Peter Kafka

Recent Posts by Peter Kafka

Pandora Beats the Street, Which Yawns

Pandora turned in revenue and earnings numbers that were in line with Wall Street’s expectations, and boosted its forecast for next year and the rest of 2011.

Investors are yawning, though, and perhaps even frowning a bit — they’ve knocked a few cents off the company’s share price in after-hours trading, and it’s now down 3 percent, to $11.50.

For the record: The streaming music/Web radio service generated $75 million and non-GAAP earnings of 2 cents, topping street estimates of $71 million and a one-cent loss. It bumped up revenue and earnings predictions for both the next quarter and all of 2012.

And while the initial earnings report doesn’t disclose the breakdown, Pandora CEO Joe Kennedy says that mobile streams — Pandora is huge on the iPhone, and very big on Android — once again constituted about 70 percent of the music the company pumped out in the last quarter. Mobile ads made up about half the company’s ad revenue, he said.

So what about competition from new services like Spotify, which launched in the summer and got a huge boost from Facebook this fall, and Clear Channel’s “iheartradio” service? Nothing to see here, Kennedy said during his prepared remarks: “We have seen no impact on our growth trends from any of the activities of other digital music services.”

(Image from animal-space.net)

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