WebProNews

Tag: q1 2012

  • T-Mobile First Quarter 2012 Earnings Report Is Here

    T-Mobile just announced their first quarter 2012 results and the highlight is a strong adjusted OBIDA increase at 7.2% year-over-year to $1.3 billion. OBIDA margins increased 3 percentage points. They added 187,000 customers in this quarter as opposed to almost 100,000 lost at the same time the year before.

    Service revenues declined to $4.4 billion, down 4% from the same time last year. Total revenues also fell 2.5% from last year and came in at $1.4 billion. Expenditures were consistent with with early 2011 and remained at $747 million.

    Philipp Humm, CEO and President of T-Mobile USA. comments on the results of the first quarter:

    “In the first quarter, T-Mobile USA delivered strong performance across several key metrics – adding customers, increasing branded ARPUs year-on-year and effectively managing costs to deliver a solid adjusted OIBDA margin. While branded contract churn remains a focus, in the first quarter of 2012 we achieved our lowest level in seven quarters,”

    “In just a short time since the December breakup of the AT&T deal, T-Mobile USA has redefined and restarted our Challenger Strategy including phase one of a major brand re-launch to redefine T-Mobile in the marketplace.”

    René Obermann, CEO of Deutsche Telekom comments on T-Mobile’s performance in the first quarter in 2012:

    “T-Mobile USA delivered an encouraging adjusted OIBDA year-on-year increase in the first quarter of 2012. Philipp Humm and his team managed the business with improved efficiency in a still difficult environment, laying the foundation for successful implementation of the Challenger Strategy,”

    T-Mobile has plans to invest over $4 billion in their 4G LTE network in coming year. They also have plans to offer new state-of-the-art equipment featuring partnerships with Nokia and Ericsson.

  • 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.

  • Amazon.Com Q1 2012 Financial Report

    Amazon.Com Q1 2012 Financial Report

    Yesterday Amazon.com released their first quarter financial results for 2012, and all seems to be going well. Net sales have increase by 34% to almost $13.2 billion as compared to the same period in 2011 ($9.9 billion). Operating cash flow is up 1% to $3.05 billion compared with $3.3 billion from the same time last year.

    Unfortunately free cash flow decreased almost 40% and ended at $1.15 billion, as compared to $1.90 billion the year before. Not too hot. Common shares outstanding plus shares underlying stock-based awards totaled 464 million a the end of the quarter as compared to 466 million a year ago. The company purchased $960 million in stock or about 5.3 million shares. They had previously authorized a $2 billion authorization to buy the company’s common stock.

    Operating income came in at $192 million, contrasted to $322 million in the first quarter last year. Net income leo decreased to $130 million, which is a 35% decrease when compared to first quarter 2011 ($201 million). That’s $0.28 per diluted share compared to $0.44 in 2011 Q1. Not so great.

    Despite the less than stellar quarter for Amazon, there are many great things in the works for 2012. E-book readers and the Kindle store have been big contributors to Amazon’s success this past quarter, and CEO Jeff Bezos has a lot of faith in their new products.

    Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon.com comments on the success of the Kindle store:

    “I’m excited to announce that we now have more than 130,000 new, in-copyright books that are exclusive to the Kindle Store – you won’t find them anywhere else. They include many of our top bestsellers – in fact, 16 of our top 100 bestselling titles are exclusive to our store,”

    “If you’re an Amazon Prime member, you don’t even need to buy these titles – you can borrow them for free – with no due dates – from our revolutionary Kindle Owners’ Lending Library. The Kindle Owners’ Lending Library is heavily used by Kindle owners, and it has extremely unusual features that both authors and customers love. Every time you borrow a book, the author gets paid – and we have an inexhaustible supply of each title so you never have to wait in a queue for the book you want. Kindle is the bestselling e-reader in the world by far, and I assure you we’ll keep working hard so that the Kindle Store remains yet another reason to buy a Kindle!”

    Here’s a look at some projections for the second quarter already underway:

    * Net sales are expected to be between $11.9 billion and $13.3 billion, or to grow between 20% and 34% compared with second quarter 2011.

    * Operating income (loss) is expected to be between $(260) million and $40 million, or between 229% decline and 80% decline compared with second quarter 2011.

    * This guidance includes approximately $260 million for stock-based compensation and amortization of intangible assets, and it assumes, among other things, that no additional business acquisitions or investments are concluded and that there are no further revisions to stock-based compensation estimates.

  • Alibaba.Com Q1 2012 Profits: $53.8 Million

    Alibaba.com reports $53.8 million profits this quarter, but also shows that growth has slowed as they invest in stronger partnerships and more refined user experiences. As a small business e-commerce company they have remained focused on enhancing buyer and seller experiences, and aim to increase the quality of the marketplace.

    Jonathan Lu, CEO and Executive Director of Alibaba.com explains:

    “In the first quarter, we remained focused on our goal of providing exceptional buyer and seller experiences by enhancing the quality and depth of product and company information available on our platforms,”

    “As expected, our continuing investment in upgrading our business model and our higher membership standards for suppliers has negatively impacted our financial performance. Nonetheless we strongly believe that information quality and member quality are fundamental for our success and business model upgrading will further benefit both customer and our business in the future. We are positive that these efforts will ultimately benefit our SME customers.”

    Total revenue for Q1 2012 was $252.2 million, which is a 3.7% increase year-over -year, but a 4.2% decrease from last quarter. $145.4 million in revenue comes from the international marketplace, while 86.6 million comes from the Chinese marketplace. $20.2 million came from other sources including HiChina.

    Alibaba earned $197.6 million in gross profits and remained flat year-over-year, but actually decreased 4.2% when compared to last quarter. Earning before interest and tax reached $59.5 million which is an almost 27% decrease from the same period last year and a 29.1 decrease from last quarter.

    Profit attributable to equity owners also fell 12% from last quarter and over 25% year-over-year to $53.8 million. Earnings per share came in at $1.08 as opposed to $1.35 in the same quarter last year. Recurring cash flow also decreased at an astounding rate of almost 88% to $3 million year-over-year and 98% from last quarter.

    The good news is they experienced an almost 25% increase in year-over-year cash and bank balances. So while businesses is picking up and they are investing heavily in their future, it has detrimentally effected their bottom line for at least the first quarter of 2012.

  • 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.”