What a nice way to top off an already big week.
Posting first-quarter financials before market opening this morning, Microsoft said it earned 40 cents a share on revenue of $12.92 billion, besting analyst estimates that had called for a profit of 32 cents a share and revenue of $12.4 billion.
Nonetheless, the software giant still saw both profits and revenue decline for the third quarter in a row.
Good thing Wall Street wasn’t expecting much from Microsoft. Because it didn’t get it.
After market close Thursday, the Redmond, Wash-based tech giant reported that fiscal fourth-quarter net income fell to $3.05 billion, or 34 cents a share, from $4.3 billion, or 46 cents a share, in the same period a year earlier. Revenue for the period ended in June fell 17 percent to $13.1 billion.
Microsoft missed Wall Street revenue estimates by $1 billion. Gruesome.
Microsoft is scheduled to report fourth-quarter earnings Thursday and if last quarter is any indication, they won’t be pretty. In April, when the company reported its first-ever year-over-year decline in quarterly revenue, CFO Chris Liddell said the weakness would persist through the next quarter.
Microsoft is still interested in a search deal with Yahoo, but for now it’s assuming one’s not in the cards. That’s the word from Microsoft CFO Chris Liddell, who, in remarks at a Goldman Sachs conference in San Francisco Thursday, said Yahoo is not a “silver bullet” solution for the problems with its search business.
Microsoft holds the bottom line better than most, doesn’t it? As expected, the software bellwether posted profit gain and sales growth that topped Wall Street analysts’ estimates when it reported first-quarter results after market close Thursday.
With Yahoo’s stock trading at a 52-week low of $11.37, how could Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer fail to comment on the discrepancy between the company’s current share price and the spurned $33-a-share bid Microsoft made for Yahoo earlier this year? Speaking at the Gartner ITXpo in Orlando, Fla., this morning, Ballmer said that a Microsoft (MSFT) acquisition of Yahoo or its search business would still “make sense economically” for shareholders at both companies. That remark spiked Yahoo’s shares as much as 17 percent, though Microsoft quickly claimed it has no interest in acquiring the company.
Looks like Microsoft’s on-again, off-again, on-again pursuit of Yahoo is off-again, this time for good. Perhaps. Microsoft Chief Financial Officer Chris Liddell told Microsoft investors assembled for an annual day of presentations Thursday that “the chances of us buying Yahoo on a full acquisition basis are so small that they are essentially negligible.”
Well, look who missed analyst expectations by a penny. Microsoft. Though the company Thursday reported 18 percent in revenue growth and 21-percent growth in earnings for its fourth quarter, its 32-percent growth in per-share earnings didn’t quite meet Wall Street expectations.
Microsoft CFO Chris Liddell said last week that “speed is of the essence” in completing a deal to buy Yahoo.
So why is it taking the company so damn long to respond to Yahoo’s latest stonewalling of its advances? Three days have passed since the expiration of Microsoft’s deadline for Yahoo to accept its buyout offer [...]
Microsoft may have fallen short of expectations for third-quarter sales, but it met and exceeded them for color commentary on the Yahoo deal.
On a post-earnings conference call this afternoon, Microsoft (MSFT) CFO Chris Liddell said Yahoo (YHOO), which insists Microsoft’s $31-per-share hostile offer “massively undervalues” it, has “unrealistic expectations” about its worth. “Our initial offer [...]
John Paczkowski has been poking fun at the tech industry and the personalities that drive it since 1997. From 1999 to 2007, he wrote the award-winning tech news Web log Good Morning Silicon Valley for the San Jose Mercury News, Silicon Valley's daily newspaper.
Here is a statement of my ethics and coverage policies. It is more than most of you want to know, but, in the age of suspicion of the media, I am laying it all out.
Best video mashup ever.
A Facebook Memorial
Wow.
Worth it for the Rickrolling photo alone.
Excellent.
Flughumor!
… you vacuous, toffee-nosed, malodorous perverts
Stephen Fry and zoologist Mark Carwardine meet the kakapo — a fat, flightless and very randy rare parrot.
Spectacular in the bellowing Russian sailor sense of the word …
“If you spell something wrong on your insurance claim, do you really deserve surgery? I don’t think so …”
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