3 million new streaming subscribers worldwide, record viewing hours
Netflix has posted its earnings report for Q1 of 2012, and reveals its streaming subscriber count in the US is currently 23.4 million, after reaching 21.67 million back in January. While the company noted a net loss of about $5 million, the letter from CEO Reed Hastings and CFO David Wells claimed it is still on a "rapid return" to profitability after last year's missteps and international expansions. Worldwide it now counts a total of 26 million subscribers to the streaming service, although it lost another million or so subscribers to discs, which currently number 10.09 million. That old disc business is still highly profitable however, adding $146 million to the bottom line. Internationally, Netflix added more customers in its first three months of UK / Ireland availability than it did in the same period for Latin America or Canada, and expects its Canadian service to be profitable a quarter earlier than expected. Reed Hastings also took the opportunity to toss another barb at Comcast for its bandwidth cap-exempt Xfinity TV Xbox 360 app, claiming it should either raise its caps, make them apply to all services including its own or eliminate them entirely. Another development in Q1 was the loss of streaming titles from Starz but it claims that caused no discernible change in viewing or subscriber hours, while customers continue to lean towards streaming TV episodes over movies. Hit the source links below to paw through the PDF and spreadsheet for yourself, we'll let you know if any interesting tidbits are revealed on the earnings call later today.
Facebook updates S-1, adds Q1 earnings, revenue up 45% over last year
Facebook just filed an amended S-1 (that all important document that officially announces its public offering plans) with some new financial info. Now included in the charts and graphs is everything you wanted to know about Q1 of 2012 at Facebook (but were afraid to ask). The new SEC filing reveals that revenues are way up at the social network over last year (a whopping 45 percent higher than Q1 of 2011), but down slightly from last quarter (six percent), settling at a more than respectable $1.058 billion. Of the cash it took in, $872 million of it was ad revenue, which is down from Q4 of 2011 ($943 million) but up significantly from Q1 of last year ($731 million). Facebook was even able to slap a per-user amount on its 900 million active monthly members -- $1.21 -- that's the average revenue for each person with an account at the site. Of course, membership has continued to grow, with 532 million stopping by daily, up from 372 million just a year ago. As for that Instagram purchase, it looks like the widely reported $1 billion figure wasn't entirely accurate -- at least not when talking cold, hard cash. Only $300 million was turned over in immediately spendable currency, the rest of the deal involved 23 million shares of common stock. If you're a sucker for financials hit up the source link.
AMD reports net loss of $590 million for Q1 2012, calls that 'solid results'
We're not sure about you, but we wouldn't call losing over half a billion dollars "solid results." Still, we're not 100 percent ready to rain on AMD's parade yet. The non-GAAP results (which disregard a pile of one-time charges and investments) turn the $590 million loss into a $92 million profit. Still, the GAAP results do make two straight quarters of losses and revenue clearly continued to decline, falling to $1.59 billion. That's down six percent from last quarter and two percent from the same time period last year. Revenue from the graphics division held steady from last quarter, though, it's down seven percent year-over-year. For more financial fun hit up the PR after the break.
Verizon's vitals: quarterly revenue up five percent to $28 billion, earnings of $1.7 billion
Verizon is remembering how to turn to subscribers into cash, reporting consolidated revenues up 4.6 percent year-over-year to $28 billion and earnings of $1.7 billion -- boosting earnings-per-share by 15 percent. By comparison, revenues were $27 billion in Q1 2011, and a mere $18 billion last quarter, which resulted in a $2 billion net loss. Big Red's performance is now as strong as ever, with subscriber numbers up five percent to 93 million, and with 47 percent of those customers using insanely profitable devices called smartphones. On the TV and broadband side side, its FiOS unit now tops five million internet customers, and added a net total of 180,000 video subscribers. And that new $30 upgrade fee hasn't even kicked in yet.
Nokia's Q1 2012 financials: $9 billion in sales can't stop a $1.7 billion loss
Nokia's released the bundle of spreadsheets that comprise its 2012 Q1 financials, just a week after it acknowledged that it would make a loss, despite bullish sales of the new Lumia 900. The numbers reveal that the company had net sales of €7.4 billion ($9.7 billion), down from €10.4 billion ($13.6 billion) at the start of last year. Net sales are down 30 percent year-on-year, which means the company's posting a loss of €1.3 billion ($1.7 billion) for the first three months of 2012. That loss is broken down as €772 million to restructure Nokia Siemens Networks, €101 million to restructure the Devices & Services and Location & Commerce departments, principally in shedding employees and relocating its factories to Asia. It had forecasted an operating margin of three percent below "break even," and says it's likely to remain that way well into the second quarter. Stephen Elop pointed out that much of the loss is due to both increased competition and the costs of restructuring, but also seemed to tacitly confirm rumors we'd heard that UK carriers have been resistant to Nokia's new direction, saying that establishing momentum in the country has been "challenging." However, it's still promising to arrest the slump and in a statement to Moody's on Monday, the company pledged that it was prioritizing "cash conservation" exercises, although its liquid cash reserves have fallen 24% in a year, meaning that the company's only got €4.8 billion ($6.3 billion) put aside for a rainy day.
Intel reports $12.9 billion in revenue for Q1 of 2012, breaks no records
While it's hard to get upset when your company is raking in just shy of $13 billion over just three months, we're sure Intel's investors are a little sad to see revenue drop across all business divisions. With a net income of $2.7 billion, profits dropped nearly 19 percent from last quarter and everyone from the data center group to the PC client group saw revenues fall by significant margins. There's no reason to worry about Chipzilla, though. The company's seemingly constant record smashing quarters had to come to an end sometime and we're sure with its entrance into the smartphone market this year new streams of revenue will start pouring in shortly. Check out the source link for all the financial nitty gritty.
Google reports $10.65 billion in revenue for Q1 2012, splits stock
Google just announced its earnings for Q1 of 2012 and the company did not disappoint. It raked in $10.65 billion, a full 24 percent higher than last year for the same time period and a hefty improvement over last quarter. Of that rather sizable chunk of cash, $10.2 billion came from advertising revenues -- $7.3 billion of that placed on Google's own properties. GAAP net income for the quarter was $2.89 billion, more than twice that of Q1 2011, which brings its total war chest to $49.3 billion in cash on hand. Perhaps the biggest news for investors, though, is the 2-for-1 stock split, which is a perfect accompaniment for the skyrocketing price. It's worth noting however, that this new stock is a new class of non-voting shares. For more info check out the PR after the break and don't miss the letter from Larry Page and Sergey Brin at the source link.
Nokia: Two million Lumia phones sold in Q1 but profits still falling
Nokia's announced preliminary information on its forthcoming Q1 results due on April 19th. It's reportedly sold €4.2 billion worth of phones, €2.3 billion coming from the sale of 71 million dumbphones and €1.7 billion coming from smart devices. On the upside, sales of the Lumia handsets are still growing, selling two million of the series in the last three months alone. However, "competitive industry dynamics" and the cost of its painful transition into a modern smartphone player have meant the numbers aren't too pleasing. The figures mean that the company will make a loss of around three percent below "break even," but Stephen Elop remains bullish, saying that his team is "continuing to increase the clock speed of the company" and that "the change is tangible."
Samsung expects to double Q1 profit versus last year, sends itself a love note
Sammy has issued guidance for its financial performance between January and March 2012, ahead of a fuller earnings report due later this month. In contrast to HTC's latest news, the Korean giant looks rosy enough -- it's predicting an operating profit of 5.8 trillion won ($5 billion), which is almost double the quarterly profit from last year. Overall revenues continued to grow steadily too, rising nearly 22 percent to 45 trillion won ($40 billion). We'll need to wait for more detail to see where the growth is coming from, but it'd be cheesily nice to think our affection for the Galaxy Note had something to do with it.
HTC's unaudited Q1 2012 financials: revenue down by 35 percent
HTC's unaudited financials have just hit the wires and it looks like the negative trends from last year are continuing. For the first quarter of 2012, revenues are down nearly 35 percent year-on-year, with revenues of 67,790 million Taiwanese dollars (around $2.3 billion) for the period. Operating income was 5,099 million Taiwanese dollars (roughly $173 million) and profits after tax 4,464 million Taiwanese dollars ($151 million). The company must be hoping that this represents the end of the nasty hangover from its previous scatter-gun approach to phone production. Now that it's gone with the sleek and slender One series lineup, we'll see how well the company's about-turn does in the next two quarters.
PlayMemories Studio lets you manipulate your memories on PS3 today
PlayMemories Studio, the new PS3-based software for editing HD video and viewing and sharing photo stuff, will be available on PSN today in North America. It's priced at $15, which is on the high end for PSN lifestyle apps, but on the low end for video editing software. It's also free for PlayStation Plus subscribers, or as a limited 30-day trial version.Studio also supports Remote Play, if you'd like to be able to view and edit video remotely from your PSP or Vita, and introduce more portability and/or lag into the experience.
XSEED Games Ys-es into Steam market
XSEED is beginning to publish PC games for Steam, starting with a pair of Ys remakes. Ys: The Oath in Felghana will be available for purchase on March 19 for $14.99. It's coming out a while after the PSP version here, but in Japan this PC release predated the PSP by about five years.Perhaps even more exciting is Ys Origin, a prequel game that never got an official English release. XSEED plans to put that out on Steam at a later date.If you've never played an Ys game before, think old-school Zelda with more storyline. And even though Felghana is technically the third game in the storyline, you won't be lost if you jump in there. Basically, all you need to know is that Adol Christin is a really nice guy who will solve everyone's problems and kill everyone's monsters.%Gallery-150671%%Gallery-150669%
Dodonpachi Resurrection re-resurrected in HD for iPhone
It's getting difficult to keep up with all the Dodonpachi variations on the App Store. We were confused when we read the latest press release from developer Cave -- we thought Dodonpachi Resurrection was already available on iPhone.It is! The game coming March 15 is Dodonpachi Resurrection HD, which updates the resolution of the iPhone release for iPhone 4 or newer devices. To celebrate the release, it'll be on sale for four days, for $10.99 (vs. its regular $13.99 price). Espgaluda II HD, a previous refresh of an iOS shooter, will be the same price.Does that still sound expensive? You can read about the reasoning behind Cave's pricing here.%Gallery-150489%
Dirt 3 Complete Edition enters the race March 20
The Dirt 3 Complete Edition officially launches March 20 in North America, running (or racing) $40 for Xbox 360, PS3 and Windows. The Complete Edition contains more than $30 of additional content, which by our calculations means you're getting a 5,000 percent increase in value. Again, that's by our calculations, and we never said we were very good at mathing.
