Later today, new Yahoo CEO and latest savior Marissa Mayer is expected to debut in her first major turn as a public company CEO, as the company reports its third-quarter earnings.

Unfortunately, her initial script recounting the last three months is likely to be rather lackluster, with Wall Street anticipating yet another nothing-to-write-home-about financial performance from the Silicon Valley Internet giant.

Investors are expecting $1.08 billion in revenue and 25 cents in net income per share in a report that is likely to show more of the same kind of weakness Yahoo has had for far too long. The main reasons this time: Worrisome growth in search and display advertising, especially compared to robust worldwide trends.

Such concerns have kept Yahoo’s stock pretty much flatlined at about $16 a share since she arrived in July.

And that is not likely to change until Wall Street hears more specifics about Mayer’s future plans. Yahoo has previously said she would outline more about her direction on the call with investors later today, after the financial results are released.

Thus, it’s basically a wait-and-see attitude, until Mayer does that, and perhaps until after there is some actual traction.

As noted by Cantor Fitzgerald’s Youssef Squali:

“1) We’ve seen this movie before (this new CEO is the fifth in as many years) and 2) it will take some time before any of the yet-to-be-announced changes yield any meaningful P&L results. Until then, we see Yahoo! shares remain cheap with limited downside, but no clear catalyst to drive them higher short/medium-term.”

Among the highlights that investors hope will be covered by Mayer and also by new CFO Ken Goldman:

A cogent strategy to turbocharge the business, which — as ATD has reported many times — will focus on tech and product solutions; what acquisition arenas are in the pipeline; plans for new talent recruitment and perhaps layoffs of less-than-stellar employees at the bottom 20 percent of Yahoo; the status of talks to sell off its stake in Yahoo Japan; and, perhaps most of all, what are the plans to return cash to shareholders from its recent sale of its partial stake in China’s Alibaba Group.

That might already be in the works via stock buybacks that Yahoo has been engaged in, but it will be interesting to see if Mayer will provide more specifics.

Investors will also look for some details around mobile growth, and perhaps an update of how Yahoo is fixing its search monetization problems with its partner, Microsoft.

One development that some expect is that Mayer will drop future expectations, in a classic take-out-the-trash move.

As J.P. Morgan’s Doug Anmuth noted:

“Similar to what AOL CEO Tim Armstrong did when he stepped in a few years ago, we believe Mayer is likely to remove low quality ad units and over-monetization throughout the site. Despite the near-term monetization impact, we think this would be a good thing, as it would improve the user experience and de-clutter the site. Additionally, we think it’s likely new management would simply want to start off with a low bar.”

And, if she makes it low enough, anything Mayer will do going forward is likely to look pretty good.

The program was first discovered by Channel Advisor, after Amazon sent detailed letters to merchants about the program. Channel Advisor provides tips to merchants, who sell items on marketplaces like Amazon and eBay. An Amazon spokesperson did not return phone calls seeking comment.

In the letters, Amazon said the new service, called Amazon Lending, can be used to “purchase inventory and increase your sales on Amazon.com.” If a merchant is approved for the program, the funds will be advanced to their Amazon Seller account within five days, and then a monthly fee will be automatically deducted from the merchant’s account.

While many consumers may think that everything they buy on Amazon comes directly from the retailer, in many cases it is coming from independent sellers, who choose to list their products on the marketplace for more visibility. Amazon collects 99 cents a sale, plus a percentage of each transaction if a merchant is selling fewer than 40 items, or $40 a month plus a revenue share if they are selling more.

By lending capital to its sellers, Amazon may be able to help merchants increase their sales, since one of the many constraints they face is having access to capital. This can be especially true ahead of the holidays as merchants stock up on inventory to meet additional demand. The loans, however, won’t come cheap. According to Channel Advisor, several merchants were offered an interest rate of 13 percent.

Other companies, like Atlanta-based Kabbage, serve online merchants, which typically have a hard time getting attention from traditional lenders. Kabbage, which has raised almost $50 million in venture capital, has now lent money to sellers — mostly on eBay, Amazon and Yahoo — that earn a combined $800 million in annual sales.

However, that forecast apparently hasn’t eased investors’ concerns that the South Korean electronics giant’s overall earnings outlook for the second quarter may not meet the market’s expectations.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

The stock market is closed today, as part of the Christmas holiday. But it is doubtful — barring any major announcements — that the vastly different performances seen by a range of tech companies will change much.

Which is to say, some companies — such as eBay and Google — did well, although only Apple shares rose significantly enough to cause festive feelings.

As of Friday, Google rose almost 7 percent for the year to date, eBay rose 10.8 percent and Apple was up almost 26 percent.

As for all the others in tech? Lumps of coal for investors of varying size.

Let’s start with the better negative performances: Amazon was down 1.95 percent, Yahoo was down 2.7 percent and Microsoft was down 6.7 percent.

Not exactly anything to wassail about. And Yahoo shares were only down a little, since the recent swirl around its possible sale gave its stock a recent bump, or the performance would have been worse, based on its financial results.

And the oft-troubled AOL? Down 35.3 percent.

The crop of new Internet companies was also not doing so great. The latest, Zynga was down only 1.2 percent, Groupon down 12.5 percent and LinkedIn down 32.3 percent. Pandora truly tanked, with a 42.5 decline in share price. Only Russia’s Yandex bested that, with a 48.6 percent drop.

Enterprise-focused companies also had a lackluster year. While recently public Jive Software was up 9.2 percent, Cisco was down 8.7 percent and Hewlett-Packard was down 38.5 percent. Juniper got truly socked, with a 43.6 percent decline.

The music you are looking for right about now is “(Hey, Won’t You Play) Another Somebody Done Somebody Wrong Song” by B.J.Thomas, which you can enjoy here in this timely video:

Remedy Health Media, a New York-based health information company, has bought HealthCentral, a start-up that offers online clinical and patient tools, community and content in a variety of topic areas.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but the Arlington, Va.-based HealthCentral has raised $50 million from investors such as the Carlyle Group, IAC/InterActiveCorp, Polaris Venture Partners and Sequoia Capital. Allen & Co., which was HealthCentral’s financial adviser for the transaction, was also an investor.

The market for online-based information about health has been a fast-growing one, but it’s still a nascent arena.

Here’s the official press release:

Remedy Health Media Acquires HealthCentral: Creates Industry-Leading Health Information and Technology Platform

NEW YORK, NY – Remedy Health Media, America’s fastest-growing health information and technology company, today announced its acquisition of HealthCentral, a leading provider of online clinical and patient community resources and tools that help millions of patients and caregivers take control of their health and improve their well-being. The acquisition brings together two companies with the shared mission of empowering patients and caregivers with the information and applications needed to efficiently navigate the healthcare landscape to receive better health outcomes. The acquisition is expected to close this week. Terms were not disclosed.

“This acquisition means Remedy now provides the health information industry’s leading portfolio of digital, mobile, and point-of-care information and technology products,” said Remedy Chief Executive Officer, Mike Cunnion.

HealthCentral’s CEO, Christopher M. Schroeder, adds, “This combination creates real opportunities for innovation in an industry segment that is growing rapidly and seeking new solutions. All of us at HealthCentral are very excited that the union of the two companies and the strength, scope, and reach of the new Remedy will be a unique force for better health and wellness.”

With the addition of HealthCentral, Remedy Health Media creates a market-leading platform for healthcare audiences seeking proprietary information and technology to manage their health concerns on their terms as well as marketing partners who want to connect with patients and caregivers on a number of platforms: online, in doctors’ offices, pharmacies, and through their mobile devices. The new Remedy Health Media will influence more than 150 million consumers annually. The company’s reach now includes 23 million unique monthly visitors to its health websites, more than 17 million patients and caregivers at pharmacy counters nationwide, a 20-million member customer database, and a network of more than 600,000 physicians.

“With the acquisition of HealthCentral, we’ve dramatically increased our online reach, sales capacity and our ability to create industry leading health information and technology applications,” notes Cunnion. “The combination creates exciting opportunities to provide even more value to our audiences, customers and strategic partners.”

Remedy Health Media is a Veronis Suhler Stevenson (VSS) company; a leading global private investment firm focused on the information, education, media, communications and business services industries. “Communications growth will be driven by the convergence of technologies in digital and mobile platforms,” said David Bainbridge, Managing Director, Veronis Suhler Stevenson. “Nowhere is this more evident than in the health and wellness sector where the ability to access accurate information is paramount.”

HealthCentral is backed by leading interactive media and technology investors IAC/InterActiveCorp, Polaris Ventures, Sequoia Capital, The Carlyle Group and Allen & Company. Notes Alan Spoon of Polaris Ventures, “We are thrilled to join forces with Mike and the Remedy team. This combination is a unique opportunity to create the largest and most innovative platform for health seekers looking to take action on their terms, and connecting them with our partners and clients.”

Schroeder will remain involved in the business as a consultant to Remedy and the board of directors, and has been named an Advisor to Polaris Ventures.

One of Yahoo’s biggest problems — brain drain — has turned out to be an asset for private equity firms and other players interested in figuring out their best moves related to the Silicon Valley Internet giant.

A plethora of ex-Yahoos, including many former top execs, are getting buttonholed by those who want to know more about the inner workings of the company that might not be obvious from its copious financial data available publicly.

That includes former Americas head Hilary Schneider, who has a longer-term consulting gig with TPG Capital, one of the several PE firms that has recently signed a non-disclosure agreement with Yahoo; former COO and President Sue Decker, who has had a longtime informal relationship with Blackstone, which has not signed the NDA and has been in talks with Yahoo’s Asian partners, China’s Alibaba Group and Japan’s SoftBank; and even former CEO Carol Bartz, who sources say has also been contacted to get her insights.

She is one of many in that regard, in a large pool of former Yahoos, such as: LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner, who had run Yahoo’s media efforts; Chegg CEO Dan Rosensweig, former Yahoo COO; SurveyMonkey CEO Dave Goldberg, who ran swathes of Yahoo’s entertainment properties; Criteo CEO Greg Coleman, former Yahoo sales head; former CEO Terry Semel, who is now an investor; former communications exec Brad Garlinghouse, who is now at AOL; and Demand Media Chief Revenue Officer Joanne Bradford, who also was a top Yahoo advertising exec.

Not all are cooperating with the requests for a chitchat about Yahoo, but there is much incoming interest in ex-Yahoos and what they might know.

There’s lots more where that came from, from all parts and all levels of Yahoo, given the breadth of the exes now doing very well — thank you very much — throughout the tech and media industries.

Thus, calls from PE firms, from Silver Lake to Bain Capital to Providence Equity Partners, as well as interest from major and majorly irritated shareholders, such as activist hedge fund investor Dan Loeb.

It’s a smart idea to tap this rich vein of information, as all contemplate possible multi-billion-dollar investments.

While some of these execs have not worked at Yahoo in many years, all have significant knowledge about the challenges and also the culture that cannot be gleaned from spreadsheets.

They also know a lot about the internal politics and personalities of the existing inside players, too. More importantly, several were involved in similar previous major business decisions at Yahoo.

Decker, for example, was a key exec in the Yahoo takeover attempt by Microsoft several years ago; Schneider and Bartz were deeply involved in striking the advertising and search partnership with Microsoft.

“Between everyone, it’s a good way to figure out where all the bodies are buried,” said one person close to the situation. “And there are a lot of bodies.”

Demand Media beat Wall Street expectations in the third quarter, posting a loss of five cents a share. Investors had expected it to lose from four to six cents.

Revenue was up 25 percent to $85.1 million, compared to $65.4 million in the same period a year ago. Minus traffic acquisition costs, sales increased 26 percent to $78.1 million from $62.2 million.

The stock of the Santa Monica, Calif., social content company has suffered in the quarter due to worries about its traffic and growth, but it has recently bounced back after hitting all-time lows.

After losing almost nine percent today, in profit-taking ahead of earnings after a recent price surge, Demand shares rose over 17 percent in after-hours trading to $8.30.

Some more details, according to a Demand statement on the Q3 financial results:

Content & Media Revenue increased 27% to $50.7 million, compared with $39.8 million in Q310.

Traffic acquisition costs (TAC), which represent the portion of Content & Media revenue shared with Demand Media partners, of $3.4 million, or 6.7% of Content & Media revenue, compared with $3.2 million, or 7.9% of Content & Media revenue, in Q310.

Content & Media Revenue ex-TAC grew 29% to $47.4 million, from $36.7 million in Q310.

Registrar Revenue increased 20% to $30.7 million compared with $25.5 million in Q310.

In addition to its more high-profile content business, Demand also has a domain registry unit.

“We reported another strong quarter as we continue to build Demand Media’s foundation for long-term growth,” said Richard Rosenblatt, Chairman and CEO of Demand Media in the statement. “The Company is uniquely positioned to deliver data-driven professional content through its robust content publishing platform. We are now in the process of optimizing that platform while increasing our investment in video content and enhancing the quality, engagement and user experience of our sites.”

There will be a conference call at 2 pm PT today, which I will liveblog (as long as it is lively!).

Until then, enjoy the official Q3 earnings press release:

3Q11 Earnings ReleaseFINAL

“Consumers who gush over the beauty and efficacy of Apple products rarely quibble or complain about Apple’s premium pricing,” Kelleher writes in a note to clients. “Behind the tech-weenie veneer on transformative products, there is an accountant’s soul presiding over the P&L at Apple.”

There are innumerable reasons why Apple is sitting atop a pile of $76.2 billion in cash and marketable securities — a conga line of insanely great products, savvy marketing and financial rigor. And together, they drove Apple’s operating margins from 12 percent in 2005 to 30 percent or more today; its revenue from $13.9 billion to an estimated $108 billion.

“Jobs did more than launch, in succession, the Mac, the iPod, the iPhone, and the iPad,” Kelleher says. “He created and nurtured an infrastructure where these products could be conceived, engineered, and brought successfully to market.The marketing apparatus is no less well-oiled than the engineering machine at Apple.”

Or the financial one, for that matter.

Realistically, Apple is so on point right now, has so much momentum in the market, that it is unlikely to stumble any time soon. Kelleher again:

“IPhone currently has a less-than 5 percent handset market share; yet everyone who holds or uses one, whether first-time phone buyer or Apple lifer, is struck with its simple beauty and efficacy. If iPhone “merely” doubled its handset market share, annual revenues would rise by $60 billion. With RIM on the ropes and the Android Empire showing cracks from Google’s purchase of Motorola Mobility, there is no reason to believe that 10% share is the ceiling for iPhone. … In other words, if newly-appointed CEO Tim Cook is no more than a caretaker, if he only presides over the ramp of existing products, he could easily ‘caretake’ the company from the current $100 billion revenue range to twice or thrice that size.”

But that’s not what Cook is going to do. He plans to keep the ball rolling at Apple and he knows how to do it, as he said in an all-hands memo to employees about a month ago.

“I want you to be confident that Apple is not going to change,” Cook wrote. “I cherish and celebrate Apple’s unique principles and values. Steve built a company and culture that is unlike any other in the world and we are going to stay true to that — it is in our DNA. We are going to continue to make the best products in the world that delight our customers and make our employees incredibly proud of what they do.”

Image via Jonathan Mak’s Tumblr.

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After a down and up and down week, tech stocks had a solid recovery yesterday, keeping pace with or even surpassing the Dow Jones Industrial Average gains of nearly four percent.

Can anyone predict what will happen next?

Probably not — including this creepy dude to the right — so let’s look backward at how tech stocks fared yesterday:

Google shares were up 2.4 percent, Microsoft 4.1 percent, Amazon 2.2 percent, eBay 3.6 percent, LinkedIn 4.1 percent and Pandora 3.7 percent.

Most interesting were the two big stock losers of late, Yahoo and AOL, both of which rose even more. They were up 9.3 percent and 12.2 percent, respectively.

AOL’s rise had to do with the New York online media company’s announcement of a stock buyback program yesterday, while Yahoo’s was perhaps due to investors questioning the steepness of the recent valuation falloff at the Internet giant.

There is no question that while most of these companies had decent quarterly returns recently, they have all collectively gotten smacked hard by the market volatility.

The financial turmoil has also caused some to speculate on the delay or cutting back of the IPOs of high-profile digital companies — most especially Groupon and Zynga.

Here’s one certainty: Both the social buying start-up and the online gaming phenom are going to get out, if not in September, then soon after.

As for Silicon Valley venture firms cutting back from their aggressive and eye-popping fundings of start-ups? As a new meme has been speculating this week: They still seem to be partying like it’s 1999.

The National Basketball Association team did not disclose the financial terms in its news release on Palihapitiya’s investment, which will make him an executive board member of the Oakland-based team.

Here are the slide decks and other investor materials from Nokia’s incredibly bad second quarter results announced earlier today.

The Finnish cellphone maker saw net sales in its core devices and services business decline 23 percent from last quarter and 20 percent from a year earlier. Meanwhile, revenue and unit sales for its critical smartphones were down more than 30 percent from both prior quarter and year-ago results.

Earlier this week, Silicon Valley Internet giant Yahoo turned in a weak quarter too, but its depressing charts pale in comparison to this set of Nokia financial data.

In fact, if the charts below had any more minuses, it would start to look like a crime scene for an unfortunate knifing victim on “Law and Order” — whose famous “doink-doink” sound is also below.

Here’s the damage to peruse:

Request-Q2_2011_results_presentation

2Q_2011_ENG

Nokia_results2011Q2e

Groupon’s S-1 filing for an IPO last month certainly got a lot of ink.

Unfortunately, much of it was negative, focused on several controversial parts of the document. Most scrutinized were large slugs of money taken out of the social buying site by its founders, as well as aggressive accounting terminology to make large losses look less, well, large.

Rattled by the intense media and analyst reaction to the filing, sources said the Chicago-based company commissioned a poll of its consumers and merchants to gauge the impact.

One source familiar with the survey said that top execs and its board wanted concrete reaction from key constituencies, instead of relying on “noise from the echo chamber” of Wall Street and Silicon Valley.

And, said several people who had seen the poll, it should probably come as no surprise that the impact of the drumbeat of Groupon-is-doomed news on merchants and consumers was low, with only one percent saying that they had formed a negative opinion of the company from the filing.

That, of course, does not mean that those important groups for Groupon aren’t disgruntled about a whole laundry list of other issues.

But — for now, at least — an S-1 with some warts isn’t one of them.

Whatever the case, Groupon will continue to face scrutiny as it moves to amend the filing after comments from government regulators, and also when it reports its latest financial results soon for the three months ended June 30, 2011.

And those are numbers that everyone will surely be paying attention to.

Shares in the company were down 6.9 percent Wednesday morning after falling 18 percent Tuesday on news of the handset maker’s profit warning. And they’re almost certain to tumble further given the number of analyst downgrades they’re being slapped with today. What was once a hypothetical worse case scenario is becoming increasingly more real, as Bernstein analyst Pierre Ferragu observed in a particularly brutal research note this morning.

“In a fast changing market, Nokia is losing ground very rapidly,” he wrote. “The profit warning for the second quarter provided evidence that the next couple of years will prove very challenging, with the gross margin and market share trends of the last 4 quarters continuing, if not accelerating even more. The collaboration with Microsoft now appears to us unlikely to be successful, as Nokia’s brand is losing ground too fast and the window of opportunity for an alternative ecosystem is vanishing rapidly.”

Nokia CEO Stephen Elop appears at D9 later this week.

Research in Motion co-CEO Jim Balsillie said that Thursday following the company’s steep first-quarter earnings warning. And while he may have convinced himself, he doesn’t have much company.

RIM shares slipped deep into a nasty downward spiral Friday, falling more than 13 percent and dragging the company’s share price below $50 for the first time in six months. And if the barrage of brokerage downgrades issued this morning is any indication, it may be there for a while. To a one, the analyst notes I’ve read this morning reveal a profound loss of faith in the company.

“BlackBerry is a broken brand on its historical high-end user base, RIM is under attack on the Corporate segment, and the company’s profitability premium to peers is at risk,” Bernstein analyst Pierre Ferragu wrote in a note to clients. “We see management expectations for a rebound driven by the launch of the PlayBook and QNX-based phones as unreasonable. We expect little upside from the PlayBook given the fundamentals of the tablet market and by no means consider QNX a game changer.”

Pacific Crest analyst James Faucette told his clients essentially the same thing. “While the company may be anticipating improving PlayBook sell-through in coming months, our latest sell-through checks indicate the opposite,” he wrote. “Additionally, we believe the slate of new products to be released in the second half of 2011 are unlikely to result in better share at the high end. We remain skeptical of the company’s ability to reaccelerate its earnings growth with its current roadmap.”

Even RBC analyst Mike Abramsky, a RIM bull if there ever was one, shook his head in disappointment. “Coming just a month after providing guidance, we believe this further damages already low credibility, making them the ‘poster boy’ for a show me story from here, with little or no credibility given for their $7.50 F12 EPS outlook,” he wrote in a bulletin to clients. “Given how pessimistic investors were already, this will more likely sustain pessimism than alter already polarized views–and may overshadow any pending announcements expected next week at RIM’s analyst day.”

Balsillie’s big refrains during yesterday’s guidance call were “stay tuned” and “just wait.” Looking at the company’s share price today, investors don’t seem willing to do either.

PREVIOUSLY:

• Why Is RIM So Optimistic About the Second Half of the Year?
• RIM Co-CEO Blames Lowered Outlook on Aging Product Line
• Research In Motion Warns Earnings to Fall Short Amid Weak BlackBerry Sales

“I will make more profits and certainly there is no technology company in the planet which is as profitable as we are.”

— Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, May 27, 2010

What was unimaginable just a decade ago has finally occured. Apple is now more profitable than Microsoft.

Posting earnings for its most recent quarter Thursday, Microsoft reported net income of $5.23 billion on revenues of $16.42 billion. Which turned out to be significantly less than the net profit of $5.99 billion on revenues of $24.67 billion Apple turned in last week.

Another remarkable–and remarkably ironic–milestone for Apple, which surpassed Microsoft in market cap last May. It was Microsoft, after all, that breathed new life into a struggling Apple back in 1997 with a $150 million investment in the company (see video below). What was it Bill Gates said at the time? “We think Apple makes a huge contribution in the computer industry. And we think it’s going to be a lot of fun helping out.”

Yesterday, Microsoft reported third-quarter earnings, which beat Wall Street expectations, but still had some warning signs (PC non-growth!).

Here are the software giant’s results, all duded up with pretty charts and bullet points to pencil out:

SlidesFY11Q3 –

“The core thing here is that there’s been a transition that’s happened since our last guidance,” RIM co-CEO Jim Balsillie said during a conference call with analysts Thursday. “Our higher-end products are aging…and that’s affecting margins…and sell-through, particularly in the United States and Latin America.”

But fear not for RIM because RIM fears not.

“As we’ve said before, we feel great about the BlackBerry Platform and the PlayBook and how they’re doing….We just need to have some newer, higher-end products in the market….This is a transition….We’re cutting over to a whole new platform and whole new set of products and it’s very powerful and we’re very excited about their long-term strength and the long term strength of the company….We are straight in the middle of the whole tablet mobile computing space. And we absolutely have a whole next generation of smartphones, so strategically we feel fantastic, but operationally this stuff is pushed out so you have this transition. … We’ll have a very exciting BlackBerry World next week. You’ll see.”

You’d think there would be a party in Redmond, Wash., today, as software giant Microsoft soundly beat Wall Street expectations in its third-quarter earnings released earlier today.

Microsoft said it had revenue of $16.43 billion for the quarter ended March 31, 2011, which was up 13 percent from a year ago. Net income was $5.23 billion, or 61 cents per share, a rise of 31 percent and 36 percent, respectively.

The surge was led by sales of Office, Kinect and Xbox and a stronger economy.

But there are shadows, too, as results were dragged down by weaker revenues for its flagship Windows unit.

The report comes as Microsoft’s stock continues to lag, declining 14 percent for the year.

Buzz kill!

BoomTown livedblogged the call for Wall Street analysts:

2:30 pm PT: Peter Klein, Microsoft’s CFO, who sounds super peppy, outlined the strong quarter, especially for its Office products.

He also mentioned some glitches, such as Microsoft’s still-struggling efforts to increase revenue per search (RPS) in its longtime search and online advertising partnership with Yahoo and the slower growth of the PC sector upon which the software giant’s Windows relies.

PC should stand for “possibly crappy,” but good-boy Klein did not say so.

Investor relations dude Bill Koefoed also read through the news, sounding at times like a sports announcer on a cable television network.

“Quuuuaaadrupled…,” he intoned about one part of Microsoft’s business.

This all went on for a while, since Microsoft has a lot of divisions. Servers & Tools. Online Services. Entertainment and Devices. Fashion & Cute Tops.

Okay, not that one, but a girl can dream.

It was all fun and games until Koefoed got to the Yahoo problem, which Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz had used as a cudgel in her earnings report recently.

Yes, it is a bummer. But soon it was back to the happy land of Xbox!

Klein said he was pleased with the results in a jaunty manner, which made me desperately wish Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer led the call.

Because he’s always one obnoxious query away from a volcanic popping off.

Which is why I love those Yahoo calls and Bartz.

Buzz kill!

2:54 pm PT: That was fast–the call was quickly into questions.

The first is about COGS–cost of goods sold–and how it impacts gross margins.

Klein said the expenses were volume driven. I’d explain, but then I would fall asleep.

The next question was about stock buybacks.

That might get the stock up. Yeah, said Klein, they’ll keep doing that–not that it has helped much on the share price front.

More and more questions, about the PC market, the issues at Yahoo (let’s get that RPS up!), the Windows Phone 7 business.

I’ll be honest, I was a bit bored and started reading a riveting Business Insider interview with TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington on his myriad conflicts of interest related to his tech investing while also blogging as a news guy.

Whatever you think about him, that dude is good copy.

Wait, back to growth rates for Office!

It’s going great, said Klein (hey, maybe Arrington will invest!).

The call wraps up on news of an upcoming investor conference, being held near Disney World.

Oooh, party time!

Software giant Microsoft soundly beat Wall Street expectations in its third-quarter earnings released after the market closed today.

Microsoft said it had revenue of $16.43 billion for the quarter ended Mar. 31, 2011, which was up 13 percent from a year ago. Net income was $5.23 billion, or 61 cents per share, a rise of 31 percent and 36 percent, respectively.

Investors were expecting the Redmond, Wash. tech company to have profits of 56 cents per share, up 45 cents per share in the same quarter last year. Revenue was expected to come in at $16.2 billion.

As usual, Microsoft beating of expectations still has not helped its lackluster stock, which is down almost 14 percent year over year.

Its shares are currently down more than two percent in after-hours trading, to $26.09.

That’s due to worries about PC market growth, in the wake of an explosion of tablet and smartphone devices from competitors such as Apple and Google.

Most of Microsoft’s divisions were up in terms of revenue, especially its Xbox, Kinect and Office businesses. That offsetted slowing PC growth, Microsoft said, as well as a 4.5 percent drop in revenue in its flagship Windows and Windows Live division.

BoomTown will be liveblogging the earnings call at 2:30 pm PT.

Until then, here is the official press release:

letterheadFY11Q3 –

Would it surprise you to know that BoomTown doesn’t really care anymore if TechCrunch editor Michael Arrington sidelines as a blogger while he makes investments in tech companies his tech news site covers?

In a post yesterday, titled “An Update to My Investment Policy,” Arrington made his seemingly cogent arguments that plenty of disclosure made it all “fine,” took one of his typical look-at-me swipes at anyone who dared to question this logic (apparently, we’re crappy “direct” competitors, so we haters have no standing to comment!) and presumably went on his merry investing way.

While I was first irked–because it was an appalling show to many of us cranky standards-insisting whiners–I soon realized Arrington had made a good argument about who he is and, frankly, who he has always been.

In other words, it’s a kind of there-he-goes-again thing, vaguely icky but hardly surprising and completely genuine.

Meanwhile, his new boss, AOL content head Arianna Huffington, pointed me to his post in an email.

When I asked her for an on-the-record comment, as usual, she politely and quickly complied, writing in support of Arrington:

“TechCrunch is committed to transparency. Michael has written about the guidelines he follows–that he rarely writes about companies in which he is an investor, and that, when he does, he clearly discloses this information. The same rules apply when TechCrunch’s writers cover these companies.”

Hold the phone.

Because while I kind of understand where Arrington is coming from, what I don’t understand is how this kind of convenient and on-the-fly rule-making can govern a much larger company whose strongly and repeatedly stated goal by Huffington herself is to create quality journalism.

Since I believed Huffington–whom I like very much as an Internet figure and as a friend–I was confused at what the rules for the whole of AOL content were now.

That’s why I sent her a long new list of questions to answer, which are:

1) What are, if any, the ethical guidelines about making investments for the editorial staff at HuffPo media group properties?

2) Since Arrington now seems to have permission to do so from you, can other editors at AOL properties do the same–that is, make very adjacent investments to what their site covers, as long as they disclose it? For example, can an editor who runs the entertainment site make investments in entertainment companies she/he has coverage responsibility over? (By the way, did you give him permission to make these investments? Did he ask?)

3) Is there anyone who polices what is fair coverage of competitors–i.e. companies competing with companies your editors invest in?

4) If an editor makes investments in a company and someone who works for them writes about that company, does that editor have to recuse himself from the story? Is that even possible?

5) Since you just fired someone for what you called an ethical breach–asking freelancers to work for free and also seemingly defending an attempt to curry favor with an advertiser/client–why is this not an ethical breach?

I had a lot more questions, still unanswered by Huffington, but you can see where this is going.

Simply put, does AOL, which is touting itself as a 21st-century media company, need to have 21st-century rules of the road? Or perhaps not so much?

UPDATE: Now, it is a real clown circus at AOL, with the company declaring that editorial personnel cannot make investments, except Arrington!

“As a rule, in order to avoid conflicts of interests, AOL Huffington Post Media Group editors, writers, and reporters may not have a financial interest in a company or industry that they regularly cover,” AOL said in a statement to Business Insider today, even though I nicely asked for a comment on the issue yesterday. “Arrington operates from a unique position.”

And how! Where do I get such a faboo ethical hall pass from Content Principal Huffington?

I suppose I should go all slouching-towards-Bethlehem here, and wring my hands over this unusual ruling, but what’s the use?

As you might have read: “The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.”

How did this all start, especially since I feel like this ridiculous tempest in a Silicon Valley teapot over Arrington’s investment-making might actually be my fault a little bit?

Here’s why:

On Tuesday night around 10 pm (just when I start getting revved up), I wrote a testy email to Arrington’s bosses at AOL–Huffington and CEO Tim Armstrong–as well as the Internet portal’s sharp PR head, asking for a response about what seemed to me to be a glaring conflict of interest at TechCrunch related to new investment activity by Arrington and the site’s coverage of those particular companies he had invested in.

It was all disclosed, of course, but it still felt, as I said, icky.

And, given the recent and loudly stated goal of promoting quality journalism by Huffington–including the recent dismissal of AOL’s Moviefone site editor over what the company considered ethical lapses–it seemed pertinent to ask.

Mostly because I don’t think they actually knew much–if at all–about Arrington’s increasing investing action. Armstrong said as much in an email to me, and Huffington assured me they were going to check it out tout de suite.

But rather than the answer I was waiting on, up popped Arrington’s missive yesterday, which I assume came after his bosses asked for some info on this.

In it, he explained his controversial decision to go back into investing again, in what is clearly a more significant manner.

It was a practice he had abandoned years earlier, apparently after being pecked by detractors for it.

But, dear readers, no more! Let Arrington be Arrington!

And that seems to be a talented blogger with a flare for the dramatic, with a clearly sharply-honed news nose and sassy writing skills, but a scribe who much prefers to be a playah than just an observer and chronicler of that play.

And, after more reflection, I thought: Well, maybe it is a better idea for Arrington to go play with all the boys in Silicon Valley, which would probably be more fun than taking flack for lack of traditional journalistic ethics he never ascribed to in the first place.

I once jokingly nicknamed Arrington Yertle the Turtle after the Dr. Seuss book on one dubious king of one small pond in Sala-Ma-Sond, after he went particularly nuts on the topic of news-embargo breaking.

That diatribe on how he saw news rules–which is to say, there aren’t any that bind him–was vintage Arrington, too. And, after reading his latest post, I suddenly realized that it’s pointless to give a turtle a hard time for not being a fish.

But Huffington is another story. She has put herself in word and deed right into the center of the debate on where news is going on the Web, especially after AOL paid $315 million for her Huffington Post news and opinion site.

Huffington has certainly taken a lot of hits over the years as the HuffPo has grown, some deserved, but she has clearly led an impressive effort.

In fact, I think the cute-kitten and celebrity-loving angle played up by her detractors to dismiss her is silliness, because she and the Huffington Post are clearly more than that and are obviously having a major impact on the future direction of content in the digital age.

But that power she has sought also gives her a responsibility to say exactly what that means on a real and granular and consistent level, beyond the platitudes of wanting to make great journalism that she declares all the time now.

In other words, very specifically: What does Arianna Huffington stand for in regards to journalism? What are her rules and standards and codes? And, perhaps more importantly, what does she not stand up for?

These are questions I hope Huffington–who is really good at smacking back at criticism, too (See: the New York Times’ Bill Keller)–will address in one of her patented blog-xplosions and many times over, too.

Until then, here’s a link to my very long and very detailed ethics disclosure on All Things Digital, which is exactly how our little site thinks it should be in the digital age.

In short, besides signing the Dow Jones Code of Conduct–standard at The Wall Street Journal and other DJ publications–all our editorial staff is required to also pen their own in-plain-English personal and detailed account of disclosures that are pertinent to their job.

(You can read an extensive interview with me on the subject, in fact, which was posted here by Two Bananas Marketing, this week.)

My ATD disclosure is probably the most detailed of all of them, since I gay-married Megan Smith a dozen years ago. She later became a VP at Google, which I cover from time to time, especially related to other companies I focus on more, such as Yahoo.

Most of the time, if you care to read my posts on Google, I am probably tougher and snarkier than not, mostly because I know the search giant from its earliest days.

And, even though I once wrote extensively for the Journal about Google since its founding and before Megan arrived there, I thought it wise to lay it all out in detailed detail.

(By the way, if you want to try to tweak me by asking what News Corp.-owned Fox News’ ethics rules are, I don’t know, as ATD belongs to Dow Jones, which has had them forever. I will say, though, that Roger Ailes often freaks me out.)

In any case, as Arrington preaches, the more disclosure the better, and perhaps I should say even more so here, given the current swirl, by noting explicitly that I garner exactly no financial benefits from my relationship with Megan.

That might seem odd, because she certainly earns more. But I don’t know how much nor do I ask, since we have separate bank accounts and she always pays up–well, almost always–when half the bills are due. While it sounds painfully un-romantic, we only spend overall what each of us can afford equally in an exact 50-50 split.

In addition, I also legally signed away all rights to inheritance–although I had no such marriage rights in the first place, being gay–of Megan’s assets, which are in a trust for her relatives and our sons (for when they are too old to have any fun).

More to the point, I believe this makes me the only person to marry an exec at a hot Silicon Valley company with no prospect of any gold-digging.

Thus, I clearly would make the worst investor ever–not that I ever invest in tech or plan to while I am a reporter covering the sector.

Thank god, I suppose, that Michael Arrington is there to take up the slack.

While Sprint did lose contract subscribers–114,000 of them–that loss was significantly less than the 464,000 it lost in the first quarter of 2010. Meanwhile, churn fell to 1.81 percent from 2.15 percent (finally time to retire the “hemorrhaging subscribers like Dan Ackroyd’s exsanguinating Julia Child” analogy, I guess)

Sprint’s revenue for the quarter rose about 3 percent to $8.3 billion, surpassing analyst expectations of $8.19 billion. And its loss narrowed to $439 million, or 15 cents a share, from $865 million, or 29 cents, a year earlier. That beat expectations as well. The Street had been looking for Sprint to lose 22 cents.

Not bad, all things considered. As CEO Dan Hesse noted during this morning’s earnings call, being the No. 3 carrier in a market in which the No. 1 and No. 2 carriers both have the iPhone isn’t easy.

“We do typically see a significant impact upon the launch of a new device, or in this case, the iPhone 4 on a new carrier, Verizon,” Hesse said. “The iPhone continues to be a competitive threat to us, first in the hands of AT&T and now in the hands of Verizon….Quarter after quarter, the iPhone is a successful device and one that provides very strong competition to Sprint. Needless to say, Verizon’s introduction of their new iPhone this past quarter had a notable impact on our net add performance for the quarter.”

Every time I want to view a video on YouTube, the video repeatedly starts and stops. Sometimes a five-minute video takes 20 to 30 minutes to view. This happens on all my computers and on my smartphone. What can I do to correct this problem?

A:

Since the problem exists on all your devices, I would guess that it’s an issue of some kind with your network, or perhaps the router or modem you are using. I’m sorry that I can’t precisely diagnose the problem from afar, but I’d suggest talking to your Internet-service provider and troubleshooting the router or modem. Sometimes network issues can be solved by merely rebooting the router, switching it off and then on after a few minutes.

Q:

I have the Fidelity app on my iPhone, and wonder about the security involved in placing stock trades through it.

A:

Remember that a smartphone is really a computer, and nothing in the consumer computer world can be deemed with certainty to be totally secure from the subculture of malicious hackers, whose motives are often financial. Having said that, I am unaware of any incidents in which iPhones in the hands of consumers have been compromised in a way that steals financial data sent over cellular networks. Further, I assume that Fidelity has some form of encryption for such transactions.

Still, I will repeat my oft-stated advice: Never perform confidential online business on any computing device over a public Wi-Fi network.

You can find Mossberg’s Mailbox and Walt’s other columns at http://walt.allthingsd.com. Email mossberg@wsj.com