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Nintendo: Sales tracking below forecasts, weak yen drives profit
Nintendo reduced its annual sales forecast by 6.8 percent today, leading to a 50 percent drop in the projected operating profit for its core business. Nonetheless, the ever-weakening state of the yen is balancing that out by boosting the company's overseas earnings. According to its revised forecast, Nintendo now expects to earn a net profit of ¥30 billion for the fiscal year ending March 31, 2015, which converts to around $255 million. That's up 50 percent from the company's previous projections, and a sharp contrast to the $229 million loss posted the previous fiscal year.
GameStop stock drops on declining sales, despite new hardware
GameStop's third quarter financial results show global sales are down for the quarter ended November 1, 2014, totaling $2.09 billion, compared to 2.11 billion over the same period last year. Net income fell to $56.4 million, as compared to $68.6 million during the third quarter last year. Despite this overall decline, the company says that sales of new hardware rose 147 percent, adding that after a year on the market, the installed base of the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 is 73 percent larger than that of the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 after their first year of availability. GameStop's bread-and-butter pre-owned sales, meanwhile, grew by 2.6 percent over last quarter. Sales of mobile devices, a new focus for GameStop, grew by 125 percent thanks to "continued expansion and strong results" for the company's new Spring Mobile stores. So, with all of this apparent growth, why the drop in sales? GameStop CEO Paul Raines pins the decline on Assassin's Creed Unity, which was delayed to November 11 earlier this year, meaning it couldn't be included in GameStop's third quarter results. Wall Street hasn't taken kindly to the news, with VentureBeat reporting that GameStop's stock has dropped by 13 percent.
HTC's recovery stays on track by the slimmest of margins
When a company like HTC has been on a year-long losing streak, it's hard to work out if its earnings for this quarter are a cause for celebration or despair. Last quarter, you see, the One M8 helped the company achieve a huge turnaround, pulling down a $92 million profit after a series of losses. This time out, the news is goodish, since while the company did make a profit, it was just $19 million - but considering that HTC was losing money this time last year, it's better than nothing. As far as products are concerned, the M8 is still doing well, and lower-end phones like the Desire 610 and 820 are getting plenty of attention from carriers and consumers. Hopefully sales of the HTC-made Nexus 9 and the RE camera will help the company maintain its promise to keep raking in cash rather than handing out IOUs.
Netflix's growth slows down just as HBO joins the streaming fight
Netflix is no longer an up and comer, it's a giant, pushing out well-regarded original content -- in 4K even -- and constantly expanding its reach. Today we learned that HBO will finally hop off its cable-only throne and do battle with some sort of internet-only service next year, and as Netflix reveals how it did in the last three months, we'll find out how it plans to respond. According to CEO Reed Hastings' Q3 letter to investors, despite the "inevitable" move, he believes "it is likely we both prosper as consumers move to Internet TV." Meanwhile, his company has grown to 53 million customers worldwide and figures it will crack 57 million by the end of the year. The bad news? Those price hikes for new customers appear to have slowed growth, with Netflix adding 980,000 customers in the US, lower than both the 1.29 million net additions in the same period a year ago -- when it passed HBO in paid subscribers -- and the 1.33 million the company predicted just three months ago. There should be plenty to talk about when Netflix has its investor call at 6PM ET (live video streaming -- watch it embedded after the break).
Samsung's Q3 profits drop 60 percent from last year to under $4 billion
At this time last year, Samsung was enjoying a record operating profit of $9.6 billion for its third quarter and shipping Galaxy phones seemingly as fast as it could make them. Now? The company announced its operating profit for the period will be down to between $3.6 and $4 billion, which would be its fourth straight quarter of declines. Of course, that's nothing to sneeze at but it represents a drop of 60 percent in just a year. We don't have specific sales stats, but industry analysts mentioned by the Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg see its phone sales squeezed at the high-end by Apple's latest iPhones, and at the low end by numerous Chinese competitors like Xiaomi and Lenovo. Samsung's next steps -- after launching the new Galaxy Note 4 -- include growing its businesses making memory chips, processors and displays. Samsung announced today that it's building a new $14.7 billion chip plant in Korea -- maybe it can get prices of the next Galaxy Alpha down enough to get sales back on a growing track.
Asymco's Horace Dediu tweets his Apple Q3 earnings prediction
Horace Dediu is widely accepted as a expert on all things Apple. He writes for the Harvard Business Review Blog, is regularly interviewed about Apple products, and runs the industry blog and analysis firm Asymco. Today Dediu shared his predictions for Apple's third quarter earnings via his Twitter account. Dediu lists his numbers as Apple's Q2, based on the normal quarter divisions most companies use. However since Apple's Q1 actually runs from September through December these are actually the company's Q3 numbers. His predictions come ahead of Apple releasing its actual numbers on July 22's earnings call.
Sprint still struggling despite growing subscriber base and smartphone sales
Sprint has just revealed its Q4 2013 earnings, and despite increasing its postpaid subscriber base to a record 53.9 million, it still managed a net loss of $1 billion -- nearly four times worse than last quarter. That continues the US carrier's recent losing streak, and is especially notable during a holiday period when AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile all had gangbuster quarters. On the plus side, it managed to hit its LTE coverage goal of 200 million people, but that figure is still the lowest of all the major carriers. It also sold 5.6 million smartphones compared to 5 million last quarter, with 20.5 million sold for the year. That accounts for 95 percent of postpaid subscriber sales, which tops its main competitors. With few other financial bright spots, though, new owner Softbank might be wondering what it got itself into.
NCsoft takes a financial hit in Q3 2013
NCsoft's latest financial earnings report shows that the publisher took a substantial hit in the third quarter of this year. Sales, operating profit, pre-tax income, and net income were all down from both the previous quarter and Q3 2012. NCsoft blamed the dip due on a shuffling of Lineage's in-game sales from third to fourth quarter. Guild Wars 2 once again dropped in sales, while Blade and Soul came out the best in the report, seeing an uptick in sales thanks to a recent content update. Higher expenses were also to blame for NCsoft's lower profit margin, including an increased WildStar marketing campaign and relocating headquarters. Quarter-over-quarter, sales were down across most of NCsoft's subsidiaries save for NCsoft Taiwan and Ntreev Soft, which both saw a bump in sales. [Thanks to Sharvis for the tip! And note, the unit on the Y axes is million South Korean won, not US dollars.]
Time Warner Cable promises faster internet to woo back fleeing customers
One of the downsides of taking a risk is that the consequences are liable to come back and hurt you further down the line. Take Time Warner Cable, for instance, which took CBS' channels offline for the better part of two months in protest of "outrageous" carriage fees. Now that it's come to financials season, however, the company has admitted that the moral high ground came with a price: it lost 117,000 customers in three months. Of more concern, is that Time Warner also managed to lose 24,000 broadband customers, a trend which may make executives a little twitchy. In the hope of distracting people from today's dour news, the company is going to double the speed of Ultimate 50 customers in Los Angeles from 50 Mbps to 100, and those with the same package in NYC and Hawaii will get the same boost before the end of the year.
Sprint's iPhone gamble still isn't paying off as it loses 360,000 customers in a quarter
Sprint has managed to shrink its operating losses to $398 million for Q3 23013 compared to $1.6 billion last quarter on a record $8.7 billion in revenue. However, despite now having 230 US LTE markets as of yesterday including Queens and Manhattan, the operator managed to lose 360,000 all-important postpaid subscribers. In exchange, it only picked up 84 thousand prepaid and 181 thousand wholesale customers. On a positive note, Sprint said it sold 1.4 million iPhones during the quarter, including about 550,000 to new customers as part of its all-in bet on the handsets. It added that 92 percent of its new postpaid customers purchased higher-margin smartphones. Those stats helped boost its total revenue per postpaid customer to a new high -- now it just needs to think about how to retain them.
Samsung's Q3 operating profit of $9.6 billion is a record, thanks to memory and cheap Galaxys
Samsung's earnings for the third quarter are in and as usual, the money keeps flowing in. As it predicted a few months ago, Q3 represented a record high in operating profit for the company, hitting 10.16 trillion won, or about $9.6 billion. While the results last quarter reflected a flattening growth curve in smartphone sales, business is still getting better thanks to cheaper versions of its Galaxy smartphones and profits from memory chips (Flash storage and RAM) that have doubled last year's results. With its chips in demand for the new game consoles, smartphones, servers and PCs, Samsung has plenty of customers (including some of its competitors), and is predicting supply will stay tight for the near future. Meanwhile, it's making less money on displays as prices continue to drop, but noted sales of 60-inch and higher TV panels are growing.
Amazon touts 'millions' of new Prime members, 1,382 new robot workers as it pulls in $17 billion in revenue
Amazon's known for not offering many specific details about its device sales or customers in its earnings reports, and this quarter's is no exception. The company did note, however, that it added "millions" of Prime users during the quarter, a number that's no doubt only set to grow further now that it's finally raised its free shipping threshold to $35. Beyond that, the company announced that its net sales increased 24% year-over-year to 17.09 billion, but it's still not making a profit, reporting a net loss of $41 million for the quarter. In one detail you don't often see in an earnings report, Amazon also boasted that it's deployed 1,382 Kiva robots in three of its fulfillment centers during the quarter (it bought the company last year), adding another degree of automation to its shipping process. That pales in comparison to the number of new human employees its brought on, though -- Amazon says it has begun hiring and training 70,000 new employees to work in those centers in advance of the holiday season. You can find the rest of the company's numbers at the source link below.
LG's smartphone sales stayed high in Q3, but the G2 ad campaign cut into profits
The last quarterly report from LG noted record sales of 12.1 million smartphones in Q2, today's number's show the company has maintained that pace with 12 million units moved in Q3. It sold $2.75 billon worth of phones -- 24 percent more than during the same time period last year -- actually lost money thanks to competition driving prices down and the costs of a big marketing push. That won't stop LG though, as it plans to keep promoting the G2 and its back-mounted buttons, plus mid-tier phones like the L II and F line (there's no word on how much it's hoping the curved G Flex will contribute after it's unveiled next month). If you're interested in how LG's TVs have managed, the answer is that they've continued a downward slide, with revenues in the home theater division dropping 7 percent from last year to a mere $4.5 billion. Lower demand and selling prices are cited as the culprits there, but LG's plan is to push OLED (at $10k a pop they should make up the shortfall easily, even after recent price cuts) and Ultra HDTVs. Overall, its net profit of $103 million in the July - September window dropped 34 percent from last year's results -- hit the PDF link below for the detailed results.
AT&T's U-Verse subscribers top ten million as it adds another million wireless users
We've been seeing AT&T paying a good deal of attention to its U-Verse service as of late, and it looks like those efforts are paying off for the company. In its third quarter earnings announced today, AT&T confirmed that the service has now topped ten million subscribers (up from 9.4 million in the previous quarter), and that it is the fastest-growing part of its business, now generating $1 billion in revenue per month. Finally, it announced today that it's added BBC America to the channel lineup. The company's wireless business is also continuing to grow, albeit at a more modest rate, with revenue up 5.1 percent year-over-year as it added 1 million net subscribers during the quarter. Not surprisingly, more of those customers are choosing smartphones than ever. According to the carrier, they represented a record 89 percent of its postpaid phone sales for the quarter, while its total number of new smartphone subscribers stood at of 1.2 million (including current customers who've upgraded). Tablets are also on the upswing, with postpaid sales standing at 388,000 -- AT&T says that represents the largest gain of any carrier, although it's not breaking any of those numbers down by specific devices. Those interested can find the full earnings report at the source link below.
Netflix tops 40 million customers total, more paid US subscribers than HBO
Netflix's results for the third quarter have arrived and one of its most important numbers, the total amount of US subscribers (not including trial accounts), has reached 29.93 million, more than HBO's last count of 28.7 million. Last year at this time it had notched 25.1 million US customers, and including trial subscribers it passed HBO's US customer base back in April. Internationally it's up to 9.19 million subscribers and is anticipating that it will add more than three million customers total in the next quarter. New original series Orange is the New Black has been a hit and while Netflix still isn't releasing viewing numbers, it says the show will end the year "as our most watched original series ever." Yes, bigger than House of Cards. Regarding its original content push, Netflix has already rolled out some of the stand-up comedy specials it promised (Aziz Ansari's is next up) and says it will expand soon into original documentaries, largely based on the popularity of that kind of content among its customers. The second season of Lilyhammer will arrive in Q4 along with a new original series for kids from Dreamworks Turbo F.A.S.T., while 2014 holds the return of HoC, OITNB, Hemlock Grove and Derek. Of course, while the original content grabs headlines, CEO Reed Hasting's letter to investors lays out the fact that a bigger percentage of its viewing hours are filled by its complete "season-after series" like The Walking Dead, Breaking Bad and Scandal. Interestingly, in a change from previous letters there's no mention of competition like Amazon Prime, Hulu and Redbox Instant, but it does reference the possibility of cable deals, saying "we think it will be many years before cable set-top boxes match Internet set-top boxes for Netflix streaming volume." Netflix has an investor call scheduled for 5PM ET like many other companies, but unlike others it distributes it on YouTube as a live video broadcast, check it out embedded after the break plus our notes from the call.
Yahoo's Q3 sees net revenue drop slightly, 'meaningful increases' in traffic
The Q3 earnings report for Yahoo is in, and even with earnings down 91 percent year over year (due to an infusion of cash last year when it sold part of its share in Alibaba Group) it held few surprises. Revenue dropped 1 percent to $1.08 billion, while ad sales also dropped slightly, down 7 percent for Q3 last year. Other than that new logo, the company also pointed out its run of acquisitions has continued, with Bignoggins, Qwiki, Xobni, Admovate, Ztelic, Lexity, Rockmelt and IQ Engines joining the fold. It's reporting 800 million monthly users, "up 20 percent over the last 15 months," aka since Marissa Mayer took the reins. We'll keep waiting to see if Yahoo's changes affect its bottom line significantly, but right now its remaining 24 percent stake in the Chinese search engine is the highlight -- Alibaba's section in the filing shows $707 million in profit for Q2 and an expected IPO could increase its value by billions.
Twitter's updated IPO plans reveal TWTR stock on NYSE, 232 million active users
Twitter isn't a public company just yet, but its updated S-1 filing hit today and showed how it's grown in the last three months. While it showed 218 million monthly active users by the end of June, its Q3 stats have grown to 232 million (53 million of them are in the US). While the number of users accessing the service from mobile devices grew slightly from 75 to 76 percent, ad revenue on mobile grew 37 percent since the last report, compared to other revenue which was up 9 percent. It's making more money too, with revenue for the quarter of $168.6 million, up from $139 million in Q2 and $82 million for the same period last year. If you want to invest in the right stock at its IPO, look for TWTR on the NYSE -- until then prospective investors can dig through the financial data here and follow the @TwitterIR account for updates.
Join us for a TUAW liveblog of the Apple Q3 2013 earnings call
Later today, Apple will hold its quarterly earnings conference call. The call will cover Apple's Q3, which ended on June 30, 2013. As always, TUAW is hosting a liveblog of the event, during which we'll provide commentary on the actual results, questions from the financial community and thoughts on how the results are likely to affect Apple's share price, if at all. To get an overview of what the Street is expecting, check out the numbers here. The call is scheduled at 5 PM ET today and our liveblog will begin at 4:50 PM ET. If you're an IRC user, we'll have a chat room set up on server irc.freenode.net, chat room #tuaw so you can converse with the TUAW team and others. You can also listen to a live audio stream of the event here.
Microsoft video game division turns a profit in Q3
Microsoft has announced earnings for its fiscal third quarter (ended March 31), drawing attention to the Entertainment & Devices Division (EDD), which handles products like the Xbox, Windows Phone and Surface.The EDD reported revenue of $2.53 billion, a 56 percent increase over the $1.61 billion reported during the same period last year. The company also cited a "video game deferral" of $380 million – an advance on the launch of Halo 4, according to Gamasutra – effectively lowering revenues to $2.15 billion. Even so, the EDD racked up an operating income of $342 million, up from a $242 million loss during the same period last year.Sales of Xbox 360 consoles declined, with Microsoft shipping 8.9 million units in the first nine months of fiscal 2013, down 3 million units from the same period last year. Xbox Live subscriptions rose, however, as did Xbox Live revenue. Specifically, Xbox Live membership grew 18 percent and now totals 46 million members. Microsoft did not specify how many pay for Gold memberships.
Konami revenues, income down year-over-year, still profitable
Konami has released its year-to-date financial information for the nine month period ending on December 31, 2012, and while the company has posted significant year-over-year losses, it is still reporting a profit in all areas.So far, Konami has accrued revenues of ¥160.1 billion ($1.71 billion), down nearly 18 percent from the ¥194.5 billion it had earned by the end of calendar 2011. Likewise, net income (read: post-tax profit) was down 48 percent; ¥8.82 billion ($94.6 million) as compared with the ¥17 billion reported this time last year. Konami's "Digital Entertainment" division, responsible for all video games and Yu-Gi-Oh cards, brought in roughly half of the company's overall revenues with ¥80.5 billion ($861.1 million) reported.Konami also produces a wide assortment of slot machines and pachinko games for western and Japanese markets: Its "Gaming & Systems" and "Pachinko & Pachinko Slot Machines" segments, respectively. While all of Konami's divisions suffered losses, its Pachinko division experienced the most severe year-over-year disparity, reporting a 77.8 percent decrease in revenue versus last year.
