Posts related to ‘Internet’

Is Google’s Navigation Launch A Category Killer? (GOOG, TRMB, GRMN)

GOOG ImageGoogle Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) and its ‘new’ navigation via Google Maps Navigation is putting the hurt on the GPS competitors.  Trimble Navigation (NASDAQ: TRMB) posted income of $15.6 million, a 60% drop, in its quarterly profits yesterday and revenue was down 18% to $269.7 million.  Unfortunately, the guidance was under expectations.  And shares are only down 0.2% at $21.25 after recovering from morning lows.  Garmin Ltd. (NASDAQ: GRMN) is getting clipped far worse as the ‘launch’ from Google seems to be a direct assault on its model, and Garmin’s earnings are just a week away.  Today’s only real shock may be in the timing of the launch.
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Posted on: October 28, 2009 – 2:46 pm in Consumer Electronics, Internet, Technology Companies, Wireless, , ,

Level 3 Earnings To Outline Direction (LVLT)

LVLT LogoLevel 3 Communications, Inc. (NASDAQ: LVLT) is set to release its third quarter 2009 earnings results on Wednesday morning before the open and plans to hold a conference call at 10:30 AM EST.  Thomson Reuters has consensus estimates at -$0.10 EPS and $926.25 million in revenues.  If Level 3 gives guidance, the estimates for Q4 are -$0.10 EPS and $922.88 million in revenues.  Because this is such a cult stock, the actual metrics behind the scenes are likely to dominate over just the corporate earnings reports.
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Posted on: October 27, 2009 – 2:34 pm in Earnings, Internet, Telecom,

IAC Starts to Recapture Some Ground (IACI, OPEN)

IAC LogoIAC/InterActiveCorp (NASDAQ: IACI) seems to be recapturing some of its mojo.  The online content and online destination and search company noted that asset sales did help profits at a time when advertising revenues were slow.  The company earned $21.7 million or $0.16 EPS (made $0.34 EPS on an adjusted basis) and revenue fell by 9% to $337 million.  We had Thomson Reuters estimates at $0.13 EPS and $334.9 million in revenues.
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Posted on: October 27, 2009 – 8:12 am in Earnings, Internet, Media, ,

Newspapers Cut To Black

newspaperNot too many years ago, one senior newspaper executive said that there was nothing wrong with cutting costs but that, eventually, a company could cut so much that it would disappear up its own arse. The Audit Bureau of Circulations yesterday reported that the average American newspaper lost 10% of its circulation in the six months ending September 30, based on the 379 papers that filed data with the firm. All of the country’s largest newspapers do so. Some of the most well-known newspapers in the industry reduced their circulations much more than 10%. USA Today, the Gannett (NYSE:GCI) flagship, had a drop of over 17% to 1,900,116. The Boston Globe, which is owned by The New York Times Company (NYSE:NYT), had a fall of more than 18% to 264,105. Read More »

Posted on: October 27, 2009 – 5:41 am in Internet, Old Media, ,

New York Times (NYT) Loses Over 7% Of Circulation, Washington Post (WPO) Down 6%

Daily circulation at the nation’s newspapers dropped 10% for the six months ending September 30 according to industry measurement service Audit Bureau of Circulations.

newspaperIt is not clear whether newspapers are helping themselves by shrinking both the size of the pages they are printed on and the number of daily subscribers that they have. The industry’s theory is that if it charges more for newsstand copies and home delivery that marginal readers will fall away and profit-per-reader will rise.

The only problem with a shrinking reader base is that advertising rates have to come down as well. Fewer readers, and advertisers want a better deal. Read More »

Posted on: October 26, 2009 – 10:37 am in Internet, Media, Old Media, , , ,

Carl Icahn Leaves Yahoo! (YHOO) Board Without Getting What He Wanted

houseCarl Icahn, who joined the Yahoo! (NASDAQ:YHOO) board on August 6.2008 after a long proxy fight with the company, is leaving. The portal company had rejected Microsoft’s (NASDAQ:MSFT) search and restructuring proposal the month before Icahn’s addition to the portal company’s board. The Microsoft negotiation was the end of a long series of events which began when the world’s largest software company made a bid to buy Yahoo! for $44.6 billion.

Icahn never really got his way as a board member. There was not follow-on offer from Microsoft to buy Yahoo! and the company’s shares traded below $13 for a number of months after the conversations between the two firms broke off. Read More »

Posted on: October 23, 2009 – 6:02 pm in Activist Investor, Internet, ,

Book Sellers Ask Justice Department To Review Amazon (AMZN) And Wal-Mart (WMT) Pricing

magazinThe American Booksellers Association wants to know the motivation of Wal-Mart (NYSE:WMT), Target (NYSE:TGT), and Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) for selling popular books online for under $10. The industry group has asked The Justice Department to investigate what it believes “constitute illegal predatory pricing that is damaging to the book industry and is harmful to consumers.” The association sent a letter to the Antitrust Division of the department detailing its grievances.

At the core of the dispute between publishers and the large online retailers is that major titles are being sold below the cost that Amazon and its rivals have to pay to book companies. The American Booksellers Association says that this is the equivalent of a conspiracy “to win control of the market for hardcover bestsellers.” Read More »

Posted on: October 23, 2009 – 5:14 am in Internet, Law, Retail, , ,

Amazon (AMZN): Innovation’s Reward

nokThe founders of the large web properties of Web 1.0 are all gone now save one. Yahoo!’s (NASDAQ:YHOO) chief Yahoo!s have very little to do with the company, although one of them, Jerry Yang, made a brief and troubled attempt to run the company recently. The founders of eBay (NASDAQ:EBAY) and AOL retired a long time ago. Many of the websites that were among the most visited in the US a decade ago have disappeared since Jeff Bezos created Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) in 1994. Lycos, Excite, Altavista, Infoseek, and Switchboard have either disappeared or are tiny players among the new elite group of Web 2.0 firms which includes Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, and Google (NASDAQ:GOOG). Read More »

Posted on: October 23, 2009 – 4:37 am in Earnings, Editor's Picks, Entertainment, Internet, , , , ,

Is Twitter The Next Hula Hoop?

twitterMicrosoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) and Google (NASDAQ:MSFT) have each formed a partnership with micro- blogging company Twitter. The search engines at the firms will survey the real time “tweets” , which are small text messages of only a few words, from Twitter’s millions of users. There is some important information to be gathered in all that “real time” communication, or at least Microsoft and Google think so.

Access to Twitter’s tens of millions of users may give insights to marketers who want to know how people use their brands, to news organizations who want to know what people will watch or read, or the government which may want to spy on people plotting by using Twitter as their means of communications. Read More »

Posted on: October 22, 2009 – 6:01 am in Internet, , ,

eBay Guidance Poses Performance & Valuation Questions (EBAY)

eBay LogoeBay Inc. (NASDAQ: EBAY) posted non-GAAP earnings of $0.38 EPS on $2.24 billion in revenues.  Thomson Reuters had estimates for the online auction giant pegged at $0.37 EPS and $2.14 billion in revenues.  The guidance for the company came in at $0.38 to $0.40 non-GAAP EPS and $2.2 to $2.3 billion in revenues for the current Q4 period.  After the run-up we have seen, that is not going to please even the most bullish fans of the stock as Thomson Reuters has estimates of $0.40 EPS and $2.26 billion in revenues.
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Posted on: October 21, 2009 – 4:25 pm in Earnings, Internet, Technology Companies,

Yahoo! (YHOO) And The Miracle Of Cost Cutting

bearWall St. was impressed by but not euphoric about Yahoo!’s (NASDAQ:YHOO) third quarter earnings. The company’s net revenue was $1.131 billion, down from $1.325 billion in the period last year. Net income for the quarter that ended in September was $187 million, $.13 cents a share, up from $54.3 million, or $.04 a share, a year ago. Read More »

Posted on: October 21, 2009 – 4:58 am in Internet, Media, , ,

Google (GOOG) Apps Passes Two Million Customers

TVGoogle (GOOG) says it now has two million customers using its Apps products. The online software offers many of the features of Microsoft (MSFT) Windows, but operates on Google’s servers instead of on the user’s PC.

Read more….

Posted on: October 19, 2009 – 6:58 am in Internet, ,

Major Tech Earnings on Deck (AAPL, TXN, SNDK, STX, WDC, YHOO, EBAY, VMW, EMC, AMZN, BRCM, JNPR, SYNA, MSFT)

This week is going to make last week’s earnings flood look like elementary school.  We have the floodgates opening for technology, web, software, hardware, and IT, and 24/7 Wall Street has previewed 14 of the top technology stocks that are on deck to report earnings this coming week:  Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL), Texas Instruments Inc. (NYSE: TXN), SanDisk Corp. (NASDAQ: SNDK), Seagate Technology (NASDAQ: STX), Western Digital Corp. (NYSE: WDC), Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ: YHOO), eBay Inc. (NASDAQ: EBAY), VMware, Inc. (NYSE: VMW), EMC Corp. (NYSE: EMC), Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN), Broadcom Corp. (NASDAQ: BRCM), Juniper Networks, Inc. (NASDAQ: JNPR), Synaptics Inc. (NASDAQ: SYNA), and Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ: MSFT).

We have provided the first details for earnings, Thomson Reuters consensus data, added color of our own on the earnings trends, listed key issues to watch, and included the performance from the June 30 close and from the March 9 close that traders are using as the key pivotal turning day where the bear market died and a new bull market run began.
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Posted on: October 17, 2009 – 11:25 am in Calendar, Earnings, Internet, Semiconductor, Technology Companies, , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Next Week’s Top 10 Earnings on Deck (AAPL, UNH, YHOO, FCX, WFC, T, MCD, POT, MSFT, SLB)

NYSE Floor ImageWe have almost an endless wave of corporate earnings for the calendar Q3-2009 coming out next week.  We have what looks to be over 100 of the S&P 500 Index members reporting and what appears to be 12 current or ex-DJIA components reporting earnings as well.  Coming up with a Top 10 is almost unfair, but this coming week’s top ten earnings we will be focusing on are as follows: Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL), UnitedHealth Group Inc. (NYSE: UNH), Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ: YHOO), Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold (NYSE: FCX), Wells Fargo & Company (NYSE: WFC), AT&T Inc. (NYSE: T), McDonald’s Corporation (NYSE: MCD), Potash Corporation of Saskatchewan Inc. (NYSE: POT), Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ: MSFT), and Schlumberger Limited (NYSE: SLB).

We screened out the companies whose destiny has already been set by competitor earnings from this last week and screened out the ones which will have no real broad impact but are still widely held and actively traded. Lastly, we screened out the drug and medical companies as we are featuring those in their own group at BioHealthInvestor.com.  A more detailed estimate count from Thomson Reuters has been provided, along with data showing performance from the March 9 close and the June 30 closing date along with other pertinent information on each stock.
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Posted on: October 16, 2009 – 1:12 pm in Calendar, Earnings, Editor's Picks, Internet, Large Cap Stocks, Technology Companies, , , , , , , , , ,

24/7 Wall St. Interview With Jason DeSena Trennert

bank24/7 Wall St. is conducting a series of interviews with prominent economist and market strategist. Jason DeSena Trennert is the Managing Partner, Chief Investment Strategist at Strategas Research Partners LLP.

The conversation: Read More »

Posted on: October 16, 2009 – 5:24 am in Economy, Internet

Wal-Mart (WMT) Joins E-Book Wars

WMTThe competition in the e-reader and e-book industries gets more brutal by the day. Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) is the e-reader leader because of the success of its Kindle. Other companies including Sony (NYSE:SNE) have come out with products of their own and price cuts have already begun, presumably as a tactic to gain market share.

The e-book business is also becoming much more competitive. The largest book retailer in the country, Barnes & Noble (NYSE:BKS), has increased its presence in the sector in which Amazon is the clear leader. Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) has announced that it will launch an online bookstore.

Wal-Mart (NYSE:WMT), which has one of the most visited e-commerce sites in the US, has launched a new program to sharply increase it market share in the e-book business. Read More »

Posted on: October 16, 2009 – 5:07 am in Internet, , , , ,

Level 3 Filing Pressure Shares, Maybe Unjustly (LVLT)

Money Stack ImageLevel 3 Communications, Inc. (NASDAQ: LVLT) has just disclosed in an SEC filing the “Creation of a Direct Financial Obligation or an Obligation under an Off-Balance Sheet Arrangement of a Registrant.”  The company noted that it consummated the transactions contemplated by a Securities Purchase Agreement that it executed with certain investors on October 1, 2009 in connection with the offering and sale of $275,000,000 aggregate principal amount of its 7% Convertible Senior Notes due 2015, Series B.  A copy of the Purchase Agreement was previously filed as Exhibit 10.1 to the Company’s Current Report on Form 8-K, filed on October 2, 2009, and is incorporated herein by reference.  It appears that the title of the filing has made more of an impact than the actual terms.
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Posted on: October 15, 2009 – 4:49 pm in Bonds, Internet, Secondary Offering, Telecom,

Google Delivers (GOOG)

GOOG ImageGoogle Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) has just reported earnings of $5.89 non-GAAP EPS and revenues of $5.94 billion gross and $4.38 billion on an ex-TAC basis.  Thomson Reuters had estimates for the King of Internet Search at $5.42 EPS and $4.24 billion on an ex-TAC revenue basis.  This is back to growth for Google’s top-line.  Google does not offer guidance, but shares are running higher in after-hours trading.
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Posted on: October 15, 2009 – 4:18 pm in Earnings, Internet,

Google (GOOG) Looks For Amazon’s (AMZN) Weakness

nokToo many companies want to compete with Amazon’s (NASDAQ:AMZN) relatively successful Kindle unit, although investors are concerned that the devices, priced at $249, will never have mass market appeal.

Barnes & Noble (NYSE:BKS) is in the process of launching an e-reader to help it sell electronic content. The chain needs something to offset falling store sales. Read More »

Posted on: October 15, 2009 – 11:31 am in Internet, Media, , , ,

Expedia Scores S&P Rating Upgrade (EXPE)

Expedia LogoThe travel sector may still be complaining about softness and  a spotty recovery, but things are getting better financially at Expedia Inc. (NASDAQ: EXPE).  It turns out that Standard & Poor’s Ratings Services gave the debt rating an upgrade, and now the company is classified as an investment grade company.  The reasons for the upgrade were cited as a conservative fiscal policy, a solid operating performance, and strong financial results.
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Posted on: October 14, 2009 – 3:43 pm in Analyst Calls, Entertainment, Internet, Luxury