Hasta La Gadget!

Apple has issued its earnings report for quarter 4 of its fiscal year, and things are looking pretty solid heading into the holiday shopping season. The company reported a revenue of a whopping $36 billion, which is a pretty significant boost over the $28.3 billion in revenue Apple made in the same quarter last year. The company’s net profit came in at $8.2 billion, which is again up year-over-year from $6.6 billion.

That $8.2 billion in net profit equates to an earnings per diluted share of $8.67, which actually fell a bit short of analyst expectations of $8.81. Interestingly, while EPS came in below analyst expectations, revenue did not. Analysts expected Apple’s revenue for the quarter to settle at $35.8 billion, so Apple managed to slightly beat those predictions.

Where Apple really shined last quarter was with iPhone sales, which were up a ridiculous 58% to 26.9 million. The iPhone 5 certainly helped boost that number, even though the device launched with only 9 days left to go in the quarter that ended on September 30. Apple sold 16 million iPads last quarter, along with 4.9 million Macs and 5.5 million iPods. The sales for iPads, Macs, and iPods came in just under analyst expectations, while iPhone sales managed to exceed predictions.

Apple also trimmed its profit forecast for Q1 a little bit, despite the fact that it’ll be the biggest quarter of the year for the company. Whereas before the company expecting to report a revenue of $55 billion and an earnings per share of $15.49, Apple is now expecting a revenue of $52 billion with an earnings per share of $11.75. Of course, making $52 billion in a single quarter is still insane, so we doubt Apple will be hurting too much when it comes time to report results for Q1.

As an aside, Tim Cook was asked during today’s financial call what he thought of Microsoft Surface, the new Windows RT tablet that’s primed and ready to launch. Cook said that he thinks Surface is “a fairly compromised confusing product,” and that he was confident consumers would still opt for an iPad after seeing all of the competition that’s about to hit store shelves. We’ll see if that’s the case soon enough, as a ton of tablets – including the iPad Mini – will be launching in the coming weeks. Stay tuned.

[via ZDNet; via The Verge]

Apple Q4 earnings report issued, Cook sounds off on Surface is written by Eric Abent & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Just a day after introducing the iPad mini, a revised iMac, a 4th-generation iPad and a retooled Mac mini, the company is outing its Q4 2012 earnings — and it looks as if it has narrowly fell short of Wall Street estimates. Revenue was pegged at $36 billion (compared to estimates of $35.08 billion), with net profit at $8.2 billion. For the sake of comparison, the outfit’s fourth quarter of 2011 saw $28.27 billion in revenue alongside $6.62 billion net profit — at the time, those comically large numbers were actually not up to Wall Street’s comical expectations. If you’re looking for a quarter-over-quarter comparison, the company’s Q3 2012 report showed $35 billion in total revenue, with $8.8 billion in net profits.

The company is guiding for $52 billion in revenues for Q1 2013, while announcing that it sold 26.9 million iPhones (up from 17.01 million a year ago), 14 million iPads (up from 11.12 million) and 5 million Macs (up from 4.89 million) in this quarter. As for the waning iPod business? Predictably, it sold just 5.3 million of those, representing a 19 percent drop from the year-ago quarter. Naturally, the company is expecting its next earnings report to be the one that blows everyone away, with holiday sales — combined with a slew of new kit — to propel things leading into 2013. Apple also announced that shareholders that hold stock as of November 12th will pick up a $2.65 / share dividend.

As for other specifics, we’re told that gross margin was 40.0 percent compared to 40.3 percent in the year-ago quarter, while international sales accounted for 60 percent of the quarter’s revenue. Peter Oppenheimer, Apple’s CFO, proudly boasted: “We’re pleased to have generated over $41 billion in net income and over $50 billion in operating cash flow in fiscal 2012. Looking ahead to the first fiscal quarter of 2013, we expect revenue of about $52 billion and diluted earnings per share of about $11.75.” As for the outfit’s current stash of on-hand cash? $121.3 billion. Yeah. The financial results call will get going at 5PM ET, and we’ll be liveblogging it right here!

Continue reading Apple Q4 2012 earnings: $36 billion in revenue, $8.2 billion net profit

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Apple Q4 2012 earnings: $36 billion in revenue, $8.2 billion net profit originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 25 Oct 2012 16:31:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Hot on the heels of the mysterious and sudden layoffs of 150 employees at Zynga‘s multiple studios comes the company’s Q3 2012 earnings report, and while it doesn’t look too good for the once-booming social game studio, it’s not as bad expected. The company earned a revenue of $317 million, but the net income dipped into the negatives, losing $52 million during the third quarter.

It’s not all bad, though. Revenue was actually expected to be around $250 million, so the amount of money Zynga brought in was actually more than what analysts thought. However, the company is looking for ways to cut down on costs and save a little bit of cash. They implemented a “cost reduction plan” that will hopefully total a pre-tax savings in the fourth quarter of up to $20 million.

The plan already included the downsizing of certain studios and the closure of others. In total, Zynga cut 5% of its workforce and shut down its Boston branch. The company also expects to shut down its Japan and UK studios, but no timeline has been given for that. Zynga also is expecting to shut down 13 of their games, but a lot of their popular games will still remain available.

However, Zynga is reporting slightly higher user numbers this time around. Daily active users were 60 million during the third quarter, which is up 10% from 54 million a year ago, but down from 72 million in the second quarter of this year. Monthly active users were 311 million in the third quarter, up 37% from 227 million a year ago, and also up from 306 million during Q2.

Zynga reports Q3 2012 earnings is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Facebook just announced its earnings for this year’s third quarter, and it seems they were right on track with analysts’ expectations. The company earned a revenue of $1.26 billion and adjusted earnings of $0.12 per share. Analysts had Facebook at estimations of $1.23 billion and $0.11 a share, which was right on par.

More importantly, though, Facebook accelerated its revenue growth once again after experiencing a period of slower growth. They announced sales were up 32% over last year, and Analysts had expected that growth to plateau to 29%. Similarly, ad revenues grew 36% compared to the 28% growth last quarter.

Mobile ad revenue, specifically, accounted for 14% of all ad revenue for Facebook. CEO Mark Zuckerberg mentioned that he wanted to put more focus on mobile, since that’s what a lot of users are taking advantage of. “People who use our mobile products are more engaged, and we believe we can increase engagement even further as we continue to introduce new products and improve our platform,” Zuckerberg said.

The number of monthly active users was 1.01 billion as of the end of September, which is up 26% from last year. In the previous quarter, Facebook had 955 million users. Daily active users was at 584 million on average at the end of September, which is up 28% from last year. And in the previous quarter, daily active users was at 552 million, which is up 32% from that time last year.

[via Forbes]

Facebook announces Q3 2012 earnings is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

With the dawn of Windows 8 coming in this next quarter, it’s time for Microsoft to brace itself for a big change – or what they hope will be a big change after a rather modest financial report here in their Q1 report for 2012. This report has them coming in at $16.01 billion in revenue, which is good, with $5.31 billion in profit, which is certainly OK, but not spectacular for the beast of a company. This update has them coming up over their Q4 report just one quarter ago, but compared to last year at this time, the big M isn’t doing nearly so well.

Last year in this quarter, Microsoft reported a $7.2 billion dollar profit. That’s nearly $2 billion more than what they’ve reported here, and certainly has something to do with the same situation that basically every hardware company has reported this year thus far – low PC sales. It’s time for the next page though, Microsoft must hope, with Windows 8 coming out in just about a week from now.

This update has Microsoft setting aside a lovely $1.36 billion in revenue for Windows and Office upgrades, and the real wave must be coming. Once we’re another quarter in, it’ll be the real test – with the release of Windows 8 and Window Phone 8 could come either a brand new high point for the company or a rather unprecedented low. We’re guessing the former, especially considering the pre-sale sell-out status of the Surface tablets the company is placing so much faith in here before their big launch.

Have a peek at the timeline below for some additional insight in to Windows 8 and the next generation that’ll be popping up by the end of the month. Are you ready for Microsoft to open a new page for the PC world? We certainly hope so.

Microsoft Q1 earnings report swings Windows 8 in like a lamb is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.