q3
Latest
Spotify is adding users faster than it thought it would
After a short COVID-19 related slump in Q1 2020 and a rebound in Q2, Spotify saw big growth in subscriber numbers for its latest earnings period.
Huawei boosts smartphone sales in China by a whopping 66 percent
In spite of US sanctions, Huawei is doing just fine in China. The company's domestic smartphone shipments increased 66 percent year-over-year, according to a report by market research firm Canalys. In the last quarter, Huawei shipped 41.5 million devices in China, giving it a record-high market share of 42 percent. At least some of that success, might be attributed to customers purchasing Huawei devices as a rebellion against US sanctions and foreign pressure.
Spotify's podcast strategy is starting to pay off
Spotify's strategy of owning a chunk of the podcast game appears to be paying off, at least according to its latest financial report. In the third quarter of 2019, Spotify says it saw "exponential growth" in podcasts, with a 39 percent increase in listens in just three months. The US is the biggest consumer of the format, but Spotify is also seeing bumps in a number of European countries. And those people who come to Spotify for podcasts are, according to the company, more likely to sign up for premium than others.
Twitter says it's better at spotting abusive tweets than users
Twitter says it has achieved a major milestone in its attempts to improve the "health" of its platform. According to the company's most recent earnings report, 50 percent of abusive tweets removed this past quarter were pulled before a user even flagged the content. That's up from 38 percent in Q1. Twitter adds that it achieved the milestone on the back of improvements it made to its machine learning-based moderation algorithms, which in turn forward more tweets to the company's employees to scrutinize.
Twitter adds more users, but finds it hard to make money from them
In the last three months, Twitter added six million more users, but couldn't manage to sell any more ads to those eyeballs. At least, not in quantities enough to boost its bottom line, with net profit remaining the same as it was in the previous quarter. Then, as now, Twitter made $37 million in profit which, while nothing to sniff at, hints that the company may have a stasis problem.
Netflix grows to 158 million subscribers as Disney+ looms
Netflix just released its results for Q3 in 2019 (PDF), showing that it added slightly fewer subscribers (6.77 million) than the 7 million it anticipated, while still notching an all-time record for the quarter. The company cited lower retention rates in the US since its most recent price hike, and justifies with a statement that "With more revenue, we'll continue to invest to improve our service to further strengthen our value proposition." The one thing the company's investor letter seeks to convince people is that the problem isn't competition, with the likes of Amazon Prime and Hulu already here ahead of Disney+ and Apple TV+ launching later this year with HBO Max and Peacock waiting in the wings. Specifically it pulled up a growth chart for Netflix in Canada (as measured by penetration in broadband connected homes) to compare with the US to claim that Hulu's impact on it doesn't really exist. With more competition incoming, soothing investor's nerves will be key. When Disney is dropping three hour trailers for the video it has, the Netflix library will be compared, top to bottom, with these new entrants.
Tesla's Q3 electric car deliveries set another record
Tesla's record-setting second quarter deliveries weren't a fluke, it seems. The EV builder has broken the record again with its initial delivery estimates for the third quarter, with about 97,000 cars reaching customers over the summer. That's not a huge leap over the 95,356 EVs delivered in Q2, but it's a stark contrast to the sharp drop-off at the start of 2019. There's at least some sustained interest, then.
Apple's wearables and services made up for weak iPhone sales
Apple's latest earnings report is out, and as many had expected, it's very much on-trend with the numbers we've seen coming out of Cupertino this year. The company managed to grow its overall revenue a little, raking in a total of $53.8 billion compared to $53.3 billion this time last year. That's... not a huge amount of growth, but it was enough to claim an all-time Q3 revenue record, according to CEO Tim Cook. Unfortunately, Apple's iPhone sales showed little sign of recovering — the company saw just under $26 billion in iPhone sales this quarter, continuing a streak of year-over-year declines.
Spotify is just $6.8 million away from profitability
If anyone was expecting to see Spotify's growth tail off, then the company's latest earnings report is chock full of disappointment. The streaming service has managed to increase the number of paying subscribers to 87 million, up from 83 million three months ago. More broadly, the platform has seen its total user numbers rise to 191 million, up from 101 million in the summer. The increased numbers haven't led to an actual profit, but losses are way, way down, from €90 million ($102 million) in Q2, to just €6 million ($6.8 million) now.
Alexa helps propel Amazon to another massive quarter
Amazon has been pretty busy the past few months, unleashing a slew of new hardware just in time for the holiday season. Several of those products haven't made it to market quite just yet, but that hasn't stopped the company from raking in money as per usual.
Twitter is more profitable despite losing 9 million 'users'
Twitter has announced that it made a profit for the fourth successive quarter, capping a year of profitability. In its most recent release, the company said that it pulled in $758 million in revenue and turned a net profit of $106 million. Since the start of 2018, Twitter has seen profit figures grow from $61 million in Q1, through $100 million in Q2.
Musk: Model Y prototype approved to go into production
On Tesla's earnings call after announcing its first quarterly profit, CEO Elon Musk chatted about the company's upcoming products. While claiming it has "the most exciting product roadmap of any company on Earth," Musk mentioned the Model Y crossover EV we've only seen hints of so far, and said "I recently approved the prototype to go into production."
Netflix expects to hit 146 million subscribers in Q4
Three months ago, Netflix failed to meet its own prediction for worldwide subscriber growth, so there are a lot of eyes on today's results. Since then it's announced that CFO David Wells is leaving, snapped up property in LA, announced a new production studio in Albuquerque and continued a torrid pace of releasing original content. For the third quarter its subscriber additions were well above its internal prediction, with worldwide growth of 6.96 million compared to the projected 5 million. Now it predicts it will grow by another 9.4 million customers in Q4, with most of the new subscribers coming from outside the US. In its earnings letter (PDF), executives referenced the projections by saying that starting next year, they will only provide guidance on the number of paid memberships without including free trials, which are harder to predict. Then in 2020 it will stop reporting the numbers on free trials altogether.
Samsung projects record high profit for Q3 2018
Samsung had a less-than-stellar second quarter after the Galaxy S9 failed to keep its profit growth on pace, but the third quarter marks a return to form for the Korean tech giant. In fact, it expects to post record profits for Q3 2018. In its guidance report, the company said it estimates its consolidated operating profit to reach 17.5 trillion Korean won (US$15.5 billion) and its consolidated sales to reach 65 trillion won (US$57.5 billion). That's around 20 percent more than the 14.53 trillion Korean won profit it posted for the second quarter and could be a record high for the corporation.
LG's phone arm continues to eat away at its profits
One of the great problems with being a popular musician or comedian is that your audience is always aching for you to play the greatest hits. That can get pretty boring, especially if you want to be known as an artists with a broader, or deeper, body of work than just Achy Breaky Heart. Bear that in mind for poor LG which, yet again, has to announce that its mobile division is a furnace that turns money into ashes and dust.
Twitter closes in on its first-ever profitable quarter
Twitter has updated the world on its financial position for the third quarter of this year, and the outlook is better than it has been for a while. The company has seen monthly active user figures increase, arresting the slide that it had to report across the summer. In addition, net losses have been trimmed down to just $21 million, and if Twitter can improve on its targets in the next three months, it may even turn a profit.
Netflix could spend $8 billion on content next year
Once again, Netflix's quarterly earnings report (PDF) shows it's added even more customers (5 million in the US alone), and now boasts more than 115 million subscribers worldwide. The company is now five years into its "original content strategy" that first drew attention with House of Cards, which turned into a string of series including hits like Stranger Things and Orange is the New Black. Of course, with more competition turning up (Amazon, Hulu, CBS All Access and, eventually, Disney), things are getting more expensive, as the company says it will spend "$7-8 billion on content" next year -- even if it's off the hook for 30 Rock. That's potentially a billion dollars more than what Ted Sarandos predicted in August, and up to two billion more than it spent this year. Those differences also explain why prices are going up on some of its plans, as it continues a push to become more profitable. The company is predicting it will add slightly fewer new customers next quarter than it did last year, although it's unclear if that's due to the price changes or simply running out of people who want Netflix but don't have it yet. The company will broadcast the video from its quarterly earnings call on YouTube at 6 PM ET, if there are any interesting anecdotes, we'll update this post. Update: Execs did mention, among other things, that they intend to work with airlines to make streaming on a plane easier -- helpful if you didn't download the latest season of something before taking off on a long trip.
LG would make more money if it wasn't for smartphones
You know it's bad when your mobile business gets trounced by the rival that sold a smartphone that actually blew up in its customers pockets. That's the situation over at LG, whose mobile communications division contrived to lose $389.4 million across the last three months. In the company's latest financials, it's revealed that LG shipped 13.5 million devices and saw US sales increase by 14 percent quarter-on-quarter. But that's pretty much the same thing the company achieved in every quarter since the start of 2014, and that plan stopped making a profit partway through 2015.
Apple's iPhone sales are still down, but Wall Street is happy anyway
After seeing Apple struggle through 2016, Wall Street set its sights pretty low for the company's Q3 earnings report. Those financial results just dropped, and while they're still not amazing for the folks in Cupertino, Apple did well enough to allay some nagging fears and get its flagging stock price up a bit in after-hours trading.
Microsoft's Surface sales are on the upswing once again
After a very slow start, Microsoft's Surface finally seems to be hitting its stride. The company made $713 million from Surface sales last quarter, a 44 percent jump over last year, according to its latest earnings report. And yes, it's attributing much of that to the Surface Pro 3, which also saw strong sales during the previous quarter. While any bump is good, it's easy for Microsoft to report revenue growth when it's starting from a low point. Apple sold around $9 billion worth of iPads during the last quarter, for comparison. It's also worth noting that the company's third quarter doesn't include sales of the new Surface 3, which doesn't ship until next month. It'll be interesting to see if that model ends up helping its Pro sibling come next quarter. Before the Surface Pro 3, Microsoft's Surface sales weren't exactly pretty -- at one point it had to write off nearly $900 million in unsold units.
