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Sprint fails to impress Wall Street with Q3 2010 earnings, still notches 644k net adds
Sprint certainly isn't out of the woods yet, but at least it's picking up customers from somewhere. The company's Q3 2010 earnings were ushered out today, and while its stock fell around ten percent on the news, a few silver linings were present. The carrier saw postpaid subscriber losses of 107,000, but that's an 87 percent improvement compared to Q3 2009. The CDMA network added approximately 276,000 postpaid customers during the quarter, 471,000 (net) prepaid subscribers and 644,000 total wireless subscribers from a net perspective. It also landed its second best postpaid churn result ever, but the bottom line still looks battered -- the operator announced a net loss of nearly a billion dollars ($911 million, if you're scouting specifics). Of course, phasing out iDEN should probably help things in the long run, but even its 4G advantage could quickly fade if (or more likely, when) Verizon gets its LTE act together next year.
AT&T clocks up 2.6 million net new wireless subscribers, bigger profits in Q3
AT&T's balance sheet just keeps looking happier and happier every quarter. In spite of the company's somewhat questionable hardware choices -- such as picking the ugly option from both Samsung's and LG's Windows Phone 7 platters -- it now proudly boasts a total of 92.8 million active wireless service lines. This comes off the back of a 2.6 million net subscriber gain over the third quarter of 2010, a record for this period of the year. Churn, or the rate at which people left AT&T, was also at its best ever for the quarter, coming in at a lowly 1.32 percent, while postpaid integrated device (read: smartphone on a contract) activations reached above the eight million mark. Total net profit was $12.3 billion, thanks to the sale of Sterling Commerce and a one-off tax adjustment, but in cashflow terms the company made $4.0b in the quarter. That's a lot of dinero, no doubt aided by Q3 being the first full reporting period after the iPhone 4's launch, we just wish some of AT&T's other phones weren't quite so unappealing.
Nokia reports improved earnings for Q3 2010, will still 'streamline' up to 1,800 employees out of a job
Nokia's quarterly results have just been made public and the company's devices plus services sector has actually improved its income relative to last year: €7.2b of revenue was collected over the past three months versus €6.9b in the same period a year ago. Operating profit has also pepped up, going from the previous €785m to €807m. You'd think this would augur well for Stephen Elop's beginning at the helm, but the new man in charge is also presiding over a fundamental restructuring of operations at Nokia, which is expected to result in the redundancy of up to 1,800 employees globally. There are no specifics to tell us who'll be losing out, but the aims are the boilerplate tasks of increasing efficiency, simplifying operations, and reducing time to market. Anyway, we doubt the great people of Finland will be pleased.
HTC grows profits in Q3 to $360 million, revenues rise to $2.45b
It's good to see that HTC's omnipresence in the smartphone market is paying off in nicely growing financial figures as well. Having reported $268 million in profit for Q2, the Taiwanese company is today touting a $360 million tally for the period between July and September 2010. Android is again fingered as the chief catalyst for this growth, which is best illustrated by comparing numbers to last year, when HTC managed to pull in $184 million during Q3, or almost exactly half of this year's haul. Total revenues were also appropriately inflated, up to $2.45 billion, and analysts seem in agreement that HTC's future is looking rosy. So long as the G2 hiccups remain an isolated incident, that should indeed be the case.
Motorola manages $162 million Q2 profit, turns that frown upside down
It's a good day here, because rather than poor 'ol Sad Moto we get to bust out Happy Moto, as Motorola has released some good news in its Q2 financial report. Earnings were $162 million, up from $26 million this time last year. That sounds like a big jump, but compared to overall sales of $5.4 billion you can see things are still rather tight -- especially since those sales were down from $5.5 billion the year before and all-important mobile device sales figures dropped six percent to $1.7 billion. Also, these numbers were boosted by a "significant legal settlement" valued at $228 million. Maybe intellectual property wasn't the only thing Moto got from RIM?
Panasonic to spend $9.4b on buying out Sanyo and PEW shares, posts robust quarterly profits
Clearly dissatisfied with what it sees in the mirror, Panasonic has today announced its decision to bulk up. A new share issue expected to raise ¥500 billion ($5.7 billion) will be enacted soon as part of raising the cash to complete the buyout of Sanyo Electric and Panasonic Electric Works. Don't ask us why a company named Panasonic has to buy another company with Panasonic in its name, but them's the facts. The total outlay is expected to come in at around $9.4 billion and is justified by Panasonic as fundamental to its future strategy of expanding into environmentally friendly tech and developing a three-pronged operating paradigm by 2012. The Osaka-based company is also reporting a ¥43.7b ($498 million) profit for the last quarter -- a major upswing from a ¥53b loss in the same period last year -- though that's information the market seems to have ignored. Panasonic shares have plunged down 7.7% in the immediate aftermath of the acquisitions being announced, while Sanyo's have shot up. Click past the break for the novella-sized press release explaining the details of the deal.
PS3 and Bravia sales boost quarterly Sony profits above expectations
Earlier this summer, Sony closed another fiscal year of being in the red, but it's starting the 2010/11 ledger with its quill dipped firmly in the black inkwell. For the quarter ending June 30, the Japanese megacorp clocked up ¥25.7 billion ($293 million) in pure, unadulterated profit off the back of a ¥67 billion operating income. When you compare that to the performance this time last year, a ¥37 billion loss, you have to agree that the Stringer purse-tightening program seems to have delivered the desired effect. The primary drivers for the current resurgence are pinpointed as the PlayStation 3 and Bravia lines (frankly, we consider the two utterly inseparable), and Sony's feeling so buoyant about it all that it's revising its projection for the coming year's revenues upwards today. The good news is tempered, however, by the threat of a rising Yen, which has already claimed Nintendo's profits as its first victim.
Nintendo posts Q1 loss on strong Yen and lower DS prices
Although foreshadowed, it's hard to believe that the once mighty Ninty, a company with unshakable profits even during last year's global economic downturn, just recorded a Q1 net loss of ¥25.22 billion ($288 million) compared to a net profit of ¥42.32 billion during the same 3-month period a year earlier. Revenues dropped from ¥253.50 billion to ¥188.65 billion. Lower DS portable gaming machine prices coupled with a strong Yen (86.5 percent of its sales were outside of Japan) helped pull Nintendo into the red. Regardless, Nintendo continues to forecast a full year net profit of ¥200 billion on revenue of ¥1.4 trillion. We'll see.
Verizon posts $198m net loss, picks up healthy amount of new wireless subs
Verizon Communications, the majority shareholder of Verizon Wireless, just tossed out its Q2 2010 earnings, and unlike the majority of the other big boys we've seen, this company actually lost money over the past few months. All told, the mega-corp posted a $198m net loss compared to a $1.48b net profit this time last year, but if you were to exclude "special charges" for a workforce reduction, Verizon as a whole would've seen net profits of $0.58 per share. When focusing strictly on mobile, Verizon Wireless managed to pick up 1.4 million net customer additions, which is 200,000 shy of the 1.6 million that AT&T recently picked up. What's crazy is that one carrier has the iPhone while the other doesn't, and it doesn't take the imagination of Peter Pan to figure out how those numbers would shift if Apple's smartphone somehow picked up a CDMA radio and headed over to Big Red. Other fun facts about VZW's second quarter include a 3.4 percent uptick in total revenues year-over-year, a 5.2 percent increase in service revenues and a staggering 28.3 percent boost in data revenues. With all that cash flowing in, is there really a need for these newfangled caps? Consumers say "no," but Sir Capitalism says "yes." Update: We've been pinged by Verizon and given some clarification to the awful mess known as filing quarterly reports in accordance with GAAP with varying shares of ownership. We also learned that Verizon Wireless added 665,000 new net wireless customers under contract in the prior quarter, whereas AT&T added 496,000 contract customers. It's pretty easy to make these numbers say whatever you want them to, apparently.
Verizon lost $653 million last quarter in spite of increasing revenues
91.2 million total customers, 2.2 million of whom joined in Q4, $27.1 billion operating revenue in the quarter, and you still make a loss? Well, in fact Verizon made a tidy profit, which may be considered comparable to Google and Intel's latest results, but its culling of jobs at the end of last year cost it a whopping $3 billion (presumably in redundancy settlements). Still, the company looks buoyant with that quarterly revenue number growing by 9.9 percent year-on-year, and CEO Ivan Seidenberg noting that significant costs were incurred in setting up for a 4G network deployment in 2010. Our favorite nugget of info? The "cash expense per customer" per month number: $27.62, which presumably includes Droid subsidies and the like. How does that compare to what you're giving VZW each month? [Thanks, Josta]
Apple reports fiscal Q4 earnings: $1.67b profit, Mac sales way up, iPod sales down, 'great new products' for 2010
Apple's fiscal Q4 2009 conference call is just about to begin, but the press release is already out and about. Wondering how Jobs and Company did? Precisely like you thought they would: they're making out like gangbusters over there. While the rest of the world slowly sees profits inching back up, Apple's relishing in $1.67 billion worth of net profit it pulled in from $9.87 billion in revenue. A year ago, the outfit managed to post a quarterly profit of "just" $1.14 billion, and we're also told that gross margin was up 36.6 percent. It should be noted that international sales accounted for a whopping 46 percent of this quarter's revenue, and Mac computer sales managed to shoot up some 17 percent compared to the year-ago quarter. In keeping with Apple's own acknowledgment that the standalone iPod is dying, sales of the iconic media player dipped 8 percent year-over-year (10.2 million units were sold), while 7.4 million iPhones were moved representing a 7 percent uptick from this period a year ago. Stevie J himself is quoted as saying that Apple is "thrilled to have sold more Macs and iPhones than in any previous quarter," and in case you haven't noticed, the holiday quarter hasn't even been completed yet. Oh, and if you were looking for bread crumbs as for what's on deck, chew on this: "We've got a very strong lineup for the holiday season and some really great new products in the pipeline for 2010." Great new products, you say? Would one of them happen to include some sort of, say, tablet PC? Catch our updates after the break...
Struggling Toshiba looks for help from LCDs, not Blu-ray
As with scads of other mega-corps attempting to keep their chins up while the global economy decides what it wants to do, Toshiba has announced that it is now forecasting a $468 million net loss in the first half of 2008. Interestingly, it's being reported that the firm is looking to its LCD HDTVs for growth as its chip business struggles, with plans to grab over 10% of the worldwide LCD TV market by 2011. For whatever reason, the outfit is still refusing to play ball with the lone remaining high-definition movie format, with Corporate Senior Vice President Yoshihide Fujii proclaiming that it has "no intention of adopting Blu-ray for [its] DVD players and recorders." Quite honestly, Tosh's refusal to go Blu is beyond the point of comic relief -- now, it's just downright perplexing.Read - Toshiba dips into the redRead - Toshiba counts on LCD TV growthRead - Toshiba again refuses to go Blu
North American TV shipments up 28% year-over-year, Samsung gets bragging rights
Despite the weakening economy here in the US and elsewhere, people are -- as predicted -- still showing interest in HDTV. Shortly after seeing what a nice Q2 the plasma sector had, DisplaySearch has revealed that TV shipments in general were way, way up in said quarter. In fact, North America saw the biggest year-over-year increase (28%) since the outfit started tracking TV shipments in 2004; then there's the 26% quarter-over-quarter growth, which is equally impressive. LCD TV shipments rose 52% compared to last year while PDP shipments shot up 34% in the same period, and it's safe to say that Samsung has the most to gloat about. It was the leading overall brand with shipments of its sets surging to a record 19.1% of all shipments in North America during Q2. Anxious to see who took the proverbial silver / bronze? Check out all of the stats in the read link below.
Funcom quarterly report reveals Age of Conan performance
We covered the NCsoft quarterly report two days ago; now it's Funcom's turn. Many gamers will be keenly interested to know what the truth of Age of Conan's performance really is, what with nay-sayers taking delight in talking it down and representatives and supporters talking it up. The game is either thriving, or dying on its backside. People are leaving in droves; whole guilds are untouched and continue to play on busy servers. AoC sucks; AoC rules. What do the figures say?As it turns out, we have to distinguish between the report presentation - a colorful package that includes lots of celebratory marketing woo-woo material - and the financial report itself. If one looks at the report presentation as opposed to the financial report, it appears the game sold over 800,000 copies to date and currently (that is, 'per August 14') has 415,000 customers. That many subscribers would certainly be enough to keep the game alive and healthy. But there's a big twist around the corner.
Australia's Foxtel nets 40,000 new subscribers since HD+ launch
Only a few months have passed since Australia's Foxtel launched its HD+ service, and judging by the numbers, Aussies are warming to high-def. The carrier just posted a 17% rise in revenue (up to $1.7 billion), and it's expecting the numbers to remain high as more consumers cave to the temptation of high-definition programming. Furthermore, 40,000 new users have signed on since the HD+ launch, and the average revenue per user has skyrocketed to nearly $85 per month "as a result of a higher take-up of additional services such as Foxtel iQ." There's no specific mention of additional HD channels, but given that bigwigs surely realize how critical they are to revenue growth, we can't imagine them not giving you folks a few more here shortly.
NCsoft quarterly report shows overall drop in profits, but some good news
The NCsoft quarterly report is now available, and as usual it makes for compelling reading. Net sales are down, expenses up: overall, it's not been a good quarter for the company, but there are positive elements.A look at the specific games tells an interesting story. Guild Wars shows a sharp drop in online sales, plunging by 46%, which may simply be due to anticipation of Guild Wars II. Online sales of Lineage and Lineage II, the major earners outside Europe and the US, are slightly down, presumably due to age-related falloff, while online sales of Tabula Rasa and CoX are up, the former jumping by 7%. Though online sales earnings from Tabula Rasa are still the lowest of the named games, bringing in only 2,007 million Won as compared to the 5,743 and 5,096 of CoX and Guild Wars respectively, players will be glad to know they have shown an increase.
Softbank's operating profit climbs 8.1%, isn't good enough
Seen exclusively, an 8.1% rise in operating profit is pretty remarkable. But when you consider that rival NTT DoCoMo just posted a 41% boost in profits... well, you get the point. Unsurprisingly, Softbank was able to increase its profits by reducing the amount of subsidies it applied to phones -- which obviously led to fewer new handset sales overall -- but analysts were still perturbed by the amount of discounts it did hand over. Reportedly, the street was expecting operating profits to top ¥86.1 billion ($805.7 million), but the outfit wound up missing the mark by a cool billion yen ($9.36 million). As for the iPhone 3G influence? Gotta wait 'til next quarter, bub.[Via mocoNews]
Motorola manages minuscule profit, clings to bronze medal
It has been a solid tick since Motorola had a quarterly earnings report that it didn't just send over via the paper airplane method and run for the hills, but the most recent one was actually worth cracking a smile over. After moving more mobiles in North America than it expected too, shares shot up 13% and bullish analysts began to think that the worst was over. Chief Executive Greg Brown noted that Moto will be "adding substantially to its product portfolio" here in the near future, which will hopefully enable it to get a stronger grasp on the number 3 handset maker ranking. During the most recent quarter, the outfit shipped 28.1 million phones to just barely maintain its market share lead over LG, though it remains to be seen if it can keep this up. No pressure Moto, no pressure at all.[Via RCRWireless]
China Mobile soars past the 600 million subscriber mark, refuses to slow down
Just last April, we heard that China Mobile had acquired more subscribers than the entire population of the United States of America. 15 months later, it has doubled up on that figure. Yep, China Mobile has just broken the 600 million subscriber mark as the country as a whole added 53.5 million new wireless users from January to June. Consequently, fixed-line customers fell by 9.3 million to 356 million during the same window of time. So, what's the over / under on months before the carrier breaks the big 1 billion?[Via IntoMobile]
Matsushita profit soars 86% on the wings of high flat-panel sales
So Sony didn't do so hot this quarter, but that's not to say someone else can't have fun at its expense. Matsushita Electric just posted its most recent quarterly earnings, and needless to say, it's probably pretty stoked about the 86% rise in profit. According to reports, the majority of the credit goes to digital camera and flat-panel television sales, and even though sales actually decreased 4%, operating profit still rose 48% from a year prior. Good to see someone's making sure that flat-panels rule the consumer electronics roost in 2008.
