AOL said it earned 23 cents a share for the fourth quarter on revenue of $576.8 million, compared to 60 cents per share on $596 million in the same quarter a year ago.

Wall Street analysts had expected the New York-based Internet company to earn 16 to 17 cents on revenue of $572 million.

While the results are still down significantly from a year ago, AOL’s stock has been rising — gaining more than 25 percent in the quarter — since CEO Tim Armstrong has improved advertising revenue.

That was up 10 percent in the quarter, the third consecutive quarterly increase.

Subscription revenue from its access business continued to fall — down 18 percent — although that was the lowest rate of decline in five years.

AOL also noted that it had encouraging improvements in certain areas of its business:

Video: AOL grew its videos, video views, video ad impressions and revenue at double-digit rates.

Brand Advertising: Project Devil advertisers, impressions and revenue grew at double-digit rates.

Local: Patch grew traffic, advertisers and ad impressions more than 100% year over year.

Traffic: Consumer usage was flat to Q3 2011, as growth in the Huffington Post Media Group sites offset declines at MapQuest and AIM.

But read for yourself — here are all kinds of charts and graphs from AOL:

AOL_Q4_2011_Earnings Release

AOL_Q4_2011_Earnings_Presentation

AOL_Q4_2011_Trending_Schedules

The comments follow a less than stellar fourth-quarter performance in which the gigantic e-commerce provider spent nearly as much money as it brought in the door — even during its busiest quarter of the year.

Profits for the quarter fell 58 percent, while annual earnings were cut nearly in half.

Some analysts were hoping that the end of the year would be a low point for margins and that Amazon would start growing in 2012 as it benefited from the steep investments made the prior year.

But that’s not part of the plan.

“We’re incredibly optimistic about the opportunity that we have, and that’s why we have invested the way we have and why we’re continuing to invest in the business,” said Amazon’s CFO Tom Szkutak in a conference call with analysts.

For clarity, Piper Jaffray analyst Charles Munster asked again: “So, your outlook in terms of investment philosophy hasn’t changed versus last quarter going forward?”

“No, no,” Szkutak said. “We are continuing to look as we always do. We learn every week, month and quarter about customer adoption. We are looking at a lot of positive things across the business in terms of adoption, specifically Kindle growth from a device standpoint and content that’s following that.”

Other categories seeing growth, he said, include clothing, consumables, consumer electronics and Amazon Web Services.

“There’s a lot of interesting opportunities that we continue to invest in. So we are pleased with the performance in Q4 and what it means going forward for us.”

Over the past year, Amazon has invested heavily in infrastructure, including 17 fulfillment centers around the globe. At the end of the year, it had 56,200 employees, up 67 percent year over year, with most of the hiring coming in operations and customer service.

It has also invested heavily in the digital content business, including the Kindle.

It’s widely assumed that Amazon is breaking even or taking a slight loss on the sale of each Kindle Fire. It’s also securing expensive partnerships with content companies across music, video and books, and giving some of that content away as part of the $80 Prime membership, which also includes free two-day shipping.

All of those are bets that Amazon is hoping will reap profits over the long term, as customers continue to consume after they purchase an e-reader or tablet or sign up for Prime.

So far, it’s too early to see how the investment is faring, especially when it comes to new categories.

“It’s very, very early,” Szkutak said, “but so far, we like what we see, so that’s why we are continuing down the path of adding more content and making Prime better. … Because we are investing a lot, we are making sure we understand it very well.”

A lot of details, like Kindle sales numbers, are still being kept under wraps, but he promised Amazon will someday share more about how it is doing.

Unfortunately, the market isn’t as patient. In after-hours trading, the stock was down almost 10 percent at one point. During the session, it ended up down, 8.7 percent, or nearly $17 , to close at $177.50 a share.

So well, in fact, that the tablet market is often characterized as being a two-horse race between the tricked-out Amazon e-reader and Apple’s iPad.

But when it comes down to the numbers, the two companies couldn’t be more different, like comparing Apples to oranges.

Tomorrow, Amazon is expected to report a giant fourth quarter, but it’s guaranteed not to look anything like Apple’s monstrous results reported last week for the same period.

Here’s one data point: For the holiday period, Apple’s gross margin was an impressive 44.7 percent, up from 38.5 percent a year earlier. Meanwhile, analysts are estimating that Amazon’s operating margin will fall to 1.3 percent from 3.6 percent last year.

The specifications of the two tablets can be compared side by side, but a completely different vocabulary is needed to speak intelligently about the two businesses. Simply put, Apple is a hardware maker and Amazon is a retailer.

One has very high margins and the other doesn’t, resulting in two drastically different financial outcomes today. But over time, the idea is for that to change.

Rather than making money from hardware sales, Amazon’s approach to the Fire is to generate incremental sales from other goods and services on the device. Some analysts feel that, over time, that play can create a reliable and recurring revenue stream – and ultimately higher margins.

Tomorrow, Amazon is expected to report sales of $18.3 billion in the fourth quarter, up more than 40 percent from the same period in 2010, according to FactSet Research. Q4 earnings are expected to fall notably to 17 cents a share from 91 cents a year ago.

While revenue growth is impressive, the company’s profitability is being weighed down by losses from the $199 Kindle (which is not quite a break-even proposition), the construction of more warehouses across the globe (17 were added in 2011 for a total of 69) and other investments in infrastructure, like its cloud-computing services and media services, like video, music and e-books.

In contrast, Apple has a rich markup on its iDevices and doesn’t have much of the same overhead as Amazon.

Still, the number of consumers Amazon touches in just one quarter is staggering, and it continues to take share from brick and mortar retailers.

As J.P. Morgan analyst Douglas Anmuth points out in a report, e-commerce grew about 15 percent in Q4 in the U.S. due to strong holiday sales, but he expects Amazon’s growth rate to more than double that to 47 percent year over year.

Anmuth is also bullish that while the fourth quarter could represent a “low point for margins,” Amazon could start seeing an uptick in margin as soon as the first quarter, now that a number of services and some key infrastructure are set in place.

However, don’t expect much insight tomorrow into the company’s long-range plans. The Seattle-based company is typically short on details during its earnings release and call.

If it follows standard protocol, it could provide an update on warehouses being built next year, number of employees and other infrastructure investments, but will likely dodge answers about how many Kindles it shipped during the quarter, or how much Kindle Fire owners are purchasing on the devices.

For now, we’ll have to settle for analyst estimates.

On Sunday evening, Stifel Nicolaus analyst Jordan Rohan raised his estimate for fourth-quarter Fire sales to six million units from five million.

While only on the market for a limited time, that’s still a lot less than Apple, which sold 15.43 million iPads, up 111 percent year over year.

Amazon’s stock dropped 1.65 percent, or $3.22, today to close at $192.15 a share.

Yahoo will report its fourth quarter earnings tomorrow, after the markets close, which most expect to be lackluster compared to a year ago.

To call this report a surprise would be, well, wrong.

In fact, it will be the 13th quarter in which the Silicon Valley Internet giant has done worse that the previous year. (This has happened as Internet advertising has boomed for sites like Google and Facebook, as a point of reference.)

Welcome aboard, new CEO Scott Thompson! Now, what are you going to do about it?

Probably cut costs first, including staff, and try to quickly figure out an all-new, this-time-it’ll-take strategery about what to do to turnaround the much beleaguered Yahoo.

But, first, the depressing quarter to deliver again.

The estimates for that weak performance have a range, but the consensus of analysts is expecting revenue to be $1.19 billion on profits of 23 to 24 cents. If Yahoo has managed to rein in costs more than expected, some analysts are hoping for a slightly better report.

Still, all the indications are for more negative signs in user engagement, search share, display advertising stats and more.

Thus, we await the light at the end of the tunnel.

As Citigroup’s Mark Mahaney noted in his cheat-sheet analysis:

“Valuation remains intriguing, but we’re still waiting for convincing Top-Line Turnaround Story Proof. With new CEO Scott Thompson, we believe YHOO will be another wait-and-see turn-around story.”

Of course, much of the action is taking place elsewhere, with the company ferreting away at the deal to sell off a big stake in Yahoo’s Asian assets and also subtracting and adding new board members.

But tomorrow, it’s once more unto the Wall Street breach, dear friends, or close the wall up with our purple dread.

Until the results are in, here’s a recent video I did for WSJ.com’s online Digits show on the possible layoffs at Yahoo:

According to sources close to the situation, Yahoo has instituted a hiring freeze across the company and is considering a reduction in force in support units of the company.

While the details of any layoffs — which are expected to be small and selective for now — are still being worked out, sources said that the stricture not to fill hundreds of open positions is the first step toward significant cost-cutting initiatives across the Silicon Valley Internet giant, in the wake of what it expects to be another weak quarterly report next week and a looming proxy fight.

Yahoo reports its fourth quarter earnings Tuesday. While the company has managed to improve the results in the last part of the quarter, sources said they will still show continued weakness in its key businesses and consumer usage.

That’s as competitors such as Google and Facebook have been showing significant growth, especially in the display advertising market.

Thus, new Yahoo CEO Scott Thompson appears to be zeroing in on costs and managing for margins, said multiple sources, much as his predecessor Carol Bartz did at the start of her tenure.

But many think Yahoo needs even more drastic changes, including massive cuts in staff and also product arenas, to give the company new life.

That includes shifts in leadership at the top levels too. In a major move this week, co-founder Jerry Yang stepped down from the company’s board and all roles there. More directors are expected to leave soon, too.

That will likely come after negotiations to sell part of its lucrative stakes in both the Alibaba Group and Yahoo Japan are successfully completed.

While not a certainty, Yahoo’s board hopes that will happen sometime before activist shareholder Daniel Loeb initiates a proxy battle against the company in the coming month.

Sound complex?

It is, and also troubling to Yahoo’s long beleaguered rank and file, who have been worried about more layoffs.

The Yahoo troops have been under intense pressure and have suffered from ongoing attrition. Just yesterday, for example, Yahoo lost one of its top advertising execs, Seth Dallaire, to Amazon.

The company can ill afford such departures of key talent, even as it seeks to pare employee numbers in other parts of its business.

At the end of its last quarter, Yahoo reported that it had 13,700 staffers, down from 14,100 in the previous year.

Yahoo, of course, declined comment.

If you thought things were going to quiet down with Yahoo now that it has installed new CEO Scott Thompson in place, think again!

That’s because of a very unusual — well, to be fair, unusual for most companies, but not for perpetually storm-tossed Yahoo — confluence of important events about to take place all at once over the next six weeks.

And, like a very dicey game of corporate Jenga, each has the ability to upend and impact the other significantly, either for the good or, well, for the bad.

Here are the four horsemen of the possible Yahapocalypse, all riding into town very soon:

Q4 Results: Yahoo will report its fourth quarter earnings on January 24th, after the markets close. While sources said the company has managed to turn around what was looking like a first-class disaster, it’s still not going to be a pretty picture when it comes to advertising growth, consumer engagement and other key metrics.

Simply put, Yahoo needs to show investors a fast-growing business. Instead, sources said the Q4 results will likely come in at the bottom of the expected range, which should be unimpressive, even though this has been business as usual at Yahoo for some time.

If Google and others have strong reports, of course, it will make the situation worse.

Along with goosing its ad business again, Yahoo needs to spur innovation and intro some cool new products in new arenas to make Silicon Valley and others perk up.

Proxy Fight?: Weak results will give a nice lift to potential efforts by activist investor Daniel Loeb of Third Point — a major Yahoo shareholder — to wage a proxy fight for control of the company. He’s already here in Silicon Valley this week searching for possible board members for an alternate slate of directors.

As I wrote earlier today, the earliest nominations for directors can be submitted is February 24. Loeb then has a month after that to submit a competing roster.

Worse for Yahoo, many of Yahoo’s major investors are mulling backing Loeb if he initiates a battle for control of the company.

There’s no doubt that Loeb is and means to be a thorn in Yahoo’s side — he already made a lot of noise about its consideration of partial investments from private equity firms, due to low share prices — until major changes take place at the company.

And by major, Loeb’s intent seems to be along these baseball lines: Throw the bums out!

Board in Flux: Speaking of the board, it’s not the pretty picture of solidarity as you might think.

Actually, no one in their right mind thinks that. This board is about as dysfunctional as they come. (It’s like that group on “American Horror Story,” minus the bald dwarf in the basement.)

Right now, several sources report, various factions are jockeying over which board members go and which stay. The Wall Street Journal reported last week on a formal search for new board members to replace outgoing ones, but it’s much more complex than just that.

While some departures seem most obvious — longtime board members Vyomesh Joshi, Arthur Kern and Gary Wilson — the really interesting part will be the possible exit of Chairman Roy Bostock.

While it now is more of a when rather than an if, many sources report, how it goes down is the key part of the move. And who will be the chairman then will be the big conundrum — either an internal candidate, such as David Kenny, or a fresh-eyed outsider.

Another question mark: Whether co-founder Jerry Yang could also move along off the board with Bostock. While Internet company founders usually stick on boards, it’s not a given, especially with all the turmoil at Yahoo, some of which is related to Yang.

For now, make no mistake, Bostock is still in charge of the board and Yang is the only real power behind that power, despite the recent influence of director Brad Smith.

But, with all the pressure by shareholders, some sources suggest that it might finally be time for some significant change at the board level, starting with the pair most associated with all its troubles.

Or, um, not.

If there is going to be any action at all, expect it before February 24th — when Loeb can start making real trouble.

Asian Solution: A lot of the above hinges on whether Bostock and Yang can deliver the promise of a deal with its long disgruntled Asian partners, Alibaba Group and SoftBank.

The trio is now engaged on negotiations about a tax-free deal, in which Yahoo would sell back some of its stakes in its Asian properties and get money and other operating assets in return.

While it’s good news that the talks are finally proceeding with some level of normal functionality, it’s still a complex situation and one with a lot of outstanding questions.

Most important: Which operating assets will be bought in the deal to hand over to Yahoo? And also, what will the valuations be?

Sources close to the situation said that the talks remain slow-going and frustrating — “The stop-and-go of all time,” joked one person involved. But they are moving forward, which is no small thing when it comes to these three.

That’s critical for Yahoo, which can ill afford to disappoint shareholders if no lucrative, cash-rich deal happens in Asia. And, it needs to happen before Loeb can act on a proxy fight too, since a successful end to its Asian issues will negate his momentum dramatically.

Oh Yeah, Running the Core Business Stuff: As usual, a full and fraught month for Yahoo and its directors, who have other things to do, I assume.

But not me and not new CEO Thompson. By the way, the former eBay exec will presumably be very busy doing some significant rejiggering of the core Yahoo business in the meantime.

Could that mean a new product direction for Yahoo, for example, around data? Could it mean a passel of new execs? Could it mean layoffs?

Or, could it mean Thompson will finally solve the ultimate sword-in-the-stone question: What is Yahoo?

And that, in the end, will be the real victory.

I hate to use a personal story to make a professional point — but when I was in the hospital recently, after suffering from a mini-stroke, I got an important piece of health advice that, oddly enough, applies perfectly to Yahoo, the Silicon Valley Internet icon I cover very closely.

I know, I know, but listen up …

When I was close to going home, one of my doctors told me I had to make sure I paid attention to any signs that might indicate a recurrence. The issue around any possible future ischemic attack taking place, he said, is speed in getting critical care once any unusual symptoms become apparent, such as numbness, tingling, confusion and cognitive difficulty.

That’s because every second of delay translates to increased damage to cerebral cells that could badly impact speech, movement and worse.

“Remember,” the doctor intoned with great and very appropriate gravity. “Time is brain.”

Yes, indeed it is — for me, and also very much so for Yahoo these days.

Leaving aside my own mortality, one of the most important issues going forward for Yahoo’s long-hoped-for revival will be how quickly the company moves in the next month, in what has so far been a lugubrious and rumor-heavy process to figure out its strategic plan in the wake of the firing of CEO Carol Bartz in early September.

That means — going into a major holiday season — Yahoo has about 30 working days to make what has to be a complex and multiparty deal. It is likely to include private equity firms, big companies, Asian partners, investment bankers, major shareholders and scrutiny from the media, in an effort that is approximately akin to herding cats.

This from a board that has often moved with snail-like reflexes in the midst of much more minors crises, and has shown a talent for disaster.

So, while speed is sometimes the enemy of reason, in this case, it is now more necessary than ever before.

There are three key reasons why Yahoo’s leaders have to perform quickly now, each of which could spell even more turmoil for the long-troubled company, if botched.

The first is the possibility — actually, the probability — of a proxy fight that might begin informally just after the new year.

That’s when you could start hearing from someone like activist shareholder Daniel Loeb of Third Point — who has been vocal about ousting Yahoo board members, including co-founder Jerry Yang. Yahoo directors are fully aware that he is eyeing this ugly option, which will include readying an alternate slate of directors.

According to a Yahoo spokeswoman, the earliest nominations for directors can be submitted is February 24 for those “shareholder proposals not intended for inclusion in proxy materials and for nomination of director candidates.”

But while there is a formal process, you will hear it coming long before that, unless Yahoo gives Loeb board seats to quiet him down — which is unlikely but possible.

Such a noisy fight is not one Yahoo can afford to have, and it has already shown some cloddish sensibilities in its response to a recent letter by Loeb — who has many more shares than Yang, and should still be accorded a certain amount of respect, no matter what he says.

Given how badly the last Yahoo shareholder tussle with Carl Icahn went, another proxy battle could be deadly, and might drag on through the first half of 2012. In his Yahoo tussle, Icahn ultimately got three seats on the Yahoo board, but eventually went away with everyone the poorer.

Second, Yahoo will report its fourth-quarter earnings in late January, which will likely continue to show weakness in key sectors of its business. While interim CEO Tim Morse is doing a laudable job given the shaky circumstances, drops in advertising revenue growth, engagement and search are not anything Yahoo can keep making excuses for.

While it is likely the company’s beleaguered operating execs will pull out the stops to make the numbers look better — a new game I like to play is “how many homepage ads can they jam in there at the quarter’s end?” — it’s no panacea for the kinds of dramatic and even drastic changes that new ownership will have to make, sooner than later.

And, speaking of beleaguered, perhaps the most important reason that Yahoo has to get the lead out and clarify its situation is due to one consistent thing about the company: Talent attrition and employee fatigue.

Speaking to one exec after another in recent weeks, it is dead clear that Yahoo is increasingly hard-pressed to hold on to the best of its current employees, or to attract any terrific new ones.

The impact on product innovation, morale and more is obvious.

One exec who has long been one of the more cheerleader types for Yahoo — often calling me out in the past for being too negative on the company’s prospects — has recently turned weary, cynical and even depressed about the future — so much so that I now find myself bucking up the worker.

“You can’t hire anyone, since you can’t tell them honestly who their bosses might be in three months,” said the staffer. “And you can’t look anyone who works for you now in the eye and tell them it will turn out right in the end, either, given the track record so far.”

Indeed. And, more than any other factor that could hurt Yahoo in the competitive tech sector, brain drain is what will always get you in the end.

Microsoft had a solid fourth quarter, which is why the conference call with Wall Street analysts should be relatively short and sweet.

Or sweet, at least.

Microsoft reported beat expectations on profits that rose 30 percent, as well as on revenue. Of particular note were its Office, Entertainment and Devices and Servers and Tools units. Even the revenue at its perpetually money-sucking Online Services division was up 17 percent.

(You can see Microsoft’s charts and other data here, if you really want more.)

Here’s a liveblog of the call:

2:31 pm PT: Well, Microsoft investor relations dude-in-chief Bill Koefoed sounds unusually jaunty in his greeting.

And why not? The results are good for Microsoft, even a little giddy, with a lot of impressive numbers and solid launches of several products, from Xbox Kinect to Office 365 to Bing, the very pricey but pretty search service.

Next up is CFO Peter Klein, who also sounds like this particular call is a relief.

He talks about the results a bit, most of which are up.

“In summary, we are pleased,” says Klein about the quarter and the year. He also notes that he is “excited.”

It’s party time in Redmond!

2:38 pm: Peppy Bill is back, going through the numbers. Solid!

Klein then moves onto the future and he remains “excited.”

Now, it is onto Q&A from the analysts.

This is where I zone out a little and start to wonder if a doughnut is a wise choice for an afternoon tasty treat.

That would make me “excited.”

Lots of congrats, which only makes me hungrier. One analyst asks why it was so much stronger than expected.

Klein: The economy has improved, businesses are expanding, peeps love them some cloud.

There is a question about how the troubled Yahoo search partnership is going. Klein promises some improvement by the end of the year.

Still, bummer!

But it is quickly back to happy, with a question about the strength of Xbox and its subscribers.

“It’s fantastic,” says Klein.

Like I said, sweeeeeeet.

Microsoft has a lot to crow about in its fourth-quarter earnings today, including a 30 percent jump in profits and strong overall revenue growth in its many divisions.

It is sure a lot better than what Yahoo and Nokia turned in this week in their quarterly results.

Here’s all the charts and other data to peruse before I start liveblogging the Microsoft conference call with Wall Street analysts at 2:30 pm PT:

SlidesFY11Q4

PressReleaseFY11Q4

FinancialStatementFY11Q4

According to DisplaySearch, Apple shipped 10.2 million mobile PCs in the fourth quarter of 2010–iPads, MacBooks and MacBook Pros–to claim a 17.2 percent share of the mobile PC market. That makes it the new global leader, a title it wrests from Hewlett-Packard, which shipped 9.3 million units during the same period for a 15.6 share and a second-place ranking. Acer ranked third, with 14 percent of the market and 8.4 million units shipped. Dell ranked fourth, with 5.9 million units shipped and a 9.9 percent market share.

An interesting rebalancing of market power and one that DisplaySearch believes is the result not just of first-mover advantage from the iPad, but notebook shipment growth that exceeds the industry average. Said Richard Shim, senior analyst at DisplaySearch, “Apple is currently benefiting from significant and comprehensive growth from both sectors of the mobile PC spectrum, notebooks and tablet PCs.”

[Image credit: Gizmodo commenter Ahubbuch]

Dell just reported quarterly earnings, and the numbers are a bit mixed. First off, sales in the fourth quarter were $15.692 billion, just a whisker short of consensus analyst expectations of $15.72 billion. That represents a 5 percent improvement over a year ago.

Per-share earnings, however, were way ahead of the consensus at 53 cents versus 37 cents, amounting to a change of 89 percent over the year-ago quarter.

In its outlook, Dell said it expects revenue to to grow in the range of 5 to 9 percent in its fiscal year 2012 (underway as of Jan. 29), and for profits to grow in a range of 6 to 12 percent. Cash flow from operations will exceed profits.

Dell shares are up more than 6 percent in after-hours trading.

Here are some highlights:

• Enterprise sales and services grew 7 percent to $4.6 billion, or 29 percent of overall sales.
• Server revenue increased 16 percent.
• EqualLogic sales grew 49 percent and, combined with Dell PowerVault sales, accounted for almost two-thirds of storage sales and north of 80 percent of storage gross margin dollars.
• Sales in the combined large enterprise, the public and small- to medium-business sector was up 9 percent to $12.4 billion in the quarter, with revenue for commercial laptop and desktop computers growing 10 percent.
• PC profitability (Dell calls them clients) improved in the second half of the year, driven by improvements in the supply chain, lower input costs and improved product quality. For the full year, PC revenue grew 14 percent to $33.7 billion, driven on a refresh cycle from corporate buyers.

CEO Michael Dell sounded an optimistic note, the first I can recall in some time:

“I’m very pleased with our fiscal year results and the strong performance we’re seeing in our commercial businesses. We remain focused on developing and acquiring new technologies and capabilities, and our IT solutions portfolio has never been stronger. Customers are now seeing Dell in a fresh light, and we’re heading into the new year with strength and optimism.”

Analysts had been calling for Sirius to break even in its fourth quarter on revenue of $740 million. Instead it reported a loss of $81.4 million, or two cents a share, on revenue of $735.9 million. The reason for the miss: An increase in operating expenses and $85.4 million in debt-extinguishment losses.

Unfortunate. Still, the company’s latest financials weren’t without some good news. Sirius added 328,789 new subscribers in the fourth quarter, up from 257,028 in the fourth quarter of 2009. And it ended 2010 with 20.2 million subscribers, 8 percent more than the 18.8 million it claimed at the end of 2009, and well above its target of 20.1 million.

Posting fourth-quarter earnings this morning, Sprint said it added 1.1 million total wireless subscribers, 58,000 of them two-year contract customers. Quite a milestone for a company that hasn’t seen a gain in postpaid subscribers in 13 quarters and a sign that Sprint may finally be turning a corner. Another good sign: Postpaid churn fell to 1.86 percent from 2.11 percent in the third quarter, and prepaid churn fell to 4.93 percent from 5.32 percent. And another: For the quarter, Sprint added almost 1.1 million wireless subscribers, its best showing in nearly five years.

All welcome news, even if Sprint is still losing money. The company reported a fourth-quarter loss of $929 million, or 31 cents a share, on revenue of $8.3 billion, up from $7.9 billion a year ago. Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters most recently forecast a loss of 30 cents a share on $8.15 billion in revenue. Said Bernstein analyst Craig Moffett, “Sprint CEO Dan Hesse might be forgiven for the temptation to hang a “Mission Accomplished” banner on the aircraft carrier that is Sprint. To his credit, he expressly declined to do so. Still, the company has at last achieved post-paid and total subscriber growth, customer service levels have improved, churn rates have been brought under control, and revenues were up.”

At $4.41, Sprint shares are up 1.15 percent in early trading as I write this.

“Each new product category typically causes a significant shift in market shares,” said Canalys senior analyst Daryl Chiam. “Apple is benefiting from pads, just as Acer, Samsung and Asus previously did with netbooks. The PC industry has always evolved this way, starting when Toshiba and Compaq rode high on the original notebook wave.”

And to those who contend that the iPad and similar devices shouldn’t be tallied in the same category as laptops and desktops?
“Any argument that a pad is not a PC is simply out of sync,” said Chiam.

[Image credit: Gizmodo commenter Ahubbuch]

For those who love to wallow in financial details, here is the slide deck of a lot of them, courtesy of Yahoo.

The Silicon Valley Internet giant reported its fourth-quarter earnings today, which met Wall Street investor expectations but were not a blowout.

Still, in a call after, its execs declared that signs were “encouraging,” and that Yahoo was “gaining momentum.”

See if you agree by going all junior accountant on the numbers:

YHOO_Q410EarningsPresentation_Final

BoomTown was looking over Victoria Harbour in Hong Kong as I blogged the conference call after Yahoo released its fourth-quarter earnings after markets closed today.

It’s pretty! But Yahoo’s revenue growth–still, not so much.

Let’s begin:

2:02 pm PT: Yahoo turned in earnings that were slightly better than expected, although no big shakes either, so the call was likely to sound exactly like the last several quarterly calls.

Bingo! We’re trying! It’s encouraging! You’ll see!

In fact, “encouraging” was just the word that CEO Carol Bartz used as she tried to focus on a doubling of operating income, operating margin and earnings per share.

Impressive, the revenue at Yahoo is still stubbornly not moving, which the company continued to attribute to the new search and online advertising partnership with Microsoft.

“This is all part of our plan to turn Yahoo around,” said Bartz, who added a new buzzword, “personalized content,” to its offerings.

She turned the call over to Yahoo CFO Tim Morse, who ran through the numbers, which pretty much came down to this: Display advertising up 16 percent from last year, while search revenue dropped 18 percent.

As in previous quarters, Morse talked about how “headwinds” will soon lessen and it will be smooth sailing for Yahoo ahead.

After the stormy seas of recent years, that would be nice, since investors have gotten pretty seasick owning Yahoo shares.

Morse offered that, “while there is still much to do, we are still executing well against our plan” and went on about how good things are.

Finally, we have a “unified purpose,” which he characterized as personalized content too.

It’s a nice new catchword for Yahoo, and I liked Morse’s strong tone and gumption, which for an accountant was like hollering.

His big Achilles’ heel: The revenues projections ahead remain soft.

2:24 pm: Back to Bartz, who focused on the future success of the Microsoft advertising alliance and also Yahoo’s leadership in display advertising.

She listed some big offline brands, such as Wal-Mart and Macy’s, noting when looking for online ads, “That’s right, they all came to Yahoo.”

Bartz moved on to its stake in China’s Alibaba Group and noted it was a “great investment with a bright future.” Translation: We are not selling for now.

But noting its investment in Yahoo! Japan, Bartz had a slightly different take, mentioning talks to “unlock” the value of the stake. Translation: Maybe we’ll sell if we can figure out how not to pay all those taxes.

Bartz did the same with all of Yahoo properties, putting a sunny spin on what is still a turnaround situation.

It’s a good strategy, but it is one that is starting to sound like a broken record, especially when Google, Facebook and others seem to be like a house on fire.

2:35 pm: Now on to Q&A, in which Wall Street analysts ask softball questions of executives.

And so they do, asking queries that include small details about its operating margin, questions on tiny changes in numbers due to accounting changes. And very little about larger strategy.

You can read about this stuff in the press release, but whatever.

I am thinking of starting an investment bank, so I can jump in on these calls and ask some questions that have actual substance.

The United Bank of Swisher? Goldman Sucks?

Ooh, I was wrong, because one analyst asked a good one about possible future layoffs.

Bartz noted the company would be adding people, um, after laying some employees off.

It’s all about “re-allocating” staff, which Yahoo did earlier today by laying off one percent of its workforce, after an earlier four-percent cut.

Next, a question about search share, with Morse noting there will be search volume growth in the future.

Big message: We are in this to grow the share.

Except it has not been growing, as the last several months of surveys of search share have shown.

But Bartz firmly declared: “We’ll be up” in 2011.

A question focused in on mobile, and Bartz pointed out that Yahoo had the disadvantage of not having a mobile operating system such as Google does with Android.

Good point!

2:59 pm: Another terrific analyst comment about the disconnect between the execs encouraging comments and the actual financials, which show a downturn in, yes, revenue.

It is exactly the point here, which Yahoo has been trying to spin. Morse went through the list of excuses, from bumpiness of the search transition to weakness in affiliate sales to whatever.

Bartz jumped in and blamed the search alliance again, noting that moving advertisers over to the new platform was hard to do.

“I will not back down on the fact that we are gaining momentum,” said Bartz about search. “There is a lot going on here.”

Morse chimed in, noting he was the one using “gaining momentum” in his script. “I really believe that,” he said, going through the terrific plans.

“You’re correct the top line is not showing that yet,” said Morse in an increasingly loud voice. “There’s an awful lot there to be optimistic about.”

The accountant that roared.

Encouraging.

But then came the last question about the growth of Facebook, the Silicon Valley social networking phenom that is clearly going to be Yahoo’s biggest rival over the next years.

Bartz acknowledged Facebook’s explosive growth, but declared the company more compatible than competitive.

“There’s room for everybody here,” she said.

Presumably, that’s the hope for Yahoo.

(Also, you can see a slide deck of the financials here.)

Yahoo will report its fourth-quarter earnings later today, and BoomTown will be covering them all the way from Hong Kong (the miracle of the Internet!).

Analysts expect the troubled Internet giant to turn in exactly what has been expected for the period–the consensus is $1.19 billion in net revenue and earnings of 22 cents a share.

That revenue number is lower than a year ago, especially due to declines in search ad revenue at the company.

Earlier this week, Google turned in a strong quarter. But Wall Street is only looking for meeting expectations from Yahoo, which will report after the markets close.

At a conference call with analysts after the earnings release, expect Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz to get questions on increased competition to its display advertising business from Facebook and Google, declining usage of its sites, as well as what she will do about continued product drift and talent drain.

And, if the growth picture remains lackluster, about how much longer her long-promised turnaround will take.

The slowness of the effort is starting to worry major investors, some of whom have gone sour on Bartz’s ability to reinvigorate the Silicon Valley icon and have been telling exactly that to board members in recent months.

While many division leaders might just release a dull memo, the former Google exec went right to the videotape, and I mean really went for it.

The adorkable result is an all-hands Q4 music video, which BoomTown acquired, in which a suit-wearing Eun moves into Lady Gaga territory and shakes his very buttoned-up booty.

While I like to see this kind of corporate playfulness and fun-poking, let’s hope AOL’s fourth-quarter earnings–being announced in a little more than a week and expected to remain weak–show as many jazz hands as Eun’s effort below does.

Enjoy:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110124/viral-video-aol-media-head-david-eun-gets-jiggy-in-internal-all-hands-video/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110119/yahoo-shares-feel-pressure-ahead-of-next-weeks-earnings/ http://allthingsd.com/20110119/yahoo-shares-feel-pressure-ahead-of-next-weeks-earnings/#comments Wed, 19 Jan 2011 14:18:28 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=39755

For a while recently, it looked like Yahoo shares might start pulling out of their longtime $16 range, boosted by various and sundry rumors about the sale of its Asian assets and other machinations.

But, as worries about its next earnings call in less than a week coalesce, the Internet giant’s stock has settled right around its 50-day moving average of $16.59, closing down 1.85 percent at $16.50 yesterday.

That’s not bad given the stock has a 52-week low of $12.94 (and a 52-week high of $19.12).

But, it did not stop Morgan Stanley from downgrading Yahoo shares on Monday and cutting its revenue and earnings estimates.

The reason? “Deteriorating fundamentals” and a belief that “users will increasingly consume media/content on Facebook vs. Yahoo!”

You think? (As Yahoo has found, it appears that the kids love to social network!)

Thus, despite a healthy valuation for those Asian assets in the Alibaba Group and Yahoo! Japan and some speculation about the sale of them–the lack of any revenue growth in Yahoo’s core U.S. market is still the big drag on the Silicon Valley icon.

Because of that, there has also been increased short seller activity recently, which means all eyes will be on Yahoo’s fourth-quarter earnings release next Tuesday, Jan. 25.

Currently, Wall Street analysts expect higher earnings of 22 cents a share on revenue of $1.19 billion for Yahoo.

That revenue number is lower than a year ago, due to a weakening display advertising business and declines in search ad revenue at the company.

And it will not help if Google, as expected tomorrow, turns in a blow-out quarter, especially if it shows strength in its own display business.

So, after its continued lackluster revenue in the last quarter, top executive turnover in its media business and layoffs in December, investors are going to be expecting some long-promised sign of turnaround from Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz.

Whether she can finally start to deliver on that or not next week remains to be seen.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110119/yahoo-shares-feel-pressure-ahead-of-next-weeks-earnings/feed/ 1 http://allthingsd.com/20110113/att-plans-2-7-billion-charge/ http://allthingsd.com/20110113/att-plans-2-7-billion-charge/#comments Thu, 13 Jan 2011 22:28:35 +0000 Roger Cheng http://voices.allthingsd.com/?p=35200 AT&T Inc. will take a pretax charge of about $2.7 billion in the fourth quarter in a move to simplify how it accounts for pension and other post-retirement benefits.

The Dallas-based telecommunications company said Thursday it would now recognize gains and losses in the year in which they are incurred, using a practice called mark-to-market accounting, rather than spread them out over several years.

The accounting change clarifies one of the more volatile aspects of a large employer’s financial results, better tying performance to the current economic state. It would eliminate the “smoothing out” of gains and losses over several years. Under the old system, some of the pension-plan losses recorded during the stock market decline in 2008 would still be on the books for 2010.

AT&T joins a number of large U.S. corporations including Honeywell International, General Electric Co. and International Business Machines Corp. in revamping pension-accounting practices.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110113/att-plans-2-7-billion-charge/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110113/sap-reports-27-percent-revenue-increase-still-owes-oracle/ http://allthingsd.com/20110113/sap-reports-27-percent-revenue-increase-still-owes-oracle/#comments Thu, 13 Jan 2011 18:32:09 +0000 Beth Callaghan http://voices.allthingsd.com/?p=35195 German software vendor SAP reported a 27 percent increase in software sales and maintenance services revenue for its fourth quarter. For the first time, SAP’s numbers include its 2010 acquisition of Sybase, but the company didn’t report a net profit because it has yet to determine how the $1.3 billion dollars it owes Oracle from the rival’s 2010 copyright-infringement case will impact its bottom line.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110113/sap-reports-27-percent-revenue-increase-still-owes-oracle/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110112/pc-sales-weakened-in-q4-everyone-blame-the-ipad/ http://allthingsd.com/20110112/pc-sales-weakened-in-q4-everyone-blame-the-ipad/#comments Thu, 13 Jan 2011 00:20:41 +0000 Arik Hesseldahl http://newenterprise.allthingsd.com/?p=1697 Research houses Gartner and IDC are both out with their market reports on PC sales for the fourth quarter and the full year of 2010. Both say the market was weak, and both are citing the same reason: Apple’s iPad.

One interesting revelation is that both Hewlett-Packard and Acer, the top two vendors by volume in the Gartner survey, saw their shipments decline year-on-year in a period where the rest of the industry was seeing growth, albeit slower than had been previously expected.

Hewlett-Packard maintained its market lead, with a share of about 18 percent worldwide, and 29 percent in the U.S. Acer came in second. Both saw their unit volumes decline. For HP, that translated to a decline of more than 200,000 units in fourth-quarter PC sales, or a little more than 1 percent. For Acer, which had hitched its wagon to the netbook craze a few years ago, it translated to a decline of nearly 2 percent, or more than 222,000 units. Dell, Lenovo and Toshiba all saw their shipments grow, with Lenovo leading the pack, growing a healthy 21 percent.

Gartner says that worldwide shipments totaled 93.5 million units in the fourth quarter, which amounted to growth of only 3 percent over the same period a year earlier, falling short of the 5 percent growth it had previously forecast. Gartner Analyst Mikako Kitagawa blames the iPad and other media tablets for the slackening growth. She says the industry’s one bright spot, oddly enough, is in enterprise, where companies are upgrading the machines they issue their employees. For the full year, the worldwide PC industry recovered from the recession, growing nearly 14 percent to 308 million units.

Apple remained in fifth place in the U.S. with a share of market just shy of 10 percent, and less than a percentage point behind Toshiba. Notably, this figure doesn’t include iPads, which hit a combined 7.5 million units in Apple’s third and fourth fiscal quarters, both of which ended before the holiday season. (Apple will reports earnings for its first fiscal quarter, which includes the holiday season, next week.)

IDC’s survey found the same trend, but it differed from the Gartner survey on a few key points. IDC put Dell in second place, behind HP and ahead of Acer in the worldwide market share race. I’ll attribute this to differences in methodology, since Gartner and IDC differ a little in how they count.

Another interesting note is that IDC paints a more negative picture of Acer, pegging its decline in fourth-quarter sales at 15 percent from 2009 to 2010. I asked IDC analyst Loren Loverde about the difference in IDC’s results versus Gartner’s, and he said part of it comes from differences in methodology, but also from the fact that Acer is closely held and so is a tricky company to track, and the data it does disclose isn’t as detailed as the other companies’.

But Loverde also says decline, whether 2 percent or 15 percent, reflects a stark business reality for Acer. The road to PC growth through mini-notebooks and geographic expansion is closed. It was a good strategy while it lasted.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110112/pc-sales-weakened-in-q4-everyone-blame-the-ipad/feed/ 8 http://allthingsd.com/20110110/amd-ceo-resigns/ http://allthingsd.com/20110110/amd-ceo-resigns/#comments Mon, 10 Jan 2011 22:01:16 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=55542 AMD’s looking for a new CEO. Moments ago, the company announced that Dirk Meyer, who has served in that position since July of 2008, is resigning. AMD is spinning Meyer’s departure as the result of a “mutual” agreement, but the fact that it’s effective immediately and that CFO Thomas Seifert has been tapped to replace him suggest it may have been otherwise.

Seifert isn’t even a candidate for the permanent position. And Meyer was talking up AMD at CES just last week.

“Dirk became CEO during difficult times,” AMD chairman Bruce Claflin said in a statement. “He successfully stabilized AMD….However, the Board believes we have the opportunity to create increased shareholder value over time. This will require the company to have significant growth, establish market leadership and generate superior financial returns. We believe a change in leadership at this time will accelerate the company’s ability to accomplish these objectives.”

AMD reports fourth-quarter financial results Thursday.

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