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Posted
May 02 2008, 10:33 AM
by
Kim Peterson
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It's no surprise that Oracle's Larry Ellison tops Forbes' list of the best-paid CEOs in technology. Ellison is #14 on the list of world billionaires and gets big money from his company every year. His salary last year was only $1 million, but he got $182 million more through exercising stock options, according to Forbes.
Oracle shareholders can't be too upset. The company's total return in the fiscal year was 36.3%, according to Forbes. A year ago Oracle shares were in the $19 range. They reached the $23 mark in January and are now trading at around $21.34.
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Posted
Apr 23 2008, 01:33 PM
by
Kim Peterson
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OK, Apple, this little game you play with quarterly forecasts isn't cute. Low-balling your numbers makes your stock screwy on earnings day. And it gives investors fits. Let's look at what Apple said in January about its second-quarter performance. Revenue would be about $6.8 billion, the company predicted, and profit would be about 94 cents a share. What really happened? Today the company said revenue was $7.51 billion and profit was $1.16 a share.
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Posted
Apr 22 2008, 04:43 AM
by
Douglas McIntyre
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Once a year, the firm Millard Brown puts out its BrandZ 100 Most Valuable Brands. The data used for the list come from consumer research and financial data on the companies. The research house gives its methodology here.
For those who think Google is the top brand, give yourself a pat on the back. It has a brand valuation of $86 billion, up 30%. For those research mavens in the crowd, the figure makes absolutely no sense. Google has a market cap of $168 billion. Most of that would go away -- no matter how good the technology is -- if it changed it name to Dawdle.
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Posted
Apr 18 2008, 01:43 PM
by
Kim Peterson
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Apple once again topped BusinessWeek's annual list of the 50 most innovative companies. And it's hard to argue with that call, what with the iPhone and the MacBook Air debuting in the last year. But I think Google is on pace to beat Apple when it comes to innovation, with its emphasis on creativity and pet products and its entry into markets like renewable energy and telecommunications. Let's see Apple top that this next year. Google is #2 on the list. Here's the rest of the top 10:
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Posted
Apr 16 2008, 04:57 PM
by
Charley Blaine
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I'm not making this up. Apple's market capitalization is bigger than Citigroup's. The actual numbers at today's close were $135 billion for Apple and $123 billion for Citigroup.
This fact, which came courtesy of Barry Ritholtz's blog The Big Picture, struck me as, well, preposterous. Check these most basic of comparisons:
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Posted
Apr 03 2008, 12:32 PM
by
Kim Peterson
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Apple has become the top music seller in the U.S. The company made the announcement today after Ars Technica leaked an internal e-mail with details. Just a couple of months ago, Apple passed Best Buy to become the #2 music retailer. Now, the company is topping the charts.
Apple had 19% of the market in January, and Wal-Mart was in second place with 15%, according to the leaked e-mail. It's worth noting an obvious difference between the two: Apple is an all-digital music seller, while most of Wal-Mart's sales are physical CDs. Best Buy, Amazon and Target rounded out the top five spots. Some tech blogs thought that January's numbers were skewed due to people redeeming iTunes gift cards recieved over the holidays. But it looks like Apple stayed on top in February as well.
Shares of the company rose nearly 3% today to close at $151.61. Here's what others had to say about the news:
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Posted
Apr 03 2008, 11:45 AM
by
Douglas McIntyre
Filed under: Apple, Comcast, Ford, DirecTV, Verizon, Sirius, XM Satellite Radio, AT&T, Time Warner Cable, Toyota, GM, Clear Channel, Dish Network
Rating:
When the Justice Department cleared the merger of Sirius with XM Satellite there was anticipation that once the deal got done the shares of both companies would go up. A year ago, the combination was viewed as a dream deal.
If anything, the shares have dropped. Sirius is below $3 and XM is below $13. The market began to realize that the year wasted on getting government approval was a year the companies need to stay competitive. XM has over $1 billion in debt. Refinancing it in the current market would be nearly impossible. Selling shares would lead to extremely large dilution. As we recently noted, Goldman Sachs even put Sirius on its "Conviction Sell List" with a price target of $2.25.
Growth at Sirius has slowed considerably. In the fourth quarter revenue rose only 29% to $250 million. But, for the full year, revenue was up 45%. Subscriber deactivations in the fourth quarter were almost 540,000 compared to 330,000 in the same quarter of 2006. The firm's net loss was $166 million. Long-term debt was almost $1.3 billion.
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Posted
Mar 31 2008, 10:13 AM
by
Kim Peterson
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A 3G iPhone? Don't expect Apple to talk about it these days. Any acknowledgement by the company that a 3G iPhone is coming will cause sales of existing iPhones to plummet. Why spend $400 or $500 on an iPhone now when there's a faster, cooler one just around the corner? No wonder Apple is keeping quiet while iPhone rumors swirl. Taiwanese manufacturer Hon Hai has reportedly received an order to make a "more advanced version" of the iPhone. A Bank of America analyst says the 3G iPhone will be here by summer, and predicts that Apple will produce 8 million in the third quarter alone. Apple has said it wants to sell 10 million iPhones in 2008. Current iPhones run on AT&T's EDGE network, which is technically at
2.75G for data transmission. That's slower than 3G, but how noticeable is the difference? Let
me know in the comments.
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Posted
Mar 20 2008, 12:05 PM
by
Kim Peterson
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I've been thinking about CEO apologies today after reading the Jeff Bezos note plastered on Amazon's front page. Bezos' contrition stems from the fact that the company sold out of the new Kindle electronic book reader in 5.5 hours, and it has been scrambling to increase production ever since. Some customers have waited six weeks to get one. Soon, Bezos said, Amazon will start shipping Kindles to people the same day they order them. "We had high hopes for Kindle before its launch," Bezos wrote, "but we didn't expect the demand that actually materialized." This wasn't exactly an apology -- Bezos never said he was sorry -- but it did have a "we screwed up" tone. And yet it smacked of product promotion -- it was another opportunity to advertise the Kindle to everyone who visits Amazon today. Amazon shares rose more than 4% today to $73.25.
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Posted
Mar 19 2008, 08:02 AM
by
Kim Peterson
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After pooh-poohing music subscription services for years, Apple is talking to labels about that very idea, according to the Financial Times. It's about time. Apple could really energize iPod sales this way. But here's the twist: instead of the regular pay-every-month scenario, the fee would be bundled up front into the price of an iPod or iPhone.
In other words, if you pay more when you buy the iPod, you could get free access to all the music on iTunes for the life of the device. Executives talking to the FT said research has shown that people will pay up to $100 for that, or they would be willing to pay a $7 to $8 monthly fee for a music subscription.
Nokia has a similar deal in place for devices it's developing, and reportedly will pay music labels $80 for every device sold. Apple, in its typical drive-the-labels-nuts fashion, has only offered to pay about $20, according to the FT. Nokia is being hit hard with the news today; its shares have fallen nearly 8% this morning to $30.17. Apple shares are down less than 1% to $132.04, and shares in RealNetworks, which owns the competing Rhapsody music subscription service, are down nearly 2%. Napster shares are down 3%.
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