“We always said 2009 would be a tough year.” SAP CEO Léo Apotheker made that remark during the company’s third-quarter earnings call today and, sadly, SAP’s worse-than-expected performance and reduced forecast for the year would seem to bear him out.
Evidently, Netflix is as recession-proof as Hollywood. Reporting third-quarter earnings after market close Thursday, the DVD-by-mail pioneer posted net income of $30.1 million, up 48 percent from a year earlier, on revenue of $423.1 million. That’s 52 cents a share. Analysts had been expecting 46 cents a share on $419.9 million in sales. Why, then, are investors punishing the company in after-hours trading?
Though eBay reported a 29 percent drop in profit for its third quarter Wednesday, the company did deliver revenue that was reasonably higher than Wall Street’s expectations. Not that it mattered much. Investors took eBay out to the woodshed anyway, beating its shares down seven percent in after-hours trading.
Google isn’t scheduled to report third-quarter results until Thursday, but already shares in the company are trading higher in anticipation of solid results. At $524.24, they’re up 1.55 percent–nearly $8, and not without good reason.
It’s merger mania in the tech industry. First Dell buys Perot Systems for $3.9 billion. Then Xerox purchases Affiliated Computer Services for $6.4 billion. Now Cisco is acquiring Tandberg for nearly $3 billion in cash.
Good apparently isn’t good enough for RIM investors. The BlackBerry maker reported earnings for its first fiscal quarter that rose 33 percent to $3.42 billion on strong sales. And while that was in line with the Street’s $3.41 billion consensus estimate, the company’s shares slipped nearly five percent in after-hours trading.
Business journalists who had their careers curtailed by the souring economy might consider stopping by the Securities and Exchange Commission on their next trip to the unemployment office. The agency may have a good use for their talents, according to Chairman Mary Schapiro, who finds the sadly diminished ranks of the business press worrisome.
As one might imagine, Apple’s shareholders did not take the news of Steve Jobs’s medical leave of absence well. And learning that his “health-related issues are more complex” than first believed certainly didn’t help matters. After trading resumed, Apple shares tanked, plummeting eight percent to $78.50 (and knocking about $6.4 billion off the company’s market cap) before recovering a bit.
Trading in Apple shares was halted this afternoon when the company announced that Apple CEO Steve Jobs is taking a medical leave of absence until the end of June. Apple COO Tim Cook will handle day-to-day operations in his absence. And Jobs is to remain involved in major strategic decisions. Jobs broke the news to investors in the following memo…
Told that Macworld Expo 2009 will be Apple’s last, and the first that CEO Steve Jobs does not keynote, investors behaved much as you’d imagine, dragging the company’s shares into the mud in after-hours trading. Fueling the panic: obvious concerns about Jobs’s well-being. And, of course, speculation that Macworld is likely to disappoint devotees hoping for the introduction of some insanely great new product. But would Apple really send Senior VP Phil Schiller out onto the Macworld stage without a cool new product to introduce?
Dissapointing news for the Mac faithful and anyone who’s ever seen Apple CEO Steve Jobs deliver his annual Macworld keynote address. Macworld Expo 2009 will be the first such event that Jobs will not keynote and the last the company will attend.
With the economy in contraction and the stock market going all to hell, 2008 was not a good year for the IPO market. In fact, volumewise, it’s looking like it was one of the worst in the last 13 years. Global IPO activity has more than halved since 2007, according to Ernst & Young’s year-end Global IPO update.
AT&T joined the sad conga line of companies laying off workers, announcing on Thursday the elimination of 12,000 jobs. That’s roughly four percent of its workforce. The company cited “economic pressures, a changing business mix and a more streamlined organizational structure” as the rationale for the move.
Well, no wonder Adobe won’t have an exhibition booth at Macworld Conference & Expo 2009–the company seems to be sacking employees who might have otherwise staffed it.… Citing the standard litany of economic tribulations, Adobe Wednesday reduced its fourth-quarter outlook and said it will cut 600 jobs around the world–about eight percent of its workforce.
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. Read more »
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.
12:58 AM: Breakfast: Two schools of fish from Tokyo Bay. Calories: 782,000. How I was feeling when I ate this: confused, irradiated, hating my size.
11:37 AM: Exercise: “Taxi Stomp” (alternating legs, for 30 blocks). Calories burned: 148,900,183.
1983. The Beatles announce their first tour in thirteen years, but likewise announce that Michael Jackson will be going on tour with them as a one gigantic mega-concert event.
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.
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