Q2-2012
Latest
Samsung's Q2 2012 earnings show $5.86 billion operating profit, that's a lot of Galaxy S IIIs
The numbers for Samsung's Q2 2012 earnings period are in and it was another big one, with the electronics giant reporting an operating profit of $5.9 billion, driven largely by growth in its smartphone business -- just as it predicted. That's up 79 percent from the same period last year, with the Galaxy S III and Galaxy Note specifically mentioned as having contributed to both high sales and higher average selling prices. The company doesn't break out exact selling figures in its earnings reports, however that business unit contributed $3.65 billion in profit to the bottom line. Sales of memory chips and processors declined slightly from last year, TV sales were up slightly, thanks to demand for 3D and LED models. Samsung is claiming a mid-80 percent share of LED HDTV sales and plans to keep that going by pushing "entry level" models in emerging markets. Ready to dig through the numbers yourself? The press release follows after the break, if we find any more details or hear anything on the earnings call, we'll let you know.
Facebook posts first earnings as a public company: $1.18 billion in revenue, 955 million users
Facebook revealed its Q1 earnings in an SEC filing leading up to its big IPO earlier this year, but it's now officially out with its first earnings report as a public company. For Q2 of 2012, it brought in $1.18 billion in revenue, up 32 percent year-over-year and slightly better than what analysts were expecting, while GAAP net income sat at a loss of $157 million (down from a profit of $240 million a year ago). Looking at things on a non-GAAP basis, though, net income is actually up from $285 million to $295 million. What's more, the company also confirmed that it has 955 million monthly active users (or what it calls MAUs) as of the end of June, up 29 percent year-over-year. As you can see in the chart after the break, those users are distributed fairly evenly across the world, including 186 million in the US and Canada, 246 million in Europe, 255 million in Asia, and 268 million elsewhere. Daily active users totaled 552 million for the same time period, up 32 percent year-over-year, while mobile users now stand at 543 million, up 67 percent from last year. Not surprisingly, a huge chunk -- 84 percent -- of the company's revenue comes from advertising, which brought in $992 million for the quarter, an increase of 28 percent from last year. That apparently wasn't enough to please investors, though, who have sent the company's stock to a new low of less than $25 (down over ten percent) in after hours trading. Update: Expectedly, the ever-recurring topic of a Facebook phone came up during the Q&A portion of the company's earnings call, and CEO Mark Zuckerberg didn't avoid the issue entirely. While not completely dismissing recent rumors of an HTC-built, Facebook-branded phone, Zuckerberg did say that building a whole phone "really wouldn't make much sense for us to do," which should put at least a bit of a damper on some of the hype.
Amazon Q2 2012 earnings: net income down 96 percent to $7 million, net sales up 29 percent to $12.83 billion
When internet mega retailer Amazon kicked off its fiscal year this past spring with $13.8 billion in net sales, the prognosis for the quarter ahead was dour, to say the least. At the time, the company projected its Q2 2012 performance would see an operating loss of $40 million to $260 million versus Q2 2011, as well as a slight down tick in revenue at $11.9 billion to $13.3 billion quarter to quarter. Well, the numbers are in and it looks like the forecast was right on the money. The Seattle-based outfit posted $7 million in net income for the quarter, a year over year loss amounting to a whopping 96 percent decrease. As for net sales, that picture's a bit rosier given the 29 percent increase over Q2 2011 that saw the Bezos-backed co. pull in $12.83 billion -- a figure that would have risen to 32 percent were it not for a $272 million hit due to "changes in foreign exchange rates[.]" Operating cash flow for Q2 2012 was down by nearly half at $107MM compared to the same segment last year. Unsurprisingly, the company's budget Kindle Fire tab -- which has enjoyed relatively weak competition up to now -- is still the number one item across Amazon's site, with titles in its Lending Library growing to over 170,000. Bezos also made note of Prime's growth, pegging that subscription offering's catalog of items at 15 million and highlighting the addition of 18,000 movies and TV shows to its streaming service. As for the future, the company expects Q3 net sales to grow by at least 19 percent year-over-year, landing somewhere between $12.9 billion and $14.3 billion, with a projected operating loss of $50 million to $350 million. Hit up the PR after the break for the full load of financial highs and lows.
Sprint's iPhone gamble isn't paying off as 2012 Q2 figures reveal $629 million operating loss
Sprint's second quarter figures have arrived, showing that the company's billion-dollar gamble on the iPhone isn't working right now. While it sold 1.5 million Apple-branded handsets in the three month period (40 percent to new and postpaid customers), it recorded an operating loss of $629 million and a colossal net loss of $1.4 billion -- compared to an operating loss of $255 million and a net loss of $863 million in the first quarter. Operating revenues of $8.8 billion improved on those in the first quarter by a single percent -- mostly due to higher service fees from its wireless offerings. It's also grown its cash reserves, up from $128 million last quarter to $267 million today, and can point to 442,000 postpaid and 141,000 new prepaid subscribers pushing the company's customer base up to 56 million nationwide -- mentioning that 60 percent of former Nextel users chose to remain with Sprint during the enforced change. The figures reveal that Sprint's eating around $782 million due to the shutdown of the Nextel platform and a further $184 million to end leases on antenna sites for the moribund network. It's also having to take a hit of $204 million due to its investment into infrastructure partner Clearwire. It's affirmed its $1 billion lending facility, contingent upon purchasing gear from Ericsson to help build its LTE network, which it aims to have installed in 12,000 sites by the end of the year. Of course, that purchase was prompted by the collapse of Philip Falcone's doomed LightSquared project, which caused the Now Network to lose $66 million in cash and its childhood innocence when it comes to trusting other people. Update: Big Yellow also mentioned that it has no plans to adopt a shared data plan to follow AT&T and Verizon.
Zynga lowers 2012 outlook after reporting $22.8M loss for Q2
Despite experiencing stronger revenues in Q2 2012 than in Q2 2011, Zynga reported a $22.8 million net loss for the quarter and lowered its outlook for the rest of the year to adjust for "delays in launching new games, a faster decline in existing web games due in part to a more challenging environment on the Facebook web platform, and reduced expectations for Draw Something."The social megalith reported revenue income of $332.4 million for the period, up 16 percent over the same period last year, which sounds good until you get to the company's net loss of $22.8 million -- compare that with the $1.3 million in profit reported in Q2 2011.Addressing investors, Zynga CEO and founder Mark Pincus lauded his company's successful launch of Bubble Safari, as well as The Ville's increasing popularity. "We also faced new short-term challenges which led to a sequential decline in bookings," Pincus said. "Despite this, we're optimistic about the long-term growth prospects on mobile where we have a window of opportunity to drive the same kind of social gaming revolution that we enabled on the web."Zynga's stock fell during trading as a result of its lowered outlook for the rest of 2012, hitting a low of $4.88 per share before closing the day up at $5.08 a share.
Strategy Analytics: iPad keeps riding high in Q2 tablet market share, Android doesn't budge
The Apple iPad may as well be called the Teflon Tablet for now, since challengers can't quite stick. Thanks to those 17 million iPads shipped in the second quarter, Strategy Analytics estimates that Apple held on to the 68 percent of tablet market share that IDC credited to the company in the previous season. That may not sound like a change in the status quo, but it's a significant jump from the 62 percent Apple had a year ago -- and not very good news for anyone else. Android is still holding on at 29.3 percent, although that's slightly underwhelming given the surge of extra devices in that time frame. The real hurt was dished out to Windows 7 tablets and "others" like RIM's BlackBerry PlayBook, both of whom were cut down to just 1.2 points of share each in the spring. We'll see if the newer crowd moves the needle for Android in the summer, although the well-received Nexus 7's current scarcity won't help its chances -- and both Microsoft as well as RIM are in holding patterns for the next several months.
Nintendo Q1 results: Wii sales cut in half since 2011, but 3DS sales more than double
Nintendo's results for the latest quarter reveal growth in profit for the Japanese games maker. Gross profit totaled 24.9 billion yen -- more than double that made from last year's Q1. Operating income remains negative, but substantially reduced since last quarter's statement -- presumably due to strong 3DS sales. Today's results tie in with the launch of both the 3DS XL and Nintendo's first downloadable titles for the 3DS, with sales of the handheld reaching 1.86 million units during the last quarter. Conversely, sales of the Wii have tailed off, with only 710,000 units sold in Q1, down from 1.56 million sold in the same period last year. Fortunately, according to the press release, Nintendo still aims to launch its Wii successor by the end of this year.
Canon reports higher profits, lower net income in Q2, points finger at pricey yen
Canon's financial results for Q2 2012 reveal an operating profit 18 percent greater than the results from the same quarter last year. However, net income has dropped from 61.5 billion yen to 51.7 billion yen since last quarter. The company saw demand grow for its DSLRs, both professional and entry-level, while sales of point-and-shoots continued to contract. The ever-increasing value of the yen -- and weakened demand in Europe -- has put a dent in its important overseas sales -- and profits. Perhaps the promise of Canon's first mirrorless ILC later this year will be enough get wallets out in the euro zone.
ARM sees profit surge 23 percent, tests forecasters' patience
Just when financial boffins expected ARM's consistent double-digit growth to slow-down, the company has beaten their projections with a 23 percent rise in pre-tax profit compared to Q2 of last year. It made £66.5 million ($103 million) in profit from £135.5 million ($213 million) in revenue from its numerous mobile and low-power processor design licensees. Analysts expected lower performance for the simple reason that the world's biggest chip-makers have warned of tougher "macroeconomic" times ahead -- rival Intel has been careful to dampen people's hopes for its next quarter, for example, and Qualcomm (a major ARM customer) has also reduced its forecasts. Still, it's all just different shades of rolling in it.
LG Q2 2012 earnings show a loss on cellphones, but higher profits overall thanks to home theater
LG has released its earnings statement for the Q2 2012 period, the claim of "turning a corner" in Q1 has just managed to hold up as it registered net profits of $138 million, up 46 percent from the same period last year. Revenues, while higher than Q1, were actually down from last year and blamed on declines in featurephone sales and slow sales of IT products. The mobile division also struggled after a strong Q1 and took an operating loss, however the positive takeaways are a rising percentage of smartphone shipments and plans to launch new LTE-connected models in North America (we've spotted the likely Spectrum 2 for Verizon already), Europe and Asia later this year. The good news for the home theater segment continued however, with an operating profit of more than double last year at $187.5 million despite slightly lower sales due to an increase in sales of premium products like its Cinema 3D HDTVs, which it expects to become the "top global seller" in the 3D segment. There's more details in the press release after the break or PDF linked below if you need more numbers.
Huawei 1H 2012: profits dropped 22 percent, still made $1.37 billion
Huawei's financial figures for the first six months of 2012 reveal that the Chinese behemoth brought in turnover of 102.7 billion yuan ($16.08 billion), making a profit of 8.79 billion yuan ($1.37 billion). That's not exactly bad news, but the figure is 22 percent smaller than the same period last year -- leading the company to blame the drop on the global economy and saying that the telecoms business is a "significant challenge." It humbly bragged that it had deployed 38 of the 80 commercial LTE networks worldwide and that the upstart now held over 12 percent of the Chinese smartphone market. It also claimed that the Ascend P1 and Ascend D1 had become bestselling handsets in China, Western Europe, Japan, Australia and Canada -- which might have prompted CFO Ms. Meng Wanzhou to be "optimistic" about the company's performance in the second half of the year.
Netflix Q2 2012 earnings: 530,000 more US subscribers and a return to profitability
Netflix recently let it drop that its users clocked in more than one billion hours of content-viewing in the month of June alone, although the big question for CEO Reed Hastings is how that relates to the company's subscriber base. The results are in from its Q2 2012 earnings report, and it's claiming 27.56 million streaming subscribers worldwide, up from 26 million last quarter. In the US alone that includes 23.94 million customers, after it reported 23.4 million in Q1, while DVD customers dropped by 850k to 9.24 million. While the number of new subscribers wasn't as high as some had hoped, the good news is the company is finally back in the black, with $889 million in revenue providing $6 million in net income. On the flip side, a plan to launch service in an "additional attractive European market" in Q4 is expected to result in temporary losses, but we'll find out more about those plans later in Q3. One other issue that has been resolved is the search for a new Chief Marketing Officer resulting in the hiring of Kelly Bennett, formerly a marketing executive with Warner Bros. This morning Verizon and Redbox began to carefully pull back the cover on their competing offering, and Amazon has also been making significant waves in the space. However in response, Netflix says Amazon and Hulu Plus have yet to gain meaningful traction in relation to its viewing hours, and it expects Redbox Instant to face a "big challenge" to break into the existing top 3. Its current content deal with Epix will lose online exclusivity "shortly" although it will still offer those titles, we'll see if any of the competition joins in. Their biggest competition however, is expected to come from efforts like Comcast's new X1 and Sky's Now TV, while for HBO, the possibility of cooperation is actually raised (again). We'll see if that happens or if there are any more juicy details revealed on the investor call in a few minutes.
AT&T's Q2: 5.1 million smartphones sold helps make a $6.8 billion profit
AT&T has announced its second-quarter results, posting revenues of $31.6 billion and income of $6.8 billion for the three month period. The company sold 5.1 million smartphones, fewer than the 5.5 million sold in Q1 -- but offset the drop by squeezing a margin of 30.3 percent from its existing customers. It's also counted on less than 1 percent of wireless churn, due to the "premier experience" available on the network. Overall it's now got 105.2 million subscribers, with 43 million of these using smartphones -- an increase of 1.3 million in the three months. More than half of all smartphone activations (3.7 million) were iPhones, with 22 percent of those customers being new to the network. U-Verse now has nearly seven million subscribers and increased revenue by 38 percent to $2.3 billion, while Big Blue's enterprise arm also saw boosted growth. We've got the full breakdown for you after the jump, but in short: It's a very, very good time to be a cellphone network... unless you're Sprint, obviously.
AMD reports Q2 earnings: continues to see revenues drop, $37 million net income
Well, things are looking slightly better for AMD this quarter. While revenues continued to decline the company actually posted a profit of $37 million, a stark contrast to $590 million net loss from last quarter. Still, with revenues down 11 percent sequentially and 10 percent year-over-year to just $1.41 billion the company isn't meeting expectations. Earnings per share were aticipated to hit $0.07, but the Sunnyvale crew only managed an EPS of $0.05. The company blames the softening PC market for its continued struggles, especially in the desktop space where it has traditionally enjoyed more success. It continues to plug away with its A and E series APUs, but it's still struggling to make much of a dent in a world increasingly dominated by Intel. The Computing Solutions division saw its revenues decrease 13 percent both sequentially and year-over-year, while the GPU department was down five percent for the quarter, but steady compared to the same time last year. For more detail hit up the source link.
Yahoo reports Q2 2012 earnings, revenue remains unchanged
Not even 24 hours since announcing its new CEO, Yahoo's announced its financial results for the second quarter, with only a few financial figures of note. Revenue was reported at $1.2 billion, barely changing since the same period last year. Net income totaled $228.5 million, down from $238.5 million from Q2 2011. With its new leader in tow, the company still aims to sell half of its stake in Alibaba, which totals around 20 percent of its shares. Taking a closer look, most of its revenue came from Yahoo's own products; about $535 million came from display ads, while $461 million from search. It reiterated the deal it struck with Facebook when it came to patent issues between the pair and future advertising tie-ups that are still in the pipeline. Hit up the press release for all the details.
Intel reports Q2 earnings: rakes in $13.5 billion, pockets $2.8 billion
Intel is back to its old games in Q2 of 2012, raking in $13.5 billion during the second three month financial period of the year, up from $12.9 billion in the first quarter and a solid five percent year over year. Of that impressive pile of cash, Chipzilla was able to pocket $2.8 billion in net income, up $100,000 from Q1 and three percent from the same time period last year. That equates to a healthy $0.57 per share in earnings, which should make investors happy. PC Client Group enjoyed slow but steady growth, seeing its revenues grow by three percent, but the big story is the Data Center division which saw revenues climb 14 percent to $2.8 billion, sequentially. It's not all wine and roses however, the processor giant also lowered its expectations for Q3 after falling slightly short of its goal this quarter. Growth is expected to continue, but at a much slower rate thanks to the "challenging macroeconomic environment." Of course, an estimated $14.3 billion in Q3 would match its previous earnings record and is hardly anything to sniff at. During today's earnings call Paul Otellini took time to brag about how well the current generation of products was performing. Production had ramped up quicker than previous gen hardware, and was selling better than earlier lines of CPUs. And, though he gave no specifics, he said the company's tracking at least 20 Windows 8 tablets powered by Intel's hardware. The company also said that it credited most of its (admittedly limited) growth in the PC market to reclaiming a tiny sliver of the bottom end from AMD. Otellini also reaffirmed that Clovertrail devices will be on the market just in time to be shoehorned inside Windows 8 tablets at the launch of the new OS.
HTC reveals Q2 2012 financial results: 57.8 percent net profit drop blamed on customs issues and weak sales
HTC has reported a substantial drop in its quarterly profits, with unaudited results for Q2 2012 totaling T$7.4 billion ($250 million), down from T$17.52 billion this time last year. While it marks an improvement compared to the company's dire first quarter of this year, HTC's been troubled by weaker-than-expected European sales, while customs issues have hampered US sales for high-end devices like the One X. Despite the continued global roll-out of the One series, sales continue to stall, with consolidated sales for last month totaled T$30 billion, unchanged from May and 33.4 percent less than June 2011.
Samsung expects record earnings for Q2 thanks to all those Galaxy phone sales
Samsung's complete earnings results for the April - June 2012 period won't come out until July 27th, but Reuters reports its early guidance to investors estimates the company's profit at a record 6.7 trillion won ($5.9 billion). That's mostly due to strong sales of the ever-expanding (and increasingly targeted by lawsuits) line of Galaxy smartphones. Sales forecasts are slightly below earlier estimates, and while there's no specific numbers for each division, a Bloomberg breakdown of analyst predictions suggests there should be more good news to go around later this month.
Tomba arrives on PSN June 19 for $10
The response was enthusiastic to our announcement of Tomba!'s impending arrival – we're guessing people have been looking at the astronomical eBay prices. Those of you who were thrilled to hear about the pink-haired caveman's digital thaw will likely be equally thrilled to hear that it's happening very soon: June 19, in fact, at a $9.99 price point. That's on the higher end of PSOne Classics prices, but on the far low end of Tomba! prices.MonkeyPaw also shared the above trailer. End your work week on a 2.5D note and watch!
Mini Ninjas Adventures uses Kinect to turn you into a tiny assassin
For those of you who played 2009's Mini Ninjas and thought, "If only I were able to directly control lil' Hiro with my own lithe ninja body," Square Enix and Side-kick Ltd. have just the thing. Mini Ninjas Adventures, out June 29, is an XBLA Kinect game that lets you control Hiro as he fights to save his master.Using Kinect gestures and voice commands, you'll fight through 21 different levels, complete with bosses. However, mere fighting is not the truest test of your ninja training and abilities – that is what the minigames are there for.%Gallery-156645%
