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PlayStation and image sensors help Sony turn a profit
Twelve months ago, Sony was busy recalculating the losses it was expecting to report, due to its beleaguered mobile division. Today, the firm's announcing a 33.6-billion yen ($278-million) profit thanks (once more) to PlayStation and its image sensor division. Overall revenues came in slightly lower than a year ago (down by 0.5%), but a general uptick across the company's many divisions has helped push it into profitability. Despite this, mobile sales continue to slide (down 15-percent this quarter). Sony's Xperia brand is an expensive pastime, costing the company approximately $1.9 million per day in losses.
TV giant Comcast actually has more internet customers now
Just in case you were wondering why Comcast is suddenly ready with TV service for people who prefer to watch over the internet, the earnings report it released today can show you why. For the first time (albeit by a narrow margin of 22.55 million to 22.3 million), the cable giant has more high speed internet customers than cable TV subscribers. As it usually does in its financial Q2, Comcast lost TV subscribers, but fewer this year (69,000) than last year (144,000), a number it credits to ongoing improvements in customer service. While the shift away from TV is a small one right now, it reminds us of a similar tipping point: when Netflix streaming overtook discs, and never looked back.
Google continues to make money thanks to mobile and YouTube
While Google has been enjoying consistent financial growth for quite some time, it was dinged the last two quarters for not living up to Wall Street expectations. But in today's Q2 earnings announcement, the Mountain View firm has made significant strides in rectifying that reputation. It reported a revenue of $17.7 billion this past quarter, which is an 11 percent growth year over year and a 3 percent growth since Q1. This has beat Wall Street estimates handily, causing its stock to climb by 11 percent at closing. What's contributing to this success? As CFO Ruth Porat puts it, it's all thanks to mobile, with YouTube playing a star role.
Netflix: New season of 'OITNB' spurred a record amount of streaming
Netflix is flying high enough to need a 7-for-1 stock split, but now it's competing in a world where Showtime and HBO offer streaming video over the internet too. That makes today's earnings results (PDF) ever more important, and not surprisingly, the company focused on its push for original, exclusive content. Now up to 65 million members worldwide (42 million in the US), Netflix mentioned that the debut of Orange is the New Black S3 resulted in viewers watching a record number of hours for one day the following Sunday, the same day as HBO's Game of Thrones finale and an NBA Finals game.
Nintendo suddenly resurgent on the strength of Super Smash Bros.
Super Smash Bros. isn't just fun to play, it also gave Nintendo a fun financial quarter. For the first time in a while, the Japanese company turned a profit, 24 billion yen worth ($224 million) to be exact. That's a big (Wii) U-turn over last quarter, when it managed to lose 9.9 billion yen ($97 million). Overall, Nintendo sold 3.2 million copies of Super Smash Bros. worldwide and 1.3 million 3DS units, not bad considering that sales started late in the quarter. Plus, the game hasn't even launched yet on the Wii U, but sales of that console were also up 22 percent in anticipation of the November 21st launch. Along with upcoming Amiibo figurines, all that should set Nintendo up for a nice Christmas quarter. Despite the good news, however, overall sales are still down 12.8 percent over last year -- and Super Smash Bros. games don't come along every day.
BlackBerry inches towards safety despite smartphone slump
From the looks of BlackBerry's newest earnings report, it looks as if CEO Jon Chen's plan to transform the company into a software-and-services company might actually be working. The company posted a quarterly net loss of $207 million, pocket change compared to the $950 million that the other guy lost in the same period the year before. The reason for the healthier spreadsheet is thanks to growth in the company's services arm, which managed to sell 3.4 million licenses of its BlackBerry Enterprise Service in three months - nearly three times the amount sold during the previous three months.
Samsung sees its lowest profit in two years as smartphone sales languish
When Samsung took the time to update investors ahead of its upcoming quarterly earnings report, it warned 'weak demand' for phones and an increased marketing spend could hit the company hard. That report hit today, and it's as bleak as the company expected. In its second quarter, Samsung posted profit of 6.25 trillion won ($6.1 billion), down from 7.77 trillion won ($6.96 billion) last year, its lowest quarterly profit in two years. Smartphone sales contributed the majority of its revenue, but the Samsung's flagship phone, the Galaxy S5, languished as the iPhone continues to fly of shelves and Chinese brands cut directly into its low-end business.
Verizon enjoys a rush of new tablet users as smartphone plans stagnate (updated)
Verizon's money machine continues to plow on, but much of its wireless growth this quarter came from tablets, not smartphones -- a trend that started last quarter. Big Red added some 1.4 million net retail connections, of which a whopping 1.15 million used LTE-equipped tablets. Many of those may have come via its new More Everything plan, which only adds $10 to an existing contract for a tablet, compared to $40 for another smartphone. Though all those devices technically count as new connections, Verizon only added 304,000 net phone customers, compared to 940,000 472,000 this time a year ago. Despite that smartphone connection dip, however, Verizon still saw 7.5 percent more wireless revenue ($21.5 billion) and a similar bump in operating profits.
Netflix crosses 50 million subscribers worldwide and takes aim at Comcast / TWC
It looks like that (pending 2 years for existing customers) price hike hasn't greatly affected Netflix's popularity, as it announced today that it has 50 million customers altogether. About 36 million of them are in the US, and Netflix specified that's about to launch in more European countries (Germany, Austria, Switzerland, France, Belgium and Luxembourg) in September. Its profit also more than doubled this quarter, up to $71 million from about $30 million in the same period last year. The only real change mentioned for customers is that it's about to start distributing in-store gift cards this fall, so you can give the gift of Netflix or join without having to pay online with a credit card. The company's focus of course is how it's building up a library of exclusive content, and it says Orange is the New Black quickly became the most watched series in every Netflix territory when season two launched. Upcoming shows include Sense8 from the Wachowskis and the Daredevil series it's making with Marvel, and it's cast a number of big names for those shows already like Vincent D'Onofrio, Naveen Andrews and Rosario Dawson -- now that Netflix scored 31 Emmy nominations this year they clearly have a tough act to follow. The company's earnings chat will start in a few minutes, check after the break to watch it live and see a few more notes about its current status.
HTC said the new One would help swing a profit, and it did
Though HTC lost money last quarter, it had just launched its One M8 flagship to great reviews, and promised the new handset would put a halt to the red ink. The (unaudited) numbers are now in and back up that boast. The company scored a NT$2.8 billion profit ($92 million) on NT$65 billion ($2.2 billion) in revenue, nearly matching sales from last year and turning around a streak of losses. That's a far cry from the Samsungs of the world, but still a shot of good news for the beleaguered company. To cash in on the new One's success, HTC recently launched a plastic-bodied version called the One M8 Ace and a cut-down One Mini. Whether those will help it keep up the momentum next quarter remains to be seen -- it often gets the post-flagship blues.
NPD: Digital spending offset physical goods decline in Q2
Information broker The NPD Group noted that for the second quarter (April-June), digital product sales made up for losses experienced at retail. "Increases in digital format spending offset nearly all the losses from the declines in physical format spending, with digital full game downloads and downloadable content spending experiencing a combined 27 percent increase (when compared to Q2'12)," said NPD analyst Liam Callahan. "Spending increases occurred across both video games and PC games in the digital format." The importance of this detail has to do with digital distribution platform holders' tendency to not share their data, meaning many analysts base their industry projections off physical retail sales, which you can imagine in the video game industry leads to some very bad information. It's led to tension with publishers and industry lobbyists. [kentoh via Shutterstock]
GameStop does slightly better than guidance heading into holiday
GameStop made it out of the slower summer season relatively unscathed, with sales of $1.38 billion during the second quarter ending August 3, a 10.7 percent decline from last year's $1.55 billion. An important indicator for the retail giant is its digital receipts grew 17.9 percent during the quarter to $158 million. "Through two quarters, the year has played out as expected," said GameStop CEO Paul Raines in prepared remarks. "During this console transition period, our financial results have been supported by the continued growth of our emerging businesses." The company is confident about the holiday season, which will see the launch of two consoles and all those sweet new software sales (and all those used sales from people unloading current-gen libraries to fund their transition). Raines concluded, "Of course, excitement continues to build for the upcoming new games and the launch of the PS4 and Xbox One. As the global gaming leader, GameStop is uniquely positioned to capitalize on the new, innovative products coming to market."
NCsoft sales are up, income is down
NCsoft may be in a more secure position with its financials at the present, as the company released its Q2 2013 earnings report with uplifting data. Overall, the publisher and its combined subsidiaries has increased its sales by 4% over last quarter and seen a healthy bump in operating profit as well. It's not all good news; NCsoft's net income has taken a 35% nosedive quarter-over-quarter. If you strip away the subsidiaries, however, NCsoft is doing well across the board. So what's fueling these numbers? Lineage 1 remains the backbone of NCsoft's financials, boasting "an all-time high" in the sales department. Aion is reportedly doing well in China, and Guild Wars 2 is providing "stable" profits. It looks as though North American sales has decreased from Q1, but an increase in Japanese and Korean sales has more than made up for the loss.
Sprint reports 'highest-ever' revenue of $7.2 billion for Q2 2013, loses $1.6 billion on Nextel shutdown
Sprint has just announced its second quarter 2013 financial results, and while it's pay as you go plans are paying off in terms of income, shutdowns and charges caused a huge loss. The company posted $7.2 billion in earnings, its "highest ever" total and an eight percent increase over last year, but also took a net loss of $1.6 billion for the quarter. It's chalking that up to a huge depreciation charge of $430 million and another non-cash hit of $623 million due to the Nextel platform shutdown, which is finally complete. However, the company added that over 4 million Nextel subscribers were "recaptured" to the Sprint platform since the transition commenced in early 2011. The shutdown and loss were anticipated, though and apart from that, Sprint said it's in good place, having achieved "record levels of... postpaid subscribers, service revenue and postpaid ARPU." It also completed its acquisition of Clearwire (at last) and US Cellular's spectrum and customers, while itself being captured into Japanese carrier Softbank's orbit. (For its part, Softbank managed a whopping 238 billion yen ($2.4 billion) in net income during the quarter.) The operator now has 4G-LTE coverage in 151 markets, including 41 that are new as of today, including Philadelphia, the Bronx , Brooklyn, Jacksonville, Nashville and Oakland. As for subscribers, post post-paid customers are up from last year, but pre-paid clients are down due to "planned deactivations related to regulatory changes." All of that resulted in an increase in churn (turnover) year-over-year to 1.83 percent. Eighty-six percent of its postpaid handset sales were smartphones, including about 1.4 million iPhones sold during the quarter. Going forward, the company just launched a raft of new data plans, including an Unlimited offering that guarantees customers who sign up will get to keep it for life. We'll have to wait and see whether that and all the other machinations this quarter will finally push the company into the black.
Samsung's Q2 earnings show $6.96 billion net profit, but smartphone growth is slowing
Samsung has released its audited results for the second quarter, and the company is reporting a net profit of 7.77 trillion won ($6.96 billion.) That's plenty of cash and up from the same period last year, however it warned investors growth momentum in its mobile department may slow in pace. Of course, it's still growing, and sales of its Galaxy S 4 and Galaxy Note 8.0 contributed to a nine percent bump in quarterly revenue for the mobile department. Samsung plans to keep profits high by focusing on "offering differentiated smartphone displays...including flexible display technology" and lowering the cost of its OLED screens. In TVs, profits were also up on more demand for 60-inch+ sets as well as mid-range and low end versions. Samsung is also rolling out Ultra HD and curved OLED TVs in the US, while focusing on more mass-market designs in emerging markets.
Facebook reports $1.81 billion in revenue for Q2 2013, 1.15 billion monthly active users
Facebook saw its revenue grow year-over-year in its Q1 earnings reported in May, and that trend has continued for its second quarter. The company has just announced that it's pulled in $1.81 billion in revenue for Q2, beating analysts' expectations, while net income stood at $333 million. Of course, much of that money comes from ads: Facebook says that revenue from advertising now represents 88 percent of its total revenue, and that mobile advertising accounted for about 41 percent of its total advertising revenue for the quarter. Mark Zuckerberg highlighted that last bit in a statement, saying that "the work we've done to make mobile the best Facebook experience is showing good results and provides us with a solid foundation for the future." In other numbers, Facebook also reported that it has 1.15 billion monthly active users as of June 30th, while its daily active users stood at 669 million. Mobile users were again its biggest growth area, with 819 million users actively checking in on their mobile devices each month (up 51 percent compared to the same quarter in 2012), and 469 million active on a daily basis. We'll keep you posted on any additional developments that may come out of the company's earnings call in the next hour. Update: Zuckerberg and co. didn't have much additional news to offer during the earning's call, although he did comment briefly on Facebook Home, which he described as a "seed we're planting," and something to look at over the long term.
LG Q2 earnings show lower profit than last year, record 12.1 million smartphone sales
LG Electronics has released its earnings report for the second quarter of 2013, and while its net profit of 156 billion won ($139 million) slipped from the same period last year, it's proudly trumpeting a record 12.1 million smartphones shipped. Operating profit for it mobile unit slipped from last quarter, but grew year over year to 54.37 million, and LG is apparently banking on phones like the Optimus L II, Optimus F and of course the upcoming G2 to keep things moving in the right direction. The mixed results continued when it came to TVs, as revenue and profit increased from the previous quarter, but dropped compared to last year, which the company blamed on lower demand and increased competition. As we've seen, it's focusing on the high end with new tech like Ultra HD and OLED for developed markets, although at the current prices it may take a while for those to have an effect.
Netflix Q2 earnings show 1.2 million new subscribers; plans for original stand-up comedy, documentaries
Netflix has revealed its earnings report for the second quarter of 2013 which shows its worldwide customer base has grown by 1.2 million. The company now has "nearly" 30 million customers in the US (up 630,000) and 8 million internationally (up 610,000), with streaming revenue up 26 percent domestically and 155 percent outside the US. That compares well with the same period last year, when it added 530,000 customers in the US. This year has been highlighted by Netflix's push into original programming and just last week that initiative resulted in a bounty of 14 Emmy nominations. Expect more in the future, as Reed Hasting's letter mentions the company expand into documentaries and stand-up comedy specials. According to the report, the new $11.99 family plan that supports four simultaneous streams has seen "limited uptake" (did anyone know it was available?), while the new individual profiles will be implemented in Q3. The company has rolled out a new streaming platform to its partners, and says its next goal is a single UI that works with various input devices, whether voice, pointer or d-pad. While we paw through the financial documents for more details, don't forget Netflix plans to live stream video of its investors call on YouTube later. The event should start at 6PM ET and is embedded after the break.
Nokia reports smaller $150 million loss in Q2 2013, Lumia sales up to 7.4 million
After BlackBerry's disastrous earnings a couple of weeks back, Nokia and Microsoft have clear bragging rights over third place in the ecosystem war -- but does a bronze medal earn you any cash? The Finnish manufacturer has reported declining Q2 2013 revenues of €5.69 billion ($7.4 billion) compared to the $9.2 billion earned in the same quarter last year. The good news is that the huge financial losses of 2012 seem to be gone, with today's reported loss standing at just €115 million ($150 million), all of which can be laid at the feet of Nokia's devices and services division. Meanwhile, the company's smartphone sales seem to be growing thanks to fresh Lumia models like the 520, 620 and 720 -- with a total of 7.4 million Windows Phone 8 devices sold in the quarter. For context, that's significantly more than the 6.8 million units BlackBerry could boast in its latest report. It's also a big improvement on the 5.6 million in Lumia sales from Q1 and the 4.4 million sold in Q4 2012. However, the Asha division saw sales slip down from 5 million last quarter to 4.3 million now. Oh, and if anyone's still in the market for a Symbian handset, better be quick -- the company is reporting that sales of the phones are now "approximately zero." In other parts of the business, "Here," Nokia's renamed mapping division, lost €89 million ($116 million) while Nokia Siemens Networks made a slender €8 million ($10.4 million) profit. Looking forward, the company has said that it's lowering its future estimates by two percent, saying that dwindling demand, higher operating expenses and "the macroeconomic environment" will all help to erode the company's cash reserves. But hey, at least Microsoft's still kicking in that $250 million in alimony platform support payments.
Intel posts Q2 2013 earnings: revenue of $12.8 billion, net profit of $2 billlion
Intel just posted decidedly mixed results for the second quarter. While it largely matched its outlook from the first quarter with $12.8 billion in revenue and a healthy net profit of $2 billion, it also saw sharp year-over-year drops in revenue from some of its core divisions. The PC Client Group, which makes the brunt of Intel's processors, saw its revenue decline 7.5 percent; the Other Intel Architecture Group, which primarily handles mobile chips, faced a 15 percent drop. Intel hasn't explained the dip, although there are a pair of major factors at work. In addition to facing a very rough PC market, the company only launched its Haswell architecture late in the quarter -- there hasn't been much time for customers to buy the new chips. Intel says there's "strong acceptance" from early Haswell customers, however, and its outlook for the current quarter is slightly rosier as a result -- it expects to make the same $13.5 billion in revenue that we saw a year ago.
