Jeff Bewkes

People have been wondering for a long time when Time Warner would sell off Time Inc. And for a long time, whenever anyone asked CEO Jeff Bewkes or senior management about the publishing company, they’d inevitably say something like “we like it, we’re keeping it.”

But when analyst Jessica Reif Cohen asked CFO John Martin the same question back in September, he gave a different answer, and people in and outside of Time Inc. took notice. Here’s the excerpt of their conversation at Bank of America Merrill Lynch’s media conference (I’ve highlighted  a few key parts):

Cohen: In June, News Corp announced plans to separate the publishing business and other small entities from the core media and entertainment franchises. In the second quarter, Time Inc., reported, or your publishing unit reported revenue down 9%, advertising was down 7%, subscription revenue 11%. I mean this is not really a great numbers, so they really kind of dragged down the overall company growth. I mean, would a separation of Time Inc. from your cable network and studio business make sense at some point?

Martin: I wouldn’t rule anything out at some point, but I don’t think it’s exactly synonymous Time Inc. to whatever News Corp’s decision was with respect to particularly newspapers. I mean, Time Inc. is a company that is dealing with nationally branded environments and transitioning to digital and there’s a lot of commonality between the strategy and the issues that we’re facing in our TV and home entertainment businesses as there is in our publishing businesses – probably more commonality now than there has been in the past.

Having said all of that, I would also – I think it’s fair to say we’re disappointed with the results at Time Inc. It’s being driven by the industry, not by the performance of the management, and so we’re proud of the management’s execution against what is a really, really difficult industry backdrop, but I would say – and I think our past is an indicator of this, given what we’ve done with Time Warner Cable and AOL – is that our job is to figure out how to value maximize. And so I wouldn’t rule anything out in the future, but right now, we are working hard and Laura Lang, the new CEO and her team, is working hard to figure out how to meaningfully transition that business to be a multi platform branded environments business, where we’re going to have to continue to obviously make sure that the costs match up against the revenue trajectory as well.

We’ve got a lot of great things going on at Time Warner, and we’re really proud of and while we’re proud of the performance of our publishing unit, within the publishing industry, I think it’s fair to say that we’re disappointed with the secular dynamics in publishing right now.

Translation: We’re in the TV and movie business, and we happen to have a publishing company. We’ll say good things about our publishing company, but please notice that we’ve already sold off our cable pipe business and our Internet business. Meanwhile, we’re going to have to cut costs.

Last week, Time Inc. took care of the cost-cutting part. So today’s report, from Time Inc. publication Fortune, that Time Warner is talking to a “serious buyer” about offloading most of its Time Inc. titles, including People, shouldn’t be a huge surprise.

Since we’re all speculating about buyers, let me suggest that you certainly don’t have to be in the publishing business to be interested in buying most of Time Inc.

The magazine industry is in trouble, but the world’s biggest magazine publisher still makes a lot of money — $420 million in operating profit last year. Wouldn’t be shocked to see a financial buyer who thinks they can cut more costs and pocket a lot of the profit. [UPDATE: The New York Times reports that Meredith, the publisher that puts out titles like Better Homes and Gardens, is the mystery buyer. Still think that "non-strategics" will take a looksee.]

Here’s one: Silver Lake’s contribution, which as far as I know had only been guessed at, turns out to have been $1.4 billion.

I’m no expert in all the nuances of how these things work, but the way I read this 8K, Silver Lake and Dell pooled that plus $750 million in cash plus 273 million shares of Dell stock worth about $3.7 billion as of today’s closing price for a combined $5.8 billion to fund and capitalize a holding company called Denali.

The name Denali is interesting, because it was said to be used as a code word — specifically the name “Mr. Denali” — while the deal’s terms were being hashed out in a six-month negotiation process that began last August, according to Bloomberg News.

It seems that Denali Holdings is the vehicle through which Dell the company will be acquired. Denali will then presumably take the name Dell.

Anyway, combine all that with about $13.75 billion in loans from Bank of America, Barclays, Credit Suisse and RBC, additional cash taken from Dell’s balance sheet, and a $2 billion loan from Microsoft, and there you are.

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The latest to enter the space is Bank of America’s Merchant Services, which today is unveiling Mobile Pay on Demand, a service that allows small business owners to accept customer payments over a cellphone.

“I hate to come out with a commodity product, but every bank should have one,” said Trevor Rubel, EVP of Strategy and Emerging Products for Bank of America Merchant Services.

Square is perhaps the most high-profile company in the market and is already processing $8 billion in payments annually. But its head start hasn’t deterred others from entering into the space, including eBay’s PayPal, Groupon, Intuit, Pay Anywhere and many others.

Bank of America’s nearly identical service will be available starting Dec. 3 and will be priced very competitively. The card reader (which is slightly more bulky than Square’s, and is more rectangular) will be free and payments will cost 2.7 percent per swiped transaction. The mobile application, available across both iOS and Android, is also free.

The rate is priced slightly below Square’s offering of 2.75 percent, but is slightly above Groupon’s 1.8 percent plus 15 cents fee (although Groupon also requires merchants to be active daily deal providers). Bank of America charges no monthly or annual fees.

Rubel says he believes that Bank of America has an advantage over the others because it has a very strong, trusted brand. Plus, it already has substantial relationships with retailers, including roughly two million small- to mid-sized businesses that don’t currently use its payment terminals because they don’t process enough transactions to justify it or because they work on the go. He imagines the new service appealing to the usual crowd of taxi cab drivers, participants at farmer’s markets and contractors.

Some of the perks provided by the service include next-day access to funds and customer service representatives available by phone. Additionally, retailers will be the merchant of record, meaning that the name of the business will appear on a consumer’s credit card statement instead of Bank of America’s or some other provider.

For those merchants that sign up by the end of the year, they will also receive a one-year subscription to Bank of America’s deals marketing platform, which normally costs $200. The platform allows business owners to create a Web site, and to distribute Groupon-like offers, coupons or loyalty programs. The offers are syndicated across several sites, including Facebook, Twitter or 8coupons.com. When offers are redeemed, Bank of America will charge merchants small fees, depending on the type of offer.

The companies — along with others such as financial-service companies Bank of America Corp., FMR LLC’s Fidelity Investments and eBay Inc.’s PayPal — are hoping to create an environment that allows the recipient of an email from, say, a bank, to feel secure that it isn’t a trick.

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The investment marks MasterCard’s first in the mobile payments space, and follows similar moves by both Visa and American Express.

Neither company is releasing terms of the round, but mFoundry said MasterCard was the lead investor. Intel Capital, Fidelity Information Services and Motorola Mobility also participated. Previous investors include PayPal, Bank of America and Ignition Partners.

Consumers will most likely recognize mFoundry for developing the Starbucks mobile application, which displays a bar code that can be scanned at the register to make payments from a prepaid account.

MasterCard’s SVP of Mobile James Anderson said he was more interested in mFoundry’s relationships with 600 banks and credit unions.

For the past five years, the company has been focused on the mobile banking space, by developing applications for banks that enables users to check their balances and conduct other financial services from their phone. He said millions of customers at banks, such as Citi and Bank of America, use the applications three to four times a week on average.

Going forward, MasterCard wants to work with mFoundry to enable those applications to make payments at the register using MasterCard’s near field communication (NFC) technology called PayPass.

Near field technology allows a consumer to tap their phone at the register to pay for items. By integrating with these banking applications, the purchase could be deducted straight from a person’s bank account, and without the need to carry around a wallet.

MasterCard is also working with Google Wallet and ISIS, the wireless carrier-led initiative, but it views this partnership as a third approach. “Some consumers will see value in Google; others will want to use their telco provider, and then some will trust their bank,” Anderson said. “At some level those options will be competing, but we believe the choice is up to the customer.”

MFoundry’s CEO and founder Drew Sievers said the relationship is not exclusive, so his company will be free to work with Visa or others, but MasterCard will naturally have a head start since they will be the first ones integrated into the application. Deployments will occur as soon as the middle of next year.

MasterCard is not the only payments provider making investments in the mobile payments space.

Earlier this year, Visa made a large investment in Square, and American Express has opened up an office in San Francisco and created an intimidatingly large $100 million investment fund to make sure it doesn’t miss out on any opportunities.

Sievers said for companies in the mobile banking and payments space that are gaining traction, there’s not only venture capitalists eager to invest, but a ton of companies looking for strategic investments.

In fact, he said, “there’s fewer opportunities to invest in than there are companies willing to invest.”

The Web site — which publishes leaked, sensitive documents — said it is temporarily suspending all publishing operations so that it can devote its resources to battling Visa Inc., MasterCard Inc., eBay Inc.’s PayPal, Bank of America Corp. and other companies that have prohibited payments to the site since last December.

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In an interview with The Wall Street Journal late Wednesday, the bank’s head of online and mobile banking blamed the glitches on heavy customer traffic amid a continuing effort to upgrade Web capabilities. The executive, David Owen, said the troubles of the past week were caused by a “convergence” of those factors.

The problems hit the most-trafficked U.S. bank website at a time when Bank of America, under pressure from investors because of weak revenue and high expenses, has been promoting Internet banking services in a bid to cut costs. The problems also come on the heels of an unpopular $5 fee the bank unveiled last week on purchases made using debit cards.

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Among the most likely are J.P. Morgan, Bank of America and Deutsche Bank.

The Washington, D.C.-based company, which is the second-largest daily deals company after Groupon, is seeking $1 billion at an implied valuation between $10 billion and $15 billion.

Groupon is seeking to raise $750 million in an IPO, which it filed with the SEC in early June.

The lead underwriters that LivingSocial is likely to work with do not overlap with the ones leading Groupon’s offering, although there might be some overlap if others join later.

LivingSocial has raised a significant amount of money from Amazon.com. Its last round of capital totaled $565 million at a valuation of $3 billion.

Look instead on the market’s margins, where a new set of tech companies is racing to attract public investors before the warm, buzzy feeling wears off.

That’s where a curious document was released Friday afternoon: The initial-public-offering papers for a company called Skullcandy, Inc., issued by top-tier underwriters at Bank of America-Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley.

You probably try to avoid things called Skullcandy. Your kids think otherwise. Lately, they may have been pestering you for a pair of Skullcandy headphones for their iPhones. These headphones are typically stamped with bright colors and large skulls, presumably to enhance parental annoyance.

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A report conducted by Corporate Insight found that all but one of the banks it tracks offer account holders at least one mobile solution, if not multiple options, including apps, mobile sites and text messaging.

The report named Chase as the most advanced, followed by Bank of America and Wells Fargo.

The adoption of smartphones by consumers, plus the threat of not keeping up with the competition, has led banks to roll out new features quickly, the report said.

The most common feature provided was the ability to locate nearby ATMs or branches, while more advanced features included being able to pay bills, receive balance information and transfer money in-house, the report found.

Chase was highlighted as the most advanced because of its “remote deposit capture” feature, which allows you to deposit a check by taking a picture of it.

That feature is frequently provided by a San Diego-based company, Mitek Systems, which said this month that at least 10 well-known financial institutions, including three of the top 10 retail banks, have deployed its picture-taking services.

PayPal and USAA are also customers, and in the first three days the USAA app was available, $1.5 million in deposits were made using the phone’s camera.

Other findings from the study:

• 40 percent of banks offer text messaging as a way to get account balance information.
• 83 percent offer mobile applications for bill paying.
• U.S. Bank and Chase are the only two firms to offer rewards information through mobile banking.

• Stuart Feigin, Oracle employee No. 5:

  “There was no version 1 [of Oracle software] because everyone thought, well, no one buys version 1, it’s buggy. So we started with a version 2. Well, our version two was at least as buggy as anyone’s version 1…And I describe those early versions as the roach motel of databases. The data went in, but it didn’t come out.”

  “For some reason Larry told the Bank of America, I think he told them there were 15 of us when in fact there were five of us. Now I’m not sure why the Bank of America would think differently of you if you’re 5 or 15, but Larry had given them a number, which was a little larger than reality.”

• Bruce Scott, Oracle co-founder:
  “I remember him very distinctly telling me one time: Bruce, we can’t be successful unless we lie to customers.”

  “All the things that you would read in books of somebody being a leader, he wasn’t. But he was tenacious; he would never give up on anything.”

• Gary Bloom, former Oracle EVP

  “I have a theory that Larry’s succession plan for Oracle is he is trying to figure out a way that when he’s six feet under in a grave, he can still run Oracle.”

Sadly missing from the broadcast, my favorite Ellison story/folktale of all time: Back in 1999, he had an enormous boulder installed in the master bathroom at Sanbashi, his Samurai-style home in Woodside, Calif. Ellison reportedly “auditioned” several boulders, pretending to shower in front of them, before settling on the 30-ton stone that would become his “shower rock.”

While a merger of AOL and Yahoo is a fervent dream of bankers looking for fees, the reality is a little more–shall we say–premature.

In fact, it’s likely it was just those dealmakers, looking to gin up some activity, who are behind the latest spin-riffic article in The Wall Street Journal that reports on machinations by AOL to hire unnamed advisers to carry out all kinds of complex deals.

Actually, it is the complexity of any of those deals that has put a lot of the takeover, buyout, merger and other scenarios that center around Yahoo–with a side of AOL, as well as News Corp., Microsoft, Yahoo Japan, the Alibaba Group–on ice.

Among the issues being grappled with: Onerous tax implications around a variety of deals; a need for complete cooperation from too many players; and the realization that a hookup of AOL and Yahoo might cause more problems than it solves.

“It looks great conceptually and everyone gets all hot and bothered,” said one prominent investor who did his own strategizing about Yahoo and AOL. “But when you actually do the numbers, you hit a pretty big wall of impossible.”

Still, any whiff of a deal makes for a spate of overreaching stories in the press, such as the Journal’s, which sources at both Yahoo and AOL tell me started out as one about how the pair were in preliminary merger discussions.

They are not, unless a call or two between AOL CEO Tim Armstrong and Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz on how to handle the hubbub constitutes preliminary.

It doesn’t, of course, unlike serious merger discussions the companies held several years ago, well before the arrival of either Armstrong or Bartz on the scene.

The Journal story then apparently morphed into one about how AOL was on the hunt to figure out what to do–especially about Yahoo–by hiring new advisers.

Actually, the company has had its same old one, Allen & Co., since it was spun off from Time Warner last year. It has since also retained Bank of America.

Yahoo’s longtime banking adviser has been Goldman Sachs, which was re-engaged more than six weeks ago, only due to all the incoming attention.

That would be from other bankers, private equity firms and others, many of whom have ginned up a variety of schemes and have then pinged both AOL and Yahoo.

Curiously, this kind of activity was reported extensively a month ago here and in the Journal too.

Read the Journal article on October 13:

“AOL Inc. and several private-equity firms are exploring making an offer to buy Yahoo Inc., according to people familiar with the matter, devising a bold plan to marry two big Internet brands facing steep challenges.”

A bold plan to marry? You might want put the honeymoon reservations on hold for now.

That’s because interest does not mean result, especially when it comes to merger scenarios (and, if you are bored, you can read a whole bunch BoomTown came up with in late September).

But, in fact, because the big Yahoo-AOL deal is harder to realize in practice than in theory, things have quieted down and there are no proposals being evaluated by Yahoo or offered by AOL.

And, thus, the dealmakers must begin to chatter again to get things hopping.

Ironically, both boards of AOL and Yahoo should be considering a spate of ideas–however outlandish–to spur growth and innovation in their lackluster businesses.

And, in truth, if some very big players, such as Microsoft, got involved, the smoke around both AOL and Yahoo could someday become a real fire.

(Full disclosure: News Corp. owns Dow Jones, which owns both this site and the Journal.)

As part of BoomTown’s duty as internal jobs board for Yahoo, here’s another departure: CIO Michael Kirwan (pictured here).

A terse email went out yesterday about Kirwan’s leaving.

According to his Yahoo bio, he had “global responsibility for Yahoo!’s Corporate Systems group, which includes the IT Infrastructure, Corporate Applications, CRM and Premium Services Infrastructure teams. These teams ensure Yahoo!’s internal systems and billing/anti-fraud services are available 24/7.”

In other words, the guy who keeps the lights on at the Silicon Valley icon!

Kirwan reported to David Dibble, EVP of Service Engineering & Operations at Yahoo.

Kirwan previously worked at VeriSign, as well as at Bank of America, Bank of California and Union Bank of California.

“We think the rest of the studios will see the light and get on board pretty fast,” Steve Jobs said earlier this month of the TV studios wary of its new 99-cent iTunes TV rentals initiative. And while it’s never wise to bet against the Apple CEO, it’s beginning to look like “pretty fast” was an optimistic choice of words. Because in a flurry of public comments recently, a growing number of TV execs have decried the 99-cent rental model, which they say undervalues their content.

At the Goldman Sachs Communacopia conference last week, Viacom (VIA.B) CEO Philippe Dauman said of it, “The 99-cent rental is not a good price point. It doesn’t work for us. We value our content a lot. We don’t think Apple has it quite right yet.”

And during his appearance at the conference, NBC Universal CEO Jeff Zucker said pretty much the same thing. “We do not think 99 cents is the right price point for our content,” he argued. “We thought it would devalue our content.”

Then there was Warner Bros. Entertainment Chairman Barry Meyer, who trashed Apple’s (AAPL) effort at the
Bank of America/Merrill Lynch 2010 Media, Communications & Entertainment Conference. “We just don’t think the value proposition is a good one for us,” Meyer said, adding that he’d rather sell season passes to the studio’s TV series and $1.99 and $2.99 per-episode downloads than “open up a rental business in television at a low price.”

And now Time Warner (TWX) CEO Jeff Bewkes has come out against 99-cent iTunes TV rentals. Speaking at the Royal Television Conference in London, Bewkes echoed the comments of his colleagues, warning that the new model Apple’s pushing will threaten sales of TV shows to network television. “How can you justify renting your first-run TV shows individually for 99 cents an episode and thereby jeopardize the sale of the same shows as a series to branded networks that pay hundreds of millions of dollars and make those shows available to loyal viewers for free?” he asked. “These new entrants must meet a few criteria: They must provide consumers with a superior TV experience, and they must either support or improve the overall economics that funds and creates the programming in the first place.”

Early reviews suggest that Apple has met Bewkes’s first criteria, but given the statements above it’s looking like it may take a bit longer than expected to meet the second, or convince the studios that it has.

After Russia-based Internet investor Digital Sky Technologies got $388 million in a stock-swapping deal with South Africa media giant Naspers–coming after an earlier $300 million investment from China’s Internet behemoth Tencent–BoomTown dialed up DST partner Alexander Tamas in London to interview him about the implications.

This developing international spiderweb of digital and media companies begged the question of what DST might do with all this new dough, especially since it has created quite a splash over the last year investing massive gobs of money in high-profile, social-focused U.S. Internet companies.

That has included, most prominently, social networking powerhouse Facebook, as well as Groupon and Zynga.

Actually, said Tamas, the money is for expansion of DST’s core businesses in Russia, Poland and the Baltics–in email, social networking, gaming and entertainment–at units such as Mail.ru, which was co-owned by Naspers and DST.

In essence, said many analysts, it will simplify its ownership structure, and could eventually lead to an IPO for DST.

For a 30 percent stake in DST and the $388 million, Naspers forked over its 39.3 percent stake in Mail.ru into DST.

“The idea was for us to be able to completely control our Russian portfolio,” said Tamas, part of a series of moves which included its recent purchase of AOL (AOL) instant messaging unit ICQ for $187.5 million in cash. “We wanted 100 percent at one company.”

Also a goal: To better link its services with those in China, owned by Tencent, which invested $300 million in DST in April, giving it just over a 10 percent stake.

Naspers, by the way, owns 35 percent of Tencent.

“It’s a pretty good dialog all around,” said Tamas (pictured here), linking companies with both global and local aspirations.

But it’s the global ambitions that have attracted the most attention to DST of late, which, Tamas noted, created some confusion and unfair maligning of the company.

Interestingly, although it is all mashed up on its Web site, DST itself is not technically the entity that maintains its investments in companies such as Facebook.

That would be DST Global, its international arm which directly hold the stakes. It is not part of the Naspers or Tencent deals.

Of course, both are run by the same people, especially DST CEO Yuri Milner, and DST has a stake in DST Global.

“Initially, DST did fund those transactions,” said Tamas. “But we wanted to separate these investments from the Internet company to give investors the clearer differentiation.”

As to its future investments, Tamas said the company will likely fund start-ups that “check the boxes,” including exponential growth and social virality.

That means only two investments annually, as opposed to 10.

He also said DST would continue to fork over large sums–its invested well over $100 million in each of its U.S. deals.

“There is a perception that we pay high prices,” admitted Tamas, who noted its Facebook investment is now valued at much more. “But we have a global outlook on what we are investing in.”

DST is also a believer in getting some of that financing in the hands of founders and early investors, since it relieves financial pressure to sell or go public before a start-up’s time.

“We want to give the companies we invest in a year or two run,” said Tamas. “That is the sweet spot.”

He said, after its U.S. flirtation, that DST is now looking more in Asia and Europe.

But, even with its expansion and getting investments from well-known media giant such as Naspers, Tamas said he is not sure DST can shake the continued questions about the sources of its funding, especially given some of its initial investors are clearly part of the much-maligned Russian business oligarchy.

“We always have to explain and justify all of Russia,” said Tamas defensively. “Obviously, Naspers did its due diligence, as have others, and they feel comfortable with DST.”

Still, Russian issues will remain a concern for the long term. As noted in a recent report by Bank of America (BAC) investment unit Merrill Lynch, for example, on the Naspers-DST deal:

“We are also concerned that DST’s dominance in the Russian internet space (close to 70% market/mind share) may attract the scrutiny of the Russian government. The precedent with the other leading Russian internet company Yandex, when the government got a veto on sale or a golden share, signals that the government may not welcome a full takeover of DST by Naspers or Tencent.”

“We know the issues,” said Tamas. “But the best digital companies going forward are going to have to understand and operate in different parts of the world that are not just in Silicon Valley.”

In his latest note, he halved his target price on Palm (PALM) to $10 and lowered his forecast for third-quarter handset shipments to 900,000, from 1.1 million, and his forecast for fourth-quarter shipments to 1.2 million, from 1.5 million.

“Palm’s superior platform features have not translated into sufficient carrier support and consumer demand, and we are concerned the window of opportunity may be closing as Google’s Android ecosystem gains ground, RIM revitalizes its portfolio, iPhone increases its presence, and as Microsoft reboots its efforts with Windows Phone 7,” Arya wrote in a research note. “With only $130 million of net cash in an opex intensive space, Palm’s options may be limited in our view.”

Craig writes in a research note that he still thinks “long-term challenges remain” for Dell (DELL) and its business model.” But he notes that the stock is down 12% since November on skepticism around gross margin. “Low investor sentiment, high short interest, compressed valuation, possible enterprise refresh and likely positive EPS revisions position the shares for better performance in 2010,” he writes.

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Reporting fourth-quarter earnings after market close Thursday, the company posted a profit of $2.3 billion, or 40 cents a share, compared with a profit of $234 million, or four cents a share, for the year-earlier period. Revenue was $10.6 billion, up from $8.2 billion for the same quarter in the year-earlier period.

A strong showing for Intel and one that blows the doors off consensus estimates that called for 30 cents a share in profit on revenue of $10.17 billion. And don’t forget that these results include a European Commission fine of $1.45 billion and a $1.25 billion settlement agreement with AMD (AMD).

“Curb your enthusiasm [for Intel]” Bank of America (BAC) analyst Sumit Dhanda told clients in a research note issued Wednesday that warned of a revenue miss from the chip behemoth. Curb your enthusiasm? Not likely after today’s results.

“Intel’s strong 2009 results reflect our investment in industry-leading manufacturing and product innovation,” Intel CEO Paul Otellini said in an earnings release. “This strategy has enabled us to generate unprecedented operating efficiencies while growing our traditional businesses and creating exciting new market opportunities, even in difficult economic times.”

Taking a wide view, Otellini adds, “Our ability to weather this business cycle demonstrates that microprocessors are indispensable in our modern world. Looking forward, we plan to deliver the benefits of computing to an expanding set of products, markets and customers.”

Looking ahead to the first quarter of 2010, Intel expects revenue of $9.7 billion, plus or minus $400 million. Evidently, the PC market is back.

Reporting fourth-quarter earnings after market close Thursday, the company posted a profit of $2.3 billion, or 40 cents a share, compared with a profit of $234 million, or four cents a share, for the year-earlier period. Revenue was $10.6 billion, up from $8.2 billion for the same quarter in the year-earlier period.

A strong showing for Intel and one that blows the doors off consensus estimates that called for 30 cents a share in profit on revenue of $10.17 billion. And don’t forget that these results include a European Commission fine of $1.45 billion and a $1.25 billion settlement agreement with AMD (AMD).

“Curb your enthusiasm [for Intel]” Bank of America (BAC) analyst Sumit Dhanda told clients in a research note issued Wednesday that warned of a revenue miss from the chip behemoth. Curb your enthusiasm? Not likely after today’s results.

“Intel’s strong 2009 results reflect our investment in industry-leading manufacturing and product innovation,” Intel CEO Paul Otellini said in an earnings release. “This strategy has enabled us to generate unprecedented operating efficiencies while growing our traditional businesses and creating exciting new market opportunities, even in difficult economic times.”

Taking a wide view, Otellini adds, “Our ability to weather this business cycle demonstrates that microprocessors are indispensable in our modern world. Looking forward, we plan to deliver the benefits of computing to an expanding set of products, markets and customers.”

Looking ahead to the first quarter of 2010, Intel expects revenue of $9.7 billion, plus or minus $400 million. Evidently, the PC market is back.

Square, started by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, goes live next year and allows merchants to swipe credit and debit cards through an iPhone attachment called a “square.”

The squares will be available for other phones, including Androids and BlackBerrys, later on, he said, and merchants will get squares for free. Visa (V), MasterCard (MA) and American Express (AXP) have already signed on.

This week, Popmoney, a service from CashEdge, went live. It’s currently available at only two financial institutions, but will expand to seven in coming months, Neal Platt, Popmoney’s senior vice president, said. (CashEdge already has various institutions as clients elsewhere, including Bank of America and Citibank.)

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“Despite increasing smartphone competition, Palm can maintain differentiation and remains well-positioned to launch its products with multiple new Tier-1 carriers in early 2010 by which time it should have a robust apps catalog,” Arya wrote. “While we expect the stock to remain volatile, the recent sell-off creates an interesting buying opportunity, in our opinion, for a company with an attractive platform, selling into a high-growth market, and at a compelling valuation.”

Interestingly, Arya notes that Palm’s webOS application ecosystem, initially something of a disappointment, is growing a bit more rapidly these days with between 50 and 100 apps being added to Palm’s App Catalog each week. He expects growth to continue with the debut of a new feature enabling customers to download apps simply by clicking on a URL. Arya believes this will dramatically improve discovery of apps and attract more attention from developers. His conclusion: With a more robust App Catalog and two attractive handsets, Palm is well-positioned to launch its webOS line with multiple new Tier-1 carriers like Verizon (VZ) in early 2010.

There has been a surge in companies receiving patents for ways of doing business, from Amazon.com Inc.’s (AMZN) one-click checkout to Priceline.com Inc.’s (PCLN) reverse auctions, since a 1998 court decision expanded the scope of processes that could be patented.

The Supreme Court must now determine whether such swaths of modern business activity deserve patent protections, thereby opening the door to infringement lawsuits, or belong in the public domain, depriving their inventors of monopoly profits.

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Could Comcast (CMCSA) be talking to NBC Universal about…something? Could be–that’s what the Los Angeles Times and other outlets reported last night.

And Comcast’s statement says there’s no “deal,” which doesn’t preclude “talks about deals.” Then again, it’s awfully unusual for a company in Comcast’s position to say anything at all.

Clear as mud? Then this won’t help. Check out these comments from Comcast COO Steve Burke at a Sept. 9 conference hosted by Bank of America (BAC) where analyst Jessica Reif-Cohen asked him about his appetite for acquisitions.

Burke said he’d love get more cable channels (like the kind NBCU owns). And he said he didn’t want a really big deal that would require the company to use its shares or take on a lot of debt (like, say, a $35 billion deal for NBCU). He said all this, by the way, in the span of a single answer.

I’ll carve it up and translate for you:

We’ve had plenty of debt, and we don’t want any more right now, thank you very much.

Well, if you look at cable companies over the last 10 or 20 years–I joined the Company 11 years ago. It is really amazing how deleveraged our Company and other cable companies have gotten….We like where we are from a leverage point of view and I think [we] would be uncomfortable if our leverage was significantly higher.

But boy oh boy, are cable channels attractive!

At our core, we believe that content and distribution work well together….I think there are a lot of case studies where content and distribution, particularly in a world where the distribution has technology that can deliver content in new and innovative ways, you really can create a lot of value by putting content and distribution together, particularly if that content is cable content.

And again, when you look at the big media companies, the best businesses that all of us have in the entertainment business I think are the cable content channels and those channels with that dual revenue stream are really good businesses. And I think we wouldn’t be doing our job if we didn’t try to figure out a way to get bigger in those businesses. Those businesses are growing more rapidly than our cable business and if the opportunity came about where we could add cable content to our portfolio, I think we would do it.

But really, we’re not in the market for a mega-deal.

Just to sort of get it right out there, I don’t think that means doing a big deal with our stock. I think all of us think our stock is significantly undervalued. So I don’t think that means doing a big deal with our stock. I also don’t think that means doing a big $50 billion acquisition. I think it is more trying to find opportunities that are complementary with our core business, that don’t take our balance sheet and push it back into a position, which we have worked so hard to get it down.

Never say never!

We are going to try to make sure that we are disciplined and we have high IRRs and good free cash flow generation and we will see if anything comes available. If it does, we will certainly look at it.

Got it? Me either. The only way I can reconcile Burke’s comments with the notion that Comcast is interested in an NBCU deal would be if Comcast was talking about buying Vivendi’s 20 percent stake in the NBCU.

Comcast could swing that one without breaking the bank–the conventional wisdom is that it would cost something in the $5 billion range. And it would technically increase Comcast’s cable network holdings, as Burke says he wants to do. But not really: Comcast would be a minority shareholder with no clear path to control. And it wouldn’t get the “distribution plus content” benefit Burke was talking about last month.

Anyone else have any ideas? Feel free to sound off below.

The latest institution to realize this–Bank of America (BAC) which, according to The Wall Street Journal, plans to close up to 10 percent of its 6,100 branches across the country over the next three-to-five years. It’s not yet known when the closures will begin or exactly how many locations will be closed. BofA says only that “Our vision is the network will be managed downward over time.”

About time too. With fewer and fewer consumers banking at their local branches and remote deposit capture an easy matter via ATM, it seems foolhardy to maintain them.

“They are not economically viable,” Rochdale Securities analyst Dick Bove wrote in a recent note to clients. “The branches are likely to be closed for three reasons: a) branch economics are changing; b) the need for positioning has been reduced; and c) the fear of regulation suggests closing branches now makes sense.

“When America was building new houses in the millions,” Bove continues, “it was creating new neighborhoods. Banks competed with each other to get branches into the new communities in the choicest locations. Branches were often built in supposed choice locations just to keep the competitors out. This strategy has now been abandoned. Many of the new communities have been abandoned. These branches need to be abandoned.”