WebProNews

Tag: Financials

  • Meg Whitman Confident Despite HP Stagnation

    HP this week released its fourth quarter 2014 and fiscal 2014 full-year financial results. The company reported quarterly revenue of $28.4 billion, down 2% from fourth quarter 2013. Full-year revenue was reported to be $111.5 billion, down 1% year-over-year.

    HP’s lackluster 2014 financial results were not unexpected, and the company hit both its GAAP and non-GAAP diluted net share earnings targets ($2.62 and $3.74, respectively). Even so, investors will be wondering just what HP can do to grow revenue and compete in a tech market increasingly dominated by the likes of Google, Apple, Microsoft, and Amazon.

    HP CEO Meg Whitman exuded confidence in a statement accompanying the financials. She commented that the company’s revenue is now “stabilized” and reassured investors that “accelerated progress” will be seen next year.

    “I’m excited to say that HP’s turnaround continues on track,” said Whitman. “In FY14, we stabilized our revenue trajectory, strengthened our operations, showed strong financial discipline, and once again made innovation the cornerstone of our company. Our product roadmaps are the best they’ve been in years and our partners and customers believe in us. There’s still a lot left to do, but our efforts to date, combined with the separation we announced in October, sets the stage for accelerated progress in FY15 and beyond.”

    The separation Whitman is referring to is HP’s recently announced plan to split into two companies. The newly created Hewlett-Packard Enterprise will focus on enterprise software and infrastructure sales, leaving HP’s older printing and computing operations to a company named HP Inc.

    HP’s Enterprise Services was one of its worst-performing divisions during fiscal 2014. HP Enterprise Services revenue was down 7% year-over-year and the company’s Enterprise Group sales were also down for the year, falling 4% compared to the division’s sales in fiscal 2013.

    Based on these results, it appears that Hewlett-Packard Enterprise will have significant challenges in the future. HP’s biggest recent leaps into the enterprise sector have turned out to be disasters. In the third quarter 2012, HP logged an $8 billion impairment charge related to its acquisition of IT services company Electronic Data Systems (EDS). The following quarter HP logged another huge $8.8 billion impairment charge related to what HP claimed was fraudulent accounting on the part of recently-acquired enterprise search and knowledge management services company Autonomy.

  • Rite Aid Stock Down on Poor Earnings Update

    Stock in Rite Aid Corporation is tumbling today following a dismal earnings update by the company. On Thursday Rite Aid released sales results for May and updated its quarterly and yearly earnings estimates, previewing a year of worse-than-expected earnings.

    Rite Aid reported that its front-end same store sales for the five weeks ending on May 31 increased just 0.5% over the same month one year ago. Pharmacy same store sales were up 5% and overall same store sales were up 3.5%. Rite Aid drugstore sales were up 2.5% for the month, hitting $2.484 billion.

    For the quarter so far, overall same-store sales increased 3.1% and pharmacy same store sales increased 4.6% over the same 13-week period last year. However, front-end same store sales have not increased, remaining flat for the quarter. Drugstore sales for the quarter so far are up 2.6% to $6.425 billion.

    Despite the rise in sales, Rite Aid’s preliminary quarterly results show that the company expects to report between $35 million and $45 million in net income, earning $0.04 per share. The company also expects its quarterly adjusted EBITDA to fall behind that of the same quarter last year. Rite Aid is blaming this decline on “higher-than-expected drug costs” due to delayed price reductions among generic pharmaceuticals and a “greater-than-expected reduction in reimbursement rates.” The company is scheduled to release its final quarterly results on June 19.

    Based on these quarterly earnings estimates, Rite Aid revised down its total-year financial guidance. The company now estimates yearly adjusted EBITDA to come in between $1.275 billion and $1.35 billion. Rite Aid now expects to take in between $298 million and $408 million in net income for the year with a corresponding income per share of between $0.30 and $0.40.

    The earnings update came as a disappointment to investors who had been expecting Rite Aid to bring in closer to $0.40 per share in income for the year. With $0.40 now closer to the high end of the company’s estimates, Rite Aid could have a hard time satisfying investor expectations in the coming quarters.

  • BlackBerry Announces $4.4 Billion Third-Quarter Loss

    BlackBerry today released its third quarter financial report and the results are about as dire as everyone expected.

    BlackBerry is reporting a $4.4 billion loss today, illustrating just how dire the situation is for the Canadian tech company. Over half of that loss ($2.4 billion) comes as part of a long-lived asset adjustment charge and over $1.3 billion related to an inventory charge. This translated over the quarter into an $8.37 loss per share.

    As the inventory charge suggests, BlackBerry posted dismal revenue numbers for the third quarter. The company’s revenue for the past quarter was just shy of $1.2 billion – a 56% drop in revenue from the third quarter of 2012.

    That BlackBerry’s higher third quarter 2012 revenue was posted before the company ever released its BlackBerry 10 smartphones demonstrates how large a failure BlackBerry 10 truly is. The company estimates that it sold 1.9 million BlackBerry devices during the previous quarter – with “most” of them being older BlackBerry 7 devices. That’s nearly half the 3.7 million devices the company sold during this year’s second quarter.

    The BlackBerry 10 failure became apparent to investors after its $965 million second-quarter loss, and BlackBerry soon after announced its intention to be acquired for $4.7 billion by an investment consortium led by FaiFax Financial Holdings. That buyout fell through and the BlackBerry board quickly booted CEO Thorsten Heins, announcing plans for a reorganization. Throughout all of this BlackBerry has continued to downsize its workforce with layoffs that have been taking place for over one year now.

    BlackBerry’s interim CEO John Chen has made it clear that he will be making sweeping changes to the way BlackBerry does business. Instead of the high-end smartphone market, the company will focus on its core business of mobile enterprise services.

    “With the operational and organizational changes we have announced, BlackBerry has established a clear roadmap that will allow it to target a return to improved financial performance in the coming year,” said Chen. “While our Enterprise Services, Messaging, and QNX Embedded businesses are already well-positioned to compete in their markets, the most immediate challenge for the company is how to transition the devices operations to a more profitable business model.

    “We have accomplished a lot in the past 45 days, but still have significant work ahead of us as we target improved financial performance next year. However, the company is financially strong, has a broad and trusted product portfolio to work with, a talented employee base and a new leadership team dedicated to implementing our new roadmap.”

  • Sprint Losses Drop, But So Do Subscribers

    Sprint, the third largest wireless carrier in the U.S., today released its first quarter 2013 financial results. The report shows that the company’s net losses have decreased from the fourth quarter of 2012, though it also shows worrying trends, such as falling subscriber numbers.

    Sprint reported a net loss of $643 million, compared to the $863 million net loss it posted for the fourth quarter of 2012. However, this small victory was tempered by the news that the carrier lost 560,000 postpaid subscribers during the quarter.

    Many of Sprint’s revenue and subscriber losses come from its Nextel platform, which the company is currently in the process of shutting down. Sprint stated that it is on-track to shut down Nextel at the end of the second quarter 2013.

    In the meantime, Sprint announced it has formed a committee of independent directors to review a proposed $25.5 billion merger with Dish. The merger would provide Sprint shareholders with a greater payout than an alternate $20.1 billion proposal from Softbank.

    Back in December, Sprint fully acquired Clearwire for $2.2 billion.

    “This is a transformative year for Sprint and we’ve gotten off to a good start,” said Dan Hesse, CEO of Sprint.

  • LinkedIn Nails its Fourth Quarter, Yearly Earnings

    LinkedIn Nails its Fourth Quarter, Yearly Earnings

    If there’s one thing LinkedIn is, it’s consistent. The company has slowly built its brand and membership numbers in the crowded social media space where other companies are getting bloodied.

    LinkedIn today announced its fourth quarter 2012 and year-end 2012 financial results, and, once again, the social network for professional networking hit its marks.

    The company pulled in revenue of $303.6 million in the fourth quarter of 2012, an 81% increase over the fourth quarter of 2011. Non-GAAP net income was also up at $40.2 million and its non-GAAP diluted earnings per share rose to $0.35.

    For the whole of 2012, LinkedIn took in $972.3 million, an increase of 86% year-over-year.

    “2012 was a transformative year for LinkedIn,” said Jeff Weiner, CEO of LinkedIn. “We exited 2011 having successfully revamped our underlying development infrastructure. Based on that investment, we said that 2012 would be a year of accelerated product innovation, and it was. The products we delivered throughout the year drove member engagement and financial results to record levels in the fourth quarter.”

    For their fourth quarter earnings, the company cited strong revenues of $161 million from its “Talent Solutions” recruiting products and $83.2 million from its Marketing Solutions products. Subscription revenue from premium memberships to its social network rose 79% to $59.4 million.

    LinkedIn set ambitious goals for itself in 2013, and expects to bring in between $1.41 billion and $1.44 billion.

    “Continued investment in our talent and technology infrastructure drove momentum in both product and monetization, resulting in record revenue, profitability, and cash flow,” said Steve Sordello, CFO of LinkedIn. “As we look forward to 2013, we remain excited about the value LinkedIn will create for members and customers in the coming year.”

  • Netflix Added 2 Million Streaming Subscribers Over the Holidays

    Though the competition to provide robust streaming services is heating up with the growth of Hulu Plus, Amazon Prime Instant Video, and the new Redbox Instant, Netflix is still holding its own. The company this week announced its fourth quarter financial results, and the news is overwhelmingly positive.

    Netflix managed to add just over 2 million new subscribers to its Instant Watch streaming service, over 9 times the number it added in the fourth quarter of 2011. Internationally it added 1.8 million new streaming subscribers, bringing the total for 2012 to 10 million new streaming subscribers.

    In a sign of the times, the number of new subscriptions for Netflix’s original DVD-by-mail service have been dropping steadily for the past year, and the company only added around 380,000 of those subscribers in the fourth quarter of 2012.

    Given the huge deals Netflix has had to work out with content providers in recent years, it might seem nearly impossible for the company to turn a profit. It has managed though, to make a slim profit of $8 million on $945 million in total revenue.

    Netflix wasn’t afraid to address its competition in its report. The company pointed to other streaming subscriptions as “a different service” due to the differing unique content between services. Netflix’s main concern with other streaming services is the content they share, as that could lead to other services being seen as a replacement for Netflix. To ease investors’ minds, Netflix pointed out that of its top 100 movies and top 100 TV shows, Amazon’s streaming service only has 73 of them, and Hulu has only 27.

  • HTC Profit Tanked in the 3rd Quarter of 2012

    Today the Wall Street Journal reported that HTC’s most recent quarterly profits are down 79% from last year. The company reported a third-quarter net profic of $133 million. Though the company still made money, its quarter 3 2012 reports its lowest profits since 2006.

    The reason for HTC’s shrinking profits probably has something to do with Apple’s continued success in the smartphone market, as well as Samsung’s rise as the top Android handset manufacturer.

    Apple’s recent release of the iPhone 5 propelled the company’s stock to new heights and cemented the post-Steve-Jobs company as the dominant player in the smartphone market (though the Apple Maps debacle has dampened investors enthusiasm somewhat). Couple that with the fact that some Android smartphone users actually wish they had an iPhone, and Apple is still growing its share of the smartphone market.

    On the Android side of things, Samsung has begun to consolidate and overshadow all other Android handset OEMs. The latest ComScore figures put the company’s smartphones in the hands of around one-quarter of smartphone users. Samsung’s dominance can be seen in its growing quarterly profits, which reached $7.29 billion this quarter.

    The story can be seen in how both Samsung’s and HTC’s flagship Android smartphone fared in the U.S. market. Though the Samsung Galaxy S III had a messy release schedule, it was eventually released on all major U.S. carriers and sold well – 20 million units well, according to Samsung.

    The HTC One X, on the other hand was held up by an Apple lawsuit and then only released on two carriers. It was re-branded and re-skinned for Sprint as an EVO smartphone. Though comparable to the Galaxy S III in terms of hardware, the One X was left behind by limited availability and a strong Samsung marketing campaign.

  • You Were Worth a Lot More to Facebook in 2007 When It Was More Private

    You Were Worth a Lot More to Facebook in 2007 When It Was More Private

    So much of what gets said about Facebook these days revolves around what the company is worth, what Mark Zuckerberg is worth, what other Facebookers are worth; or, since the company’s hilariously bad initial public offering, the public conversation has been more focused on how much all of the aforementioned parties have lost thanks to Nasdaq, Facebook shares going belly-up, and general lack of confidence from advertisers.

    But what about you, dear Facebooker? When was the last time somebody checked on the value of you, without whom Facebook would have zero Zuckerbucks in the bank?

    In 2007, the year of your peak worth to Facebook, Pluggio calculates that each Facebook user was worth $152. Since then, each Facebook user’s value has diminished, bottoming out to a measly $17 as of May 2012.

    $17? You could barely pay to go see The Dark Night Rises next month with $17.

    Assuming that there’s any validity to Pluggio’s valuation of Facebook users, there’s an interesting corollary happening with the site and its relationship with users since 2007. The thing is, an analysis last month by privacy firm Abine showed that 2007 was the last time Facebook made an update to its privacy policy that didn’t automatically push user information into the public of the internet. Every update since 2009 has made more and more Facebook user information viewable to the general internet users of the world. Incidentally, following the infographic that Pluggio put together (see below), that timeline of diminished privacy correlates with Facebook’s billion-dollar growth occurring within the same time period.

    Let’s put that into a formula. Since 2007, every change made to Facebook’s privacy policy resulted in less privacy for its users; and since 2007, the company has been raking in more billions of dollars each year (excepting the disastrous IPO that knocked down Facebook’s worth considerably). Anybody wanna take a stab at explaining that correlation using only three three letters?

    Again, assuming that there is some legitimate value to Pluggio’s data, the diminished worth of Facebook users contrasted with the increasing worth of Facebook’s advertisers sort of points to where company’s interests and priorities are these days (here’s a hint: it’s not you, the user).

    If you want to assess how much (or how little) Facebook’s users matter to the company and why they matter (or don’t matter) to the company, it’s simple: follow the money. Do that and you have a fairly plausible explanation for the devaluation of the Facebook user: you simply got bumped aside for advertisers because their pockets are deeper than yours, and Facebook is a very expensive date these days.

    Click here to see a larger version.

  • Internet Ad Revenue Pops Q1 Record with $8.4 Billion

    The 2012 fiscal year is off to a good start for internet advertising as the first quarter welcomed a record-breaking $8.4 billion in revenue, more than any previous first quarter. The news comes by way of the semi-annual Internet Advertising Report, compiled by Interactive Advertising Bureau and PwC U.S., that found that this first-quarter record is a 15% increase over the first quarter of 2011, marking $1.1 billion more than last year.

    Given that people are shooting from more screens than ever these days, that type of constant exposure and content searching seems like it could only yield better and more opportunities for online advertisers to generate revenue, and it’s an opportunity they aren’t going to let pass them by. “More online consumers than ever are taking to the internet to inform and navigate their daily lives—by desktop, tablet or smartphone,” said Randall Rothenberg, President and CEO, IAB. “Marketers and agencies are clearly–and wisely–investing dollars to reach digitally connected consumers.”

    David Silverman, Partner, PwC U.S., concurs that the internet is becoming a highly lucrative market for advertisers.

    “The year-over-year growth between Q1 2011 and Q1 2012 sets quite a milestone,” said he said. “Moreover, a 15% increase over the comparable period in 2011 is a solid affirmation the internet is delivering on its promise to attract consumers and the advertising dollars that follow.”

    Earlier this year, eMarketer predicted that Facebook’s ad revenue would climb up to $5 billion although the company’s growth rate would probably stall out in subsequent years, during which time Google is expected to surpass Facebook and become the top seller of online ads.

    In 2011, Facebook’s online display ad revenue was $1.73 billion and is expected to increase to $2.58 billion in 2012, then more to $3.29 billion in 2013. Google’s ad revenue was $1.71 billion in 2011, is expected to reach $2.54 billion in 2012, and then continue to increase to $3.68 billion in 2013. If eMarketer’s predictions are true, and the other top five ad-selling companies – Yahoo!, Microsoft, and AOL – continue to increase their ad revenue this year as well, record-breaking online ad revenue might become a repeated story throughout 2012.

  • AOL’s Patch Set New Traffic, Revenue Record in May

    Despite a damaging report last month from a group of disgruntled investors that said AOL’s Patch was not a “viable business,” the service still had a good month in May as it set an all-time high for traffic and revenue.

    Patch, AOL’s local news dispensary, served 11.7 million users in May, marking a 14% increase in users from April when the platform had 10.3 million users. Last month’s record is also an 11% increase over Patch’s previous traffic record, which was recorded in August 2011 with 10.6 million users. In month-to-month growth, Patch saw a 12% increase in visits per unique visitor in May.

    “We are extremely gratified to see these measures of the traction we have gained in our communities and in our business since our launch just over 3 years ago,” commented Jon Brod, CEO & Co-Founder of Patch, said in a statement. “We are laser-focused on continuing to serve our users and advertisers with high-quality content and impactful products, and building upon our success to date in innovative and engaging ways.”

    Patch’s revenue also hit a new high water mark in May, besting the previous record set in November of last year. The platform’s total revenue for May was 14% higher than the previous record and 17% higher than April’s revenue.

    AOL Chairman and CEO Tim Armstrong, who founded and later sold Patch to AOL after he’d joined AOL, expects that Patch will generate between $40 and $50 million in revenue this year, a projection likely based on the fact that Patch has already booked for 2012 130% of its total 2011 revenue.

    While AOL didn’t release any actual money numbers associated with Patch’s good month o’ May, Patch might need to do a little better than $50 million to finally be considered a success. Bloomberg cites the aforementioned group of disgruntled investors, Starboard, who estimated that Patch lost $147 million last year with only $15,000 coming from each of Patch’s 800-plus news sites. While the prospective $50 million that Patch hopes to generate this year would offset another fiscal year loss, it remains to be seen if the hyper-local news service can inch closer to actually producing a profit in the future.

  • Nasdaq Hopes to Appease Facebook Investors with Modest Compensation

    The Nasdaq OMX Group hopes to make up for that small-but-disastrous glitch on the day of Facebook’s initial public offering by compensating affected investors who were trying to get in on the early trading. According to the Wall Street Journal, the exchange organization has been notifying brokers that it plans to submit the proper filings tomorrow in order to begin the process of compensating investors.

    Nasdaq’s technical fumble delayed the IPO for about half an hour and left brokers wondering whether or not their trades had actually been confirmed. Some of those traders didn’t find out until hours later whether their purchases went through, which was well after it was starting to look like Facebook’s stock was stalling.

    Today’s new low for Facebook shares, $25.75, likely only adds kindling to the fiery anger felt by brokers who were unexpectedly and unwittingly left holding Facebook shares that they likely wouldn’t have kept if they’d have known what the actual fate of their share purchases were.

    Nasdaq OMX plans to use roughly $10.7 million that was gained from the organization’s “own unexpected position in Facebook shares” in addition to the standing $3 million cap on compensation reserved for exchange customers negatively affected by system outages. That may be about as far as Nasdaq cares to go in ameliorating the toxic situation investors find themselves in, though, because if the group doles out much more than that it could start to eat into their profits. That seems like shoddy, selfish math guaranteed to prolong the bitter taste in the mouths of investors should that $13 million not cover the losses suffered by investors.

    And bitter they may continue to be, as the Journal points out that total losses suffered on behalf of retail investors lost more than $100 million due to the craptastic Facebook IPO. Nasdaq might want to start brokering some peace with investors tomorrow, but paying out only a tenth of what was lost because of Facebook’s IPO errors likely won’t appease too many investors.

  • Nasdaq’s Fallout from the Fubar Facebook IPO

    Given that everyone was so excited and looking to the future with Facebook’s initial public offering on Friday, there has been a surprising absence of good news to come out of the it since it happened. It’s not even that there’s an absence of good news but an overwhelming pall of bad news. Friday stumbled out of the gates and never really caught up, ending in a flat day for Facebook shares. Yesterday produced even less palatable morsels as the afternoon ended disappointingly with shares trading for 11% less than the IPO price.

    Those technical problems hindering Facebook’s IPO seem to have left a lot of people holding onto significant financial losses and, according to the Wall Street Journal, many brokers and traders are calling for Nasdaq OMX Group, the company that owns the operates the Nasdaq, to recompense for those losses.

    Nasdaq OMX has said it will use $10 million from the Facebook shares the exchange owns to make up for some of the losses endured by investors the past two trading days. But even that’s not expected to cover all of the fumbled trades because, according to Bob Griefeld, Nasdaq OMX’s chief executive, there simply aren’t enough shares available at the price sought by brokers.

    None of this exactly restores confidence in Facebook shares or Nasdaq OMX’s reputation. Just ask George Brady. He bought 1,000 shares of Facebook soon after they became available but had his purchase stall out on his Charles Schwab account. Facebook shares had already started to dip and yet he was still standing out in the cold.

    Then, six hours of silence followed. At around 6:14 p.m, Schwab told him that he had bought the shares at $40 and that he still held them, despite the cancellation request.

    “I was stuck for six hours trying to figure out whether I owned this dog or not,” said Mr. Brady, who lost $2,775 when he sold his shares on Monday. He says he has been in touch with Schwab and has contacted the SEC.

    As terrible as it is to lose almost $3,000 on what was heralded as a sure-bet by many speculators, Brady should probably be glad he sold off his shares on Monday and swallowed the loss that he had then because today doesn’t look much better. As of writing this, Facebook shares opened 7.41% down from yesterday and are slowly slipping down to the $30 mark.

    As bad as that $3,000 loss is, it could be worse. Brady’s name could be Mark Zuckerberg and he could’ve lost $2 billion yesterday.

  • GM’s Pulling of Ads from Facebook Wasn’t Personal After All

    Told ya! Following a Reuters report earlier today that revealed Facebook had actually encouraged General Motors to utilize the website’s free pages, thus lessening the import of GM’s announcement from earlier this week about no longer paying for Facebook ads. Now, someone from the Wall Street Journal has revealed that GM won’t be advertising at the next Super Bowl, either.

    Suzanne Vranica, an advertising and marketing reporter at the Journal, tweeted the news:

    VranicaWSJ
    @VranicaWSJ     WSJ :GM to sits out Super Bowl w/@sharonterlep
    1 hour ago via Twitter for iPhone · powered by @socialditto
     Reply  · Retweet  · Favorite

    According to the accompanying report, GM’s global marketing chief, Joel Ewanick, the same guy on Tuesday that said paid ads on Facebook don’t work (in so many words), has concluded that buying ads during the Super Bowl is too expensive to justify the cost.

    Given that GM’s the third largest advertiser during Super Bowls, today’s decision helps defuse any of the controversy that got blown up after the company decided it would no longer pay for ads on Facebook (GM’s still dedicating $30 million to using Facebook’s free services).

    All of this advertising reshuffling by GM is due to the company’s effort to optimize its advertising strategy and get the most out of its ad budget. And while this Facebook/GM story is starting to sound like it’s going to go out with a whimper, GM’s timing to announce its withdrawal from paid Facebook ads only a few days before Facebook’s IPO remains a little suspect.

  • Facebook Could Only Tease the Public for So Long

    As I write this, Facebook is 2:01 from launching its most important update in the history of the company: becoming a public company and being traded on Wall Street.

    When I joined Facebook in 2006, I thought it was kind of a cheesy alternative to MySpace. Well, it was, actually, either that or Friendster. Either way, I didn’t think it’d sustain popularity anymore than Xanga or ICQ or mIRC. It’d be a brief bloom in the garden of internet. And yet, it persevered.

    The company’s popularity continued to swell until Facebook was removed from a niche interest and started to become a cultural institution. By 2007, industry bird-watchers were expecting Facebook to make an IPO as early as 2008. And yet, it didn’t.

    Roll over and Facebook said 2009 wasn’t its year, either.

    2010 was also supposed to be the year that Facebook’s balls dropped and it’d mature into a fully reared adult. But again, it didn’t happen that year, either.

    Prolonging the foreplay is always a way to charm would-be suitors, and Facebook undoubtedly knew this. So in 2011, it didn’t give Wall Street so much as a peck on the cheek before shutting the door on another year. This bit here is actually kind of amusing given today’s lucre:

    Lou Kerner, a former Internet analyst at Merrill Lynch and Goldman Sachs, is even more bullish, suggesting that Facebook could be worth $59 billion in 2011 and more than $100 billion by 2015.

    So now it’s 2012 and Facebook is ready for its debutante ball of $104 billion. Facebook’s been warming up to this dance for many years and now its primed to melt hearts and bulge wallets.

    Much has been said, much has been done, and it’s come a long way since that Harvard desktop where a youthful Mark Zuckerberg conceived of a more social experience on the internet. 901 billion users later, the company is set to become one of the largest IPOs in history, not just in the tech industry.

    The public era of Facebook has officially begun. Will it last? Will it brand us all with the mark of the beast? Will it simply continue to do what it’s been doing the whole time? Will I finally get pushed into having a Timeline? Who knows. At this moment, it’s Facebook’s world; we just live in it.

    Godspeed, you indigo emperor.

  • Facebook’s IPO Follows Other Tech Companies’ IPO

    Facebook’s IPO Follows Other Tech Companies’ IPO

    With Facebook’s IPO maaayy finally happen next week, buzz abounds that this will most likely be the tech industry’s biggest IPO to date. Still, by no means is it the first and it’s likely Facebook wouldn’t be projected to rocket into astronomical levels of filthy lucre if it hadn’t been the company’s predecessors.

    Google, LinkedIn, Yelp, Zynga, and Groupon are all tech companies that made the public move – and all with varying results. Companies like Groupon and LinkedIn saw their stocks decline below their opening day price a mere 30 days after the IPO (although LinkedIn seems to be trucking right along now while Groupon continues to ride out some turbulence). With speculation that Facebook’s opening valuation could be as high as $100 billion, it’s all but a foregone conclusion that the company will be a Wall Street success.

    As a crash course of sorts on tech company IPOs, Banyan Branch put together an infographic details the history of other tech companies that offer a glimpse of what to expect with Facebook’s initial offering. “The upcoming Facebook IPO has been the talk of the tech world, and judging by other recent tech IPOs, it can be hard to predict which way the stock will move,” said Blake Cahill, president of Banyan Branch. “Banyan Branch analyzed the online buzz and we know that the Facebook IPO will only increase in interest as we get closer to the IPO date.”

    Think the sky’s the limit for Facebook? Think it’s a lotta hype? Let us know what ya think after the infographic.

    History of Tech Company IPOs

    Click here to see a larger version.

  • LinkedIn Q1 2012 Financial Results Shred Analyst Expectations [UPDATED]

    LinkedIn released its financial results its Q1 2012 results this afternoon and things are looking good for the premier network for professionals. The company’s financial weather vane looks to be pointing north, which was encouraging to LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner.

    “LinkedIn’s solid performance in the first quarter built on the company’s momentum in 2011,” Weiner said. “We saw strength across all key metrics from member signups and engagement to significant revenue growth across our three product lines.”

    Some key points:

  • Revenue for the first quarter was $188.5 million, an increase of 101% compared to $93.9 million in the first quarter of 2011.
  • Net income for the first quarter was $5.0 million, compared to net income of $2.1 million for the first quarter 2011. Non-GAAP net income for the first quarter was $16.9 million, compared to $5.8 million for the first quarter of 2011. Non-GAAP measures exclude tax-affected stock-based compensation expense and tax-affected amortization of acquired intangible assets.
  • Adjusted EBITDA for the first quarter was $38.1 million, or 20% of revenue, compared to $13.3 million for the first quarter of 2011, or 14% of revenue.

    • Analysts had expected that LinkIn’s showing for the first quarter would be a strong one, but LinkedIn hurdled over those expectations with impressive ease. Analysts anticipated that LinkedIn’s shares would post at $0.09 but LinkedIn nearly doubled that with the Non-GAAP ES valued at $0.15.

    This is the seventh consecutive quarter that LinkedIn has posted a year-over-year growth of more than 100%. Getting down to the details of LinkedIn’s outstanding performance, Revenue from Hiring Solutions products totaled $102.6 million, an increase of 121% compared to the first quarter of 2011. Hiring Solutions revenue represented 54% of total revenue in the first quarter of 2012, compared to 49% in the first quarter of 2011. On the marketing side, revenue from Marketing Solutions products totaled $48.0 million, an increase of 73% compared to the first quarter of 2011. Marketing Solutions revenue represented 26% of total revenue in the first quarter of 2012, compared to 30% in the first quarter of 2011. Finally, revenue from Premium Subscriptions products totaled $37.9 million, an increase of 91% compared to the first quarter of 2011. Premium Subscriptions represented 20% of total revenue in the first quarter of 2012, compared to 21% of revenue in the first quarter of 2011.

    Revenue from the U.S. totaled $120.8 million, and represented 64% of total revenue in the first quarter of 2012. Revenue from international markets totaled $67.6 million, and represented 36% of total revenue in the first quarter of 2012.

    Revenue from the field sales channel totaled $101.5 million, and represented 54% of total revenue in the first quarter of 2012. Revenue from the online, direct sales channel totaled $87.0 million, and represented 46% of total revenue in the first quarter of 2012.

    It’s not even been a year since LinkedIn became the first U.S.-based social network to file an initial public offering and given the company’s steady ascent, it appears that the road ahead is nothing but clear lanes and green lights. It will be interesting to see if LinkedIn’s continued success will affect Facebook’s IPO later this month since it’s been demonstrated that investing in social network companies can be a lucrative investment. Earlier today, Facebook set the price range for its IPO at $28 to $35 a share, putting the company’s value somewhere between $77 billion and $96 billion.

    In the investors conference call following the release of the results, LinkedIn CFO Steve Sordello and LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner shared some more details about the first quarter. Sordello said that one of the next goals with mobile user engagement is to focus more on global expansion.

    Speaking of mobile users on LinkedIn, they tend to be some of the more highly engaged members on the site. Weiner cited the mobile applications for LinkedIn, including the recently released iPad app, as being instrumental in the uptick of user engagement. So far, he said, the reception to the iPad app has been encouraging. “We like what we’re seeing,” Weiner said.

    Other new features that contributed to increase in LinkedIn users is the second generation of the People You Might Know feature, which Weiner said has made it easier to link people together through faster and more complex calculations happening behind the scenes.

  • Twitter Ascends, Facebook Falters in Social Transactions

    A new financial report on the financial climate inside the social media world has been released and with Facebook’s IPO on the horizon, the news isn’t exactly the sunny sky you’d hope for if you’re an investor. Zscaler, a cloud security service provider that monitors online commerce, released its State of the Web Q1 2012 report and while the forecast isn’t what Facebook probably wants to hear, it’s great news for Twitter.

    Zscaler analyzed the transactions that people make on the web via social media and found that the traffic on Facebook declined as a percent of total social transactions. Facebook’s been on a downward slip in the past four quarterly reports, dropping from 53% of transactions in Q1 2011 to 41.72% in Q4 2011, and even lower to to 40.54% this March. Facebook is still the most frequently visited site with it’s 40% share of web application transactions, but the steady decline of that share could be of concern.

    Twitter, on the other hand, is sitting on the ascending end of that financial seesaw. The microblogging site increased its percentage of social transactions from 7.05% to 7.44%. Zscaler postulates that a significant reason why Facebook went down and Twitter rose up is due to employers increasingly limiting the the access employees have to Facebook during work hours. For some reason, employers aren’t as concerned with workers slacking off on Twitter.

    Facebook wasn’t the only social site on the decline, though as LinkedIn sliped from 1.55% to 1.44%.

    Despite the shifting market, Facebook still commands a hefty lead over its competitors. The site maintains 40% of social transactions, easily dwarfing Gmail’s 18%, YouTube’s 8%, and Twitter’s 7%

    Given that Facebook is on track to hit 1 billion registered users as soon as August, it’s a little surprising that their market share of social transactions has declined so significantly. Twitter’s 0.39% quarterly increase explains a little bit of Facebook’s 1.18% quarterly loss. Perhaps the newer Facebook users aren’t as keen on purchasing via apps on the site, or it could be that, as a whole, users are feeling a little over-saturated with the amount of ads and promoted stories that fly at you every time you log in to the site.

    If the latter is the case, that’s some chilly news for the social networking site ahead of it’s IPO dog and pony show that’s coming up.

    [Via eWeek.

  • Yahoo/Bing’s Q1 2012 Financial Reports

    Yahoo/Bing’s Q1 2012 Financial Reports

    It’s been three years since Bing started powering all searches through Yahoo! and the fruits of that partnership are beginning to ripen with success. While the two have yet to really rake away much of Google’s claim of the search market, the two companies still claimed acquired the highest market share of their partnership.

    In a release from IgnitionOne, Yahoo!/Bing produced signs of a promising year with a 46.4% increase in U.S. search advertising spend year-over-year, which was just shy of doubling Google’s lesser growth of 26.6%. And while Q1 search spend is normally down quarter over quarter due to the spike in holiday spending in Q4, Yahoo!/Bing posted a 14.3% increase in spend versus Google’s decrease quarter-over-quarter of 5.4%. The duo’s splendid quarter may be attributed to Yahoo!/Bing’s push for increased utilization of broad match keywords, which leads to more competition in auctions. Also, as mentioned above this quarter marked the groups’ highest market share claim in nearly two years with 21.2% of the market share – the best showing since the two companies partnered up.

    Yahoo/Bing Q1 2012 Financial Result

    According to Roger Barnette, President of IgnitionOne, the Q1 showing by Yahoo! and Bing was a remarkable success. “The Yahoo!/Bing turnaround was arguably the most interesting Q1 with an uptick coming primarily from the adoption of broad match targeting by marketers,” he said in a statement.

    Yahoo! and Bing’s resurgence wasn’t acquired solely through people glued to the monitors of their computers – many of those people had tablets and smartphones stuck to their face. In fact, mobile search accounted for 12.3% of total search advertising spend in Q1, holding steady following an impressive Q4. Mobile clicks were up 246.1% YoY, showing acceleration over the last quarter. Impressions were up 119.9% and ad spend was up 221.1% YoY, but both showed slower growth than the preceding quarter. Much of the mobile search activity can be attributed to tablet devices which accounted for 67.4% of total mobile search advertising budgets for the quarter. In addition, tablet click through rates of 3.1% were higher than those for PC of 2.5%.

    Yahoo/Bing Q1 2012 Financial Result

    “I am impressed by the level of activity and click-throughs on tablets,” Barnette added about the mobile ad growth. “This should be a wakeup call for marketers who are not yet leveraging search advertising on these devices.”

  • Apple Shares Soar To Another Record: $582 Per Share

    So much for that mild trepidation of traders following last week’s New iPad announcement. Not only has Apple’s stock juggernautted to new record highs yesterday, but now Morgan Stanley has increased its price target of the stock from $515 to $720.

    According to Apple Insider, analyst Katy Huberty sent a memo to investors yesterday telling them that the tech company had been added to Morgan Stanley’s Best Ideas list. She went on to say that, unbelievably, “investors ‘understimate’ Apple’s strong position” and bumped up the target price to $720. As if that wasn’t enough to give you a nose bleed, she also said that should the stock market take a turn into an uber bull market, that stock could climb as high as $960.

    Additionally, The Street reports that FBN Securities analyst Shebly Seyrafi went a bit further and raised his price target to $730 while a Wells Fargo analyst has also raised his price target for Apple, albeit slightly more modestly, to upwards of $640.

    This has injected some vigor into Apple’s stocks today, pushing the company’s shares up to $582.46 as of writing this, which is a 2.5% increase. Don’t be surprised if that number isn’t higher by the end of the day.

    With all of these analysts anticipating even greater growth of Apple’s value, I expect that WWDC 2014 will see Apple announce the launch of their first iPlanet.

  • Apple Shares Struggle After New iPad Announced

    Were you disappointed by the lack of flashy name for Apple’s new iPad, the New iPad? If so, you weren’t the only one as investors seemed slightly unimpressed with Tim Cook & Co.’s unveiling of the new tablet as Apple’s shares tumbled a bit following the conference’s conclusion.

    Apple’s shares actually started out the day at $536.87, which was higher than where they ended Tuesday when the markets closed for the day. Since the announcement, though, shares have fallen in value nearly 1%.

    Tuesday was actually a recent plunge in terms of Apple’s typical value, which is to say Apple was still highly valued in spite of that decline. Shortly after the markets began trading yesterday, Apple shares descended to $514.49, which was the greatest drop in value for the company since a regular tenant of the $500-and-Up Club. There was one precipitous plunge shortly after Apple crossed the $500 mark, but since then its shares have been on a steady incline.

    Even with today’s dip, though, Apple shares are still wildly valuable and it’s too early to really speculate whether today’s announcement took the wind out of investors’ sails. CBS Money Watch spoke with an analyst who believes that news of the New iPad will ultimately boost Apple’s value on the stock market.

    “While a new iPad announcement is arguably the worst kept secret among Apple aficionados, we nonetheless believe the news will be material,” said Sterne Agee analyst Shaw Wu in a note to clients ahead of the announcement. Apple hasn’t updated the iPad since March 2011, Wu notes, and the latest iteration of the world’s most popular tablet should lift sales this calendar year. The analyst now expects Apple to ship 55 million iPads in 2012, up from a prior forecast of 51 million.

    Still, that was then and this is now and as the afternoon trudges along, Apple’s stock seems to be struggling to return to where it started out the day.

    The last time Apple shares took a drop happened after news broke of its iPad trademark woes with Chinese tech company Proview.

    The New iPad aside, Apple announced a host of new features and products today that could prove to bolster Apple’s value on the market. Maybe all it will take is for investors to get used to the fact that the new tablet isn’t called iPad 3 or iPad HD (like everybody else). Although the initial response has been tepid, Wall Street still has until March 16, the day the New iPad hits the shelves of Apple Stores, before they have to make up their mind over whether to sell or buy.

  • SEO, Analytics, Financials, All In One Place

    SEO, Analytics, Financials, All In One Place

    How’s business? It’s a question small business owners are asked a lot. But it’s one that is increasingly difficult to answer because of the complexities of running a modern business. WebControlRoom.com is a free tool that has been developed to help small businesses answer this question by providing a real time performance report with data from various sources in the one place.

    In order to thrive, small business owners need to keep their eye on many different measures to know not only if they are on track now but whether things are heading in the right direction for the future.

    Because of the myriad of different services used by small business owners these days, particularly web savvy ones, it’s not easy to get an overall picture of how things are tracking without logging into a lot of different places and manually piecing together the puzzle.

    After battling with this issue himself, Australian small business web expert Dan Norris developed a free tool, WebControlRoom.com to do exactly that. By talking to popular small business services like Xero, Mail Chimp, Google Analytics etc, WebControlRoom.com is able to present a one page chart showing the key stats all in the one place giving business owners the important information in seconds.

    But unlike other dashboard type services, WebControlRoom.com is not just about pretty charts, Dan explains. “Big companies love pretty charts. But small business wants the right information, quickly. By focusing in on month by month comparison data, the tool makes it clear which areas of your business are going well and which ones need attention”.

    “Small business owners can open their report each day from their computer or their mobiles and within a few seconds identify issues or see areas that are performing well”.

    Examples of the charts include current Google rankings so business owners can stay in top of how their site ranks for their chosen keywords and newsletter opens from Mail Chimp or Klout score to measure the engagement of their audience. Revenue charts from Xero show how this month’s revenue compares to last month and color and size coding on all charts makes is quick to pinpoint problem areas or see spikes in results.

    In total there are 9 services and many more on the way and there is a slim lined version for mobiles that loads whenever the service is accessed from a mobile.

    Other than supporting more services, plans for the future include a smart messaging system that provides users with sponsored improvement messages related to their performance.

    WebControlRoom.com is available for free to the public as a beta release now.