earnings

Updated 8:45 a.m. PDT to include comments from Microsoft.

Microsoft just threw cold water on hopes that a better-than-average Yahoo earnings report Tuesday would likely yield a higher buyout bid for the Internet pioneer.

Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer, speaking in Morocco for the launch of the software giant's North Africa Web portal, issued these comments, according to a Reuters report:

"We think we can accelerate our strategy by buying Yahoo and will pay what makes sense for our shareholders," Ballmer said, according to the report. "I wish Yahoo all the success with its … Read more

Online DVD rental service Netflix announced Monday that net income for the first quarter was up 36 percent year over year, due in part to an increase in its subscriber base.

Netflix reported it had 8,243,000 total subscribers at the end of the quarter, which closed March 31. That's a 21 percent increase over the same period last year. First-quarter revenue was $326.2 million, up from $305.3 million for the same period last year. GAAP net income was $13.4 million, compared with $9.9 million in the first quarter last year--a 36 percent rise.… Read more

The American economy may be teetering on the edge of recession, but it appears for now that the high-tech economy is not.

Google Thursday afternoon joined the list of tech bellwethers reporting healthy first-quarter earnings and signaling confidence in the rest of 2008.

Tuesday, Intel was positively bullish in its forecast for the rest of year. Wednesday, IBM was the same. Now you have the most important company in PCs and servers, the most important business tech company, and the most important Internet company all saying the same thing: We're confident in the rest of the year, "regardless … Read more

Google topped pessimistic Wall Street profit expectations Thursday, reporting a net income increase of 31 percent to $1.31 billion for its most recent quarter.

Excluding various items, that meant earnings per share of $4.84, well above the $4.52 expected on average by analysts surveyed by Thomson Financial. Revenue, which benefited an "immaterial" amount from the acquisition of DoubleClick, was $5.2 billion in the quarter ended March 31, compared with $3.7 billion for the same period a year earlier, the company said.

Excluding $1.49 billion in partner commissions called traffic acquisition costs, Google'… Read more

eBay announced Wednesday its second straight $2 billion quarter and said its first-quarter revenue was up 24 percent from a year ago.

The auction giant said that it brought in Q1 revenue of $2.19 billion, up 24 percent from the $1.77 billion it brought in during the same period a year earlier. In addition, the company's Q1 profit of $460 million, or 34 cents a share, was up 22 percent from its Q1 2007 earnings of $377 million, or 27 cents.

In a release, eBay attributed its strong quarter to several factors, including global business classifieds, growth … Read more

IBM blew past first-quarter earnings estimates Wednesday, posting earnings of $1.65 per share.

Wall Street had expected Big Blue to post earnings of $1.45 a share on revenue of $23.7 billion for the quarter, according to Thomson Financial. Instead, IBM posted an 11 percent increase in first quarter revenue to $24.5 billion, compared with the same period last year.

IBM, cited strong performances in its Global Technology Services unit, which posted a 17 percent increase in revenue to $9.7 billion, as well as double-digit growth with its Global Business Services, also up 17 percent to $… Read more

Comments by CEO Paul Otellini and CFO Stacy Smith during Intel's 2008 first-quarter earnings conference call on Tuesday cast a pall over the chipmaker's flash business while boosting the outlook of Netbook chips.

First, a quick inventory of the comments made by Otellini and Smith about Intel's NAND flash memory business. Overall Intel gross margins were affected by collapsing prices in the NAND market. Intel is currently in a joint NAND chip manufacturing partnership with Micron Technology. NAND flash is used in large-capacity storage devices which are, in most cases, interchangeable with hard disk drives. Intel said earlier this year … Read more

Business is slowing a bit in the drive industry.

The Scotts Valley, Calif.-based company said it pulled in $3.1 billion in revenue for its third fiscal quarter, which ran from January through March, and $344 million in net income. Net income per share came to 65 cents.

While the figures for the January-March represents an increase in revenue and net income over last year, retail sales of drives and sales into the notebook market in the past three months came in at less than expected, said CEO Bill Watkins in a prepared statement.

The company, however, also lowered … Read more

Advanced Micro Devices is getting set to launch updated Phenom processors amid rumors that the chipmaker is reducing its workforce by 5 percent.

AMD is slated to begin shipping quad-core Phenom 9850, 9750, 9650, 9550, and 9150 processors in the coming weeks, according to sources close to the company. The "50" branding scheme indicates that the processors are the B3 version of the Phenom that fixes the "TLB" bug. This was first reported in DigiTimes.

Later, AMD will also ship updated triple-core processors, including the 8750 and 8560. Updated triple-core processors will not necessarily be B3 … Read more