Tag: results

Dell comes back from the dead

Posted on October 31, 2014 by - News

i-walked-with-a-zombie-from-left-everettBeancounters at IDC are claiming that Dell’s US shipments grew 19.7 percent during the third calendar quarter of 2014.

If this is the case, then it would appear that business is turning around for the tin box shifter.

Jeff Clarke, Dell’s vice chairman, Operations, and president, Client Solutions said that the reason for the increase was a strong notebook performance in the US and accompanying overall worldwide growth reflects the continued momentum. He said Dell did not intend to slow down.

“You can expect us to maintain our strategy of investing in the PC business, with more additions to our portfolio to be announced next week at Dell World,”Clarke said.

Dell was showing off its PC business in which it said had its seventh consecutive quarter of year-over-year gains in global share and grew more in the third quarter than its top two US competitors combined.

Dell also talked about its commercial portfolio which appeared to be focusing on higher performance PCs and thin clients.

Dell also claimed there was a growing demand for flexible 2-in-1 products in the work environment with the Latitude 13 7000 Series 2-in-1.

Now that the outfit has gone private we have no way of checking any of this as it does not have to share anything and we have to take its word for it.

LG is back in the phone race

Posted on October 29, 2014 by - News

logo lgSouth Korea’s LG, which was getting a good kicking from its rivals, is now back in the black and is making a killing.

LG said its July-September operating profit more than doubled from a year earlier as earnings from its mobile business surged to a five-year high.

Profits for its TV business grew 5.2 percent from a year earlier, while smartphone shipments broke all sorts of records.

“LG’s earnings reflected strong performance from its mobile business,” the company said in a statement.

LG reported an operating profit of $440.21 million which was much better than what had been predicted by the cocaine nose jobs of Wall Street.

LG’s mobile division turned a $0.1 billion operating profit, its highest since the third quarter of 2009 and compared with loss a year ago, thanks in part to strong shipments for the flagship G3 smartphone. It is likely that LG likely shipped a little over 3 million G3s during the period. LG said it shipped 16.8 million smartphones during the third quarter.

The pickup contrasts with domestic rival Samsung, which is expected to report its weakest quarterly operating profit in more than three years later this week.

LG’s TV division did well thanks to sales of high-end products like ultra high-definition TVs.

 

Microsoft results better than expected

Posted on October 24, 2014 by - News

SmaugMicrosoft reported higher than expected quarterly revenue, helped by stronger sales of its phones, Surface tablets and cloud-computing products for companies.

The cocaine nose jobs of Wall Street had been a little concerned that Microsoft might  suffer from am industry shift toward lower-margin cloud services.

Redmond shares, which have climbed 33 percent over the past year, rose another three percent in after-hours trading. You can pick up a good used share, with low mileage, for $46.36.

The Volish results fly in the face of negative earnings results from tech bellwethers Oracle, IBM, SAP, VMware, and EMC.

Big Blue’s miserable results were expected to be repeated by Microsoft  as all of them had made tentative inroads into the cloud, which generally yields thinner margins.

Microsoft did not disclose its cloud-based revenue for the fiscal first quarter, but said commercial cloud sales rose 128 percent, while sales of services based on its Azure cloud platform rose 121 percent.

Perhaps more importantly, it said gross profit margin in the unit that includes Azure rose 194 percent, despite rising infrastructure costs, which includes the huge expense of building and operating datacenters.

In the last four years, Microsoft’s gross profit margin has drifted down to about 65 percent from above 80 percent, largely due to its move into tablets and phones.

Microsoft is predicted to make $6 billion a year in cloud revenue soon, which would make it the industry’s largest cloud. However would still be only about six percent of overall expected revenue this fiscal year.

CEO Satya Nadella, in a conference call with analysts, said that Microsoft was the only company with cloud revenue that is growing at triple digit rates.

Nadella was keen to stress that Microsoft is more focused on selling higher-margin services via the cloud to its commercial customers.

Microsoft’s fiscal first quarter profit actually fell 13 percent, largely due to an expected $1.1 billion charge related to mass layoffs announced in July.

However it still collected a profit of $4.5 billion compared with $5.2 billion, or 62 cents per share, in the year-ago quarter. It easily beat Wall Street’s forecasts.

Revenue rose 25 percent to $23.2 billion, thanks to the phone business it bought from Nokia in April.  Lumia smartphones sales hit 9.3 million in the first full quarter since the close of the Nokia deal. Sales of the Surface tablet more than doubled to $908 million from $400 million last year.

 

 

Big Blue slows down

Posted on October 21, 2014 by - News

sn_blu_mysIBM shocked the cocaine nose jobs of Wall Street by giving up its 2015 operating earnings target and moaning that it was suffering from a bad dose of weak client spending and a slumping software sector.

IBM shares fell nearly seven percent to a three year low, which must really hack off Warren Buffett whose Berkshire Hathaway owns seven percent of IBM shares. The decline shaved more than $13 billion off Big Blue’s market cap, which stood at $182 billion at the stock market close on Friday.

Ginni Rometty, IBM chairman, president and chief executive officer said that the result was disappointing and that the company saw a marked slowdown in September in client buying behavior, and our results also point to the unprecedented pace of change in our industry.

In a move to rid itself of one underperforming business, IBM also said on Monday it will hive off its loss-making semiconductor unit to contract chipmaker Globalfoundries.

“Some of these fundamental shifts in the industry are happening faster than we planned,” Rometty said on a call with analysts. “We are continuing to remix to higher value.”

To be fair, IBM is hardly the only technology company having a hard time keeping up. German software maker SAP cut its 2014 operating profit forecast on Monday, citing a faster-than-expected move to cloud-based software. Oracle has similar problems.

Revenue from the company’s cloud service unit, which allows businesses to access software and data remotely, grew more than 50 percent in the quarter, while mobile revenue doubled.

Still, they were not enough to offset weakness in servers and other hardware, as well as some software business lines.

IBM is spending $600 million for “workforce restructuring,” but did not specify how many employees would be cleaning out their desks.

IBM, which said it would announce a new operating earning per share target for 2015 in January, reported a 4 percent drop in third-quarter revenues as clients held back on spending in September.

Revenue fell to $22.4 billion in the quarter from $23.34 billion a year earlier. Wall Street expected $23.37 billion.

Net profit from continuing operations dropped to $3.46 billion, or $3.46 per share, from $4.14 billion, or $3.77 per share in the same quarter last year.

 

iPads sinking to oblivion

Posted on October 21, 2014 by - News

quicksand1It looks like the world has given up on the novelty of the tablet and is more interested in bigger phones and PCs.

After years of posting stories about how Steve Jobs killed the PC by bringing in the tablet, the Tame Apple press has to face the fact that it was not quite, but completely, untrue.

Apple reported that it had its strongest growth in Mac computer shipments in years but tablet sales were slinking fast.

This seems to suggest that what we have been saying all along the so called shift to mobile was all marketing spin and that slow PC sales were due to economic rather than a shift in technology demands.

Jobs Mob saw a 16 percent jump in iPhone sales, with a stronger-than-expected revenue of $63.5 billion to $66.5 billion in the December quarter.

But sales of the iPad slid for the third straight quarter falling 7 percent from the previous quarter to 12.3 million units, and were down 13 percent from the year-ago period.

The Tame Apple Press is banking on Apple’s alliance with IBM to drive tablet and phone sales to corporate customers, however saner heads do not think that likely.

Biggish Blue Chief Financial Officer Luca Maestri said that the scheme had more than 50 clients, and Apple and IBM intend to introduce their first jointly designed software apps next month.

The lack of interest in the Tablets place Apple in a dodgy position. It means that the company still depends on the iPhone, and it is a market which is fast drying up.

Orders for the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus began in September, helping Apple chalk up a 12.2 percent jump in revenue last quarter to $42.12 billion. That exceeded the roughly $39.9 billion that Wall Street analysts had predicted, on average.

The return of the Mac was a surprise. There was talk once of Apple leaving its Mac business behind as it moved into the gadget business. But it appears that there are people who are prepared to pay over the odds for a PC with an Apple logo on it.

 

AMD flounders

Posted on October 17, 2014 by - News

flounderThe surprise exit of Rory Read as CEO of AMD appears to have been explained as the company reported a lower-than-expected revenue forecast for the current quarter and announced job cuts.

Read cleaned out his desk,  handed over the keys to the executive drinks cabinet and his special poisoned chalice, to Chief Operating Officer Lisa Su this week. This sparked speculation that this quarter’s numbers were going to be bad.

AMD has seen its market value nearly halved since when Read took over in 2011 as the company lost market share to Intel.

Sure enough, in a statement, AMD reported third-quarter revenue and gave a forecast for current-quarter revenue, both of which missed expectations and its shares were down 5 percent in extended trade.

AMD said its revenue fell two percent to $1.43 billion in the third quarter, missing Wall Street expectations.

The company said its fourth quarter revenues would fall 13 percent, plus or minus three percent, from the September quarter. That would be about $1.244 billion.

Analysts on average had expected revenue of $1.47 billion in the third quarter and $1.48 billion in the fourth quarter

In response, AMD said that it was cutting seven percent of its workforce. This would be the outfit’s third major round of job cuts since 2011.

AMD said the cuts would be made by December and save about $9 million in the fourth quarter and $85 million next year.

AMD had 10,149 employees at the end of the September quarter.

AMD reported a net profit of $17 millionin the third quarter, compared with a net gain of $48 million a year earlier.

In the third quarter, AMD’s Computing and Graphics group, which includes processors for PCs, saw its revenue fall 16 percent year over year.

PC Partner partner gets into 3D printing

Posted on October 16, 2014 by - News, Products

manli-simplyprint-3d-printer-2PC Partner partner Manli has launched two 3D printers which look the spit of something already on the market.

According to Fudzilla the move mimics one carried out by Inno3D. Both outfits are PC Partner brands and the printers are practically twins.

The Manli SimplyPrint 3D is a rebadged Inno3D Printer M1, while the Manli MXPrint 3D is the Inno3D Printer D1.

The specs are the same. All of them have a build volume of 140mm (L) x 140mm(W) x 150mm (H), layer resolution of 0.13-0.30mm, 0.4mm nozzle and all use standard 1.75mm filament. The MXPrint 3D features an open design with a metal frame, while the SimplyPrint 3D is enclosed in a plastic shroud.

Inno3D is pricing the printers at €1,150 in Europe and Manli’s printers should cost about the same. Manli is PC Partner’s brand for Asia, so its products are usually not available in western markets.

Still it is an odd step sideways for Manli which is better known as an Nvidia partner and maker of motherboards and cards.

Christmas cancelled at eBay

Posted on October 16, 2014 by - News

santa-naughty-listIt seems that eBay has been naughty and is worried that Santa will not visit it this Christmas.

The online auctioneer trimmed its full year revenue forecast because it expects a weaker than expected holiday shopping season.

EBay cut its full-year revenue outlook to between $17.85 billion and $17.95 billion from its previous range of $18 billion to $18.3 billion.

The company also forecast fourth quarter revenues of less than $5 billion, falling short of the $5.2 billion expected by Wall Street.

Weak economic data from the United States and China is fanning fears of another global slowdown, forcing investors to re-examine the world economy that is only just emerging from one of the worst recessions in history.

The fact is that analysts are not certain what will happen this Christmas, but signs from the luxury retailers indicate that things might be tight.

US retail sales, which account for about one-third of consumer spending, recorded their first fall since January last month.

eBay’s marketplaces division, which grew less than some forecast and the fear is that the company’s dependence on Europe might have also played a role in depressing its outlook.

Intel makes profit

Posted on October 15, 2014 by - News

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERASemiconductor firm Intel gave a current-quarter revenue forecast well above what the cocaine nose jobs of Wall Street had predicted.

Intel posted third quarter net profits of $3.32 billion compared with $2.95 billion in the same financial quarter last year.

Third quarter revenue was $14.6 billion, up eight percent from same quarter last year, and the company said it expects fourth quarter revenues of $14.7 billion, plus or minus $500 million.

Wall Street expected third quarter revenues of $14.44 billion and fourth quarter revenues of $14.48 billion.

The company said its supply chain was in good shape ahead of the holiday season and demand for PCs had recovered as enterprises finally started replacing their aged PCs.

Intel said in a statement on Tuesday that demand for its chips was in good shape.

“The worldwide PC supply chain appears to be healthy, with inventory levels appropriate in anticipation of the fourth quarter retail cycles,” Intel said.

The recovering PC industry has helped push Intel’s shares 24 percent higher in 2014, making it the top performer in the Dow Jones industrial average.

The results are an apparent poke in the eye to comments from Microchip that weak demand in China  would soon become visible across the chip industry.

Intel said its gross margins would slip to 64 percent in the current quarter from 65 percent in the third quarter.

Intel said its mobile and communications group had an operating loss of $1.04 billion on revenue of $1 million, reflecting subsidies Intel has been paying to persuade tablet makers to use its chips.

Shares of Intel were up 2.05 percent in extended trade after closing up 2.13 percent at $32.14 on Nasdaq.

Samsung blue over low profits

Posted on October 7, 2014 by - News

samsung-hqDepending on smartphones appears to have cost Samsung – the company is headed for its first annual earnings drop since 2011.

The company has revealed its July-September profit would be the lowest in more than three years and the short-term prospects for smartphones were uncertain.

Samsung is finding that its market share is falling thanks to the rise of Chinese rivals like Lenovo and Xiaomi.

Samsung said in a regulatory filing on Tuesday that operating profit for the third quarter likely fell 59.7 percent to $3.8 billion which was lower than the cocaine nose jobs of Wall Street predicted.

This would mark the South Korean giant’s weakest quarterly profit since the second quarter of 2011 and the fourth consecutive quarter of earnings declines on a yearly basis.

Samsung said that although “uncertainty” persisted in the mobile business, which accounted for nearly 70 percent of its 2013 operating profit, it “cautiously expects” higher shipments of new smartphones and strong seasonal demand for TV products.

Operating margin for the smartphone business fell substantially in the quarter due to higher marketing expenditure and sharply lower average selling prices, as the proportion of shipments for high-end devices fell and prices for older models dropped, Samsung said.

The belief amongst analysts is that Samsung will be back with stronger volumes once it revamped its product lineup.  The outfit released its Galaxy Note 4 in recent months, featuring metal frames which will fix the accusation that its use of plastic had harmed sales.

Samsung also aims to launch more cost-competitive devices in the mid-to-low end segments. Analysts expect these products to appear by the end of October.

It is widely expected that Samsung would release a new mid-tier product late this month valued at between $300 and $400. The new device would use similar components to the flagship Galaxy S5 smartphone which is priced at about $500.

Samsung’s chip division is doing well. Samsung is the world’s top memory chipmaker and the returns from its memory business in the third quarter improved sequentially due to strong seasonal demand.

Cloud lifts Salesforce aloft

Posted on August 22, 2014 by - News

Clouds in Oxford: pic Mike MageeSalesforce surprised the cocaine nose jobs of Wall Street by reporting better-than-expected quarterly revenue.

According to the company, its revenue was helped by an increase in demand for its web-based sales and marketing software. It also raised its full-year profit and revenue forecast.

Salesforce expects an adjusted profit of 50-52 cents per share on revenue of $5.34-$5.37 billion for the year ending Jan. 31. It had previously predicted it would make 49-51 cents on revenue of $5.30-$5.34 billion. Wall Street had been expected a profit of 51 cents per share on revenue of $5.34 billion.

Wall Street now suspects that Salesforce is sitting on a few mega-deals in the pipeline that it should close.

Salesforce is investing in software targeted at specific sectors such as healthcare to boost growth and has already signed some deals with Dutch healthcare and lighting company Philips to offer online management of chronic diseases.

Salesforce reported net loss of $61.1 million for the second quarter ended July 31, compared with a profit of $76.6 million, or 12 cents per share, a year earlier. Revenue rose to $1.32 billion from $957.1 million.

The outfit’s subscription and support revenue, which accounts for 93 percent of total revenue, rose 37 percent. Professional services revenue rose 58 percent.

Samsung sulks as profits slump

Posted on July 31, 2014 by - News

sulkingSamsung reported its worst quarterly profit in two years and moaned about uncertain earnings prospects for its key handset business.

The fact it gave such a doomed profits prophecy and kept its interim dividend unchanged from last year, put the shares of the outfit on track for their worst fall in nearly eight months.

Samsung expects July-September handset shipments to pick up by 10 percent from the previous quarter and said it planned to release a new premium smartphone employing a new design and material.

The outfit is suffering from its low end being squeezed from Chinese rivals like Xiaomi and has promised price cuts.

Those plans were pretty much want everyone thought it would do Samsung remained downbeat about its third-quarter prospects, with its mobile division expecting a decline in average sales price in the current quarter from the April-June period.

Senior Vice President Kim Hyun-joon said that considering intensifying competition of price and specifications as well as the release of new competing models, it is difficult to expect earnings to improve from the second quarter.

For April-June, Samsung said operating profit fell 24.6 percent annually to $7.03 billion, matching its guidance. It was the third straight quarter of profit decline and its weakest result since the second quarter of 2012.

Profit for the mobile division fell to about $4.42 billion from $6.28 billion a year ago.

Samsung’s mobile division executives returned a quarter of their first-half bonuses and have downgraded to economy seats for shorter flights.

Researcher IDC warned that Samsung’s second-quarter global smartphone market share slipped to 25.2 percent from 32.3 percent a year ago.

Samsung’s guidance on its memory business was bullish, tipping its 2014 shipment growth for both DRAM and NAND memory chips to outpace the broader market.

Apple loses momentum

Posted on July 23, 2014 by - News

gala_appleThe fruity cargo cult Apple is slowing down and will look to its old enemy IBM to pull its nadgers out of the fire.

Yesterday the company posted a smaller-than-expected six percent rise in quarterly revenue.

The Tame Apple press, desperate to find something good in the figures said that revenue surged 28 percent in greater China despite stiff competition in its third-largest market. What they failed to say is that 28 percent of sod all is still sod all.

Apple sold 35.2 million iPhones in the June quarter, a rise of about 13 percent that was in line with analysts’ projections.

Chief Executive Tim Cook told analysts on a conference call that Apple’s Chinese performance was “honestly surprising”. Unit iPhone sales jumped about 48 percent and Mac computer sales rose 39 percent in the June quarter.

But Apple has never been a particularly big seller in the Android dominated Chinese market and for Jobs’ Mob to make serious money it would have to increase its sales by several hundred percent to be any use.

Again the Tame Apple Press stepped in to say that this quarter is always light because there is a new phone coming out which means people are not buying the old one. But signs are that Apple is putting its hopes on larger screen phones, ignoring the fact that its rivals have been there already.
The figures also show a different story. Apple forecast revenue of $37 billion to $40 billion this quarter, weak compared with Wall Street’s outlook for $40 billion or more — Apple does not believe the new phone will make that much difference.

Some of the dafter Apple press have even suggested that the company will be turned around by entering the wearable device market with the iWatch.

Apple reported sales of $37.4 billion in its fiscal third quarter ended June, falling short of Wall Street’s expectations for about $38 billion.

Sales of iPads, which like smartphones are coming under growing pressure from Android rivals, at 13.3 million fell a little short of analysts’ projections for more than 14 million. Net income jumped 12.2 percent to $7.75 billion.

AMD loss shocks Wall Street

Posted on July 18, 2014 by - News

AMD_lassDespite winning all sorts of console contracts, AMD managed to disappoint Wall Street by posting a loss this quarter and gave a revenue forecast for the current quarter that missed expectations.

AMD’s stock fell 15 percent in extended trade after the outfit said it had a net loss of $36 million in the June quarter, compared with a loss of $74 million, a year earlier.

Intel’s results had created expectations on Wall Street that the worst is over for the personal computer industry.  However this seems to suggest that AMD does not think so.

AMD has been expanding into new markets like game consoles and low-power servers and it aims to obtain half of its revenue from those additional businesses by the end of 2015.

Some of the dafter analysts think that the problem is because AMD is too dependent on the PC and does not make enough cash making mobile gear. That argument falls flat when you realise that Intel made a stonking profit but its mobile division bled cash.

Generally it was nothing to do with falling PC sales, or a drift to mobile. AMD’s biggest problem is debt. Each quarter it has to pay $49 million to service its huge debt pile.  If this were not, there the company would have reported a non-GAAP operating profit of $67 million.

In fact AMD’s revenue rose 24 percent to $1.44 billion in the second quarter. The company said its third-quarter revenue would rise 2 percent, plus or minus 3 percent, from the June quarter. That would be about $1.47 billion. Analysts on average had expected revenue of $1.44 billion in the second quarter and $1.57 billion in the third quarter.

Revenue in the Computing Solutions Group dropped 20 percent from a year ago, to $669 million, as microprocessor unit shipments declined. But notebook processor sales rose, while AMD sold fewer desktop processors and chipsets. GPU revenue declined as well, partially offset by a rise in chips sold into graphics workstations and add-on cards.

 

IBM disappoints with better than expected results

Posted on July 18, 2014 by - News

IBM logoIt seems that IBM cannot really win.  It released results which were much better than expected but it appears that shareholders were not impressed.

Net profit rose to $4.1 billion, or $4.12 per share, from $3.2 billion, or $2.91 per share, a year earlier. On an adjusted basis, the company earned $4.32 per share, beating analysts’ average estimate of $4.29.

However, analysts were quick to find fault. At the heart of the problem was the IBM’s software business which only grew one percent in the quarter to $6.5 billion, slower than forecasts of three percent.

Software revenue was IBM’s bread and butter and it had been growing quite well over recent years. The slowdown means that IBM is getting fewer contracts.

IBM Chief Financial Officer Martin Schroeter expected that software revenue would pick up to mid-single digits in second half of 2014.

There were a few one off problems too. In January, IBM sold its customer care business, which brought in approximately $1.2 billion in full year revenue in 2013, to hardware distributor Synnex, a sale the company expects to negatively affect revenue comparisons by $300 million per quarter.

Last quarter, the company saw a $870 million restructuring fee, which was largely completed and contributed to savings quarter over quarter.

One bright point was that it saw growth in its strategic sectors as business analytics was up 7 percent, cloud revenue grew 50 percent, and security revenue rose 20 percent.

Revenue fell 2 percent to $24.4 billion in the second quarter, above analysts’ average estimate of $24.1 billion. The wooden spoon was won by the Asia Pacific region which fell nine per cent. Revenue in the Americas fell 1 percent/

Net profit rose to $4.1 billion, or $4.12 per share, from $3.2 billion, or $2.91 per share, a year earlier.