Its multi-million dollar investment in Star Wars: The Old Republic, is starting to pay off.

In EA’s third quarter, the massively multi-player online game generated 1.7 million active subscribers and sold more than two million units in a little over one month.

Is that enough units sold to call off the critics?

In an interview, EA’s CFO Eric Brown said he thought so. ”We were able to sell more units beyond what we were able to plan, and because of that, it was a big part of the upside of our EPS of 99 cents a share,” he said.

The company said non-GAAP diluted earnings per share, which excludes acquisition costs and other non-cash items, totaled 99 cents, exceeding its guidance of up to 95 cents, and exceeding analyst expectations of 93 cents.

The company’s non-GAAP revenues also exceeded estimates, totaling $1.65 billion, which was slightly above the top end of internal guidance and the $1.61 billion that analysts were looking for.

Additionally, its big first-person shooter, Battlefield 3, performed well.

To date, Brown said the game has sold 11 million units, and that it was able to gain 12 points of market share in the category year over year. “It’s an incredible success,” he said.

Still, in after-hours trading, the company’s stock continued to slip, dropping 4.3 percent, or 79 cents, to $17.65 a share.

The company’s fourth-quarter outlook suggests that it will not be able to sustain the levels seen at the end of the quarter. It predicts that non-GAAP revenue will be between $925 million and $975 million, and earnings per share will fall between 10 cents and 20 cents.

In the third quarter, EA’s GAAP revenues, which follow all accounting standards, totaled $274 million. Its loss per share was 62 cents, weighed down by the acquisition of PopCap as well as other expenses.

Brown said it was also worth calling out that its digital revenues for the 12 months ended in December hit $1.07 billion, exceeding the company’s goal of hitting $1 billion in digital revenues by March.

Digital revenues in the quarter grew 79 percent year over year with the assistance of Star Wars and digital revenue coming from Battlefield 3, he said.

During the Norwalk, Conn.-based company’s third-quarter conference call today, it fielded questions about the impact of Google adding airfare and hotel information to its search results through its acquisition of ITA Software.

Priceline CEO Jeffery Boyd said that, so far, it looks like Google has created “platforms that can be operated as an efficient vehicle for advertisers to get qualified leads.” He added that his company’s approach is “as an advertiser, and to participate as effectively as we can.”

Some companies, including Kayak and Expedia, worried about Google’s market power if it was able to acquire ITA. But Priceline did not object, Boyd said.

“The transaction was approved and we think it’s incumbent upon our industry to find the best ways to integrate and advertise on it, and try to get the wealth of qualified customers that Google is trying to drive toward us,” he said.

The downside: If Google is able to send more qualified leads, it might be able to charge advertisers more.

Priceline beat analyst expectations in the third quarter. Revenue grew 45 percent, to $1.4 billion; net income doubled to $469.5 million, or $9.17 a share, compared to the year-ago period.

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

Akamai president David Kenny has stepped down after a year on the job — and in the midst of Yahoo’s CEO search, where his name has come up as a possible replacement for fired CEO Carol Bartz.

Kenny is also a Yahoo board member — joining early last year — and had quickly become one of the major forces in pushing for change at the company in the wake of the troubled Bartz regime.

In a statement distributed along with Akamai’s Q3 earnings, Kenny said he wants to “to return to my first passion of pursuing emerging opportunities on the consumer Internet.”

You can decide for yourself whether Yahoo represents an “emerging” opportunity or something else.

Sources said the departure from the networking company was mutual, although there has been an increasing amount of tension over Kenny’s involvement on the Yahoo board, which has been working on a massive strategic review.

Kenny, who was the initial leader of the effort, stepped down from that board task and also recused himself from any involvement in the simultaneous search for a new CEO.

Whether he will get the job is not a done deal by any means. He is among several candidates Yahoo has been contemplating pursuing, after only recently hiring Heidrick & Struggles for its executive search.

In fact, it’s not entirely clear Kenny wants to be CEO of Yahoo or if he would want to return to his roots at a consumer advertising agency. Another issue: He currently lives in Boston.

Before coming to Akamai, he was managing partner of VivaKi, the media and digital arm of marketing giant, Publicis Groupe. He came to the French concern after it bought relationship marketing services firm Digitas, which Kenny ran.

All that advertising experience is one of the reasons he is being looked at by Yahoo, which is contemplating doubling down in online advertising platforms and products if it does not sell.

Many assumed that Kenny’s move to the Web platform company meant that it would become more actively involved in Web media itself. But Akamai didn’t make any major moves or acquisitions during his tenure.

Meanwhile, back at Akamai, Kenny’s title will be assumed by CEO Paul Sagan, who had previously served as president as well.

Next up — the crucial subscriber and guidance numbers. Netflix has broken its subscriber totals into streaming-only and DVD-only totals, which will make it a little harder to square with Wall Street expectations.

But here’s the important part: Netflix ended Q3 with 23.8 million total subscribers — a little lower than the 24 million guidance it offered last month. And it thinks that number won’t move much in the next three months: “we do anticipate that total U.S. unique subscribers will be slightly up in Q4.”

Investors hate the news, and are hammering the stock after hours. It’s down more than 20 percent, to around $94 a share. Recall that at one point this summer NFLX touched $300.

Here’s the company’s Q4 guidance — remember that many U.S. subscribers are both DVD and streaming customers:

Netflix says its subscriber problems don’t stem from its Qwikster misstep, but from its summer price hike, which it isn’t backing away from. “Our primary issue is many of our long‐term members felt shocked by the pricing changes, and more of them have expressed that by cancelling Netflix than we expected.”

DVD numbers dropped sharply last quarter, and streaming numbers won’t start growing again until December, the company says.

Okay. So what about all the competition that’s cropping up around Netflix? Are consumers going there? Netflix doesn’t seem to think so. For the first time that I can remember, it makes a point of denigrating Amazon’s streaming video content selection — “we have essentially all of this content on Netflix, and that content contributes a small fraction of Netflix viewing” — and says it doesn’t think many people are using it, period: “This low content selection explains why we have not seen much usage of Amazon Prime in our research.”

And what about Hulu and its Hulu Plus subscription service? Apples and oranges, the company says: “We think most Hulu Plus subs are paying to get current season TV content, which Netflix does not carry, such as this week’s SNL clips … In this sense, Hulu Plus current season TV is just a complementary content model to us, like sports or news subscriptions.”

Netflix also spends time in its shareholder letter explaining the value of exclusive content in online video, indicating that it’s going to continue to spend more on licenses it won’t share with others. That may work out well for the company in the long run but for now Wall Street is going to be hard to placate. Hastings can start trying tonight, during an earnings call that starts at 6 ET.

Here again is Mark Mahaney’s cheatsheet to help you interpret the numbers yourself:

Tomorrow, after the markets close, Yahoo will announce its third-quarter earnings, perhaps one of its more important reports in recent years.

Wall Street analysts are expecting the Silicon Valley Internet giant to report earnings of 17 cents per share on $1.07 billion in revenues.

But whether or not Yahoo has beat expectations will be less scrutinized than information about the state of Yahoo’s key search and display advertising businesses, as well as other user metrics.

It is at those numbers that a range of players — including major shareholders, possible bidders and media — will be looking to see just how badly the company’s business has fared with all the turmoil of late.

That has included the firing of its CEO Carol Bartz, a massive strategic review that includes the possibility of a sale to a range of mostly private equity buyers, a persistent attrition problem and a worry that the company continues to drift in its product innovation, even as others have surged.

Last week, I reported that Yahoo had finally selected an executive search firm to help it find a new CEO, which many think is a difficult task given the uncertain situation.

A series of worrisome trends across its ad businesses over several recent quarters has some looking at the company for possible purchase with some skepticism.

“What if it is too broken to fix, what if trends to Google’s and Facebook’s premium offerings is too overwhelming?” said one potential bidder for Yahoo. “There are a lot of what-ifs at Yahoo.”

By comparison, Google posted impressive earnings last week.

Yahoo stock closed at $15.70 today, down 1.3 percent.

As Dan Frommer notes, that’s down one million from Q3 of last year, but it’s still AT&T’s second-best iPhone quarter ever. Overall, the carrier added a record 2.8 million more wireless customers.

This quarter, of course, is the quarter that AT&T’s U.S. exclusivity for the iPhone goes away, courtesy of Verizon.

AT&T also said it activated 442,000 wireless plans for tablets. That number includes both the iPad and Samsung’s new Galaxy Tabs running Google’s Android; reasonable to assume that the overwhelming majority of those activations are for Apple’s machines.

Earlier on Thursday, RIM reported earnings that topped estimates along with sales that were just about what many analysts were expecting. The company said it expects revenue for the current quarter to be around $5.5 billion to $5.7 billion with per-share earnings in the range of $1.74 to $1.80.

It said that it shipped 14.2 million BlackBerrys, up 40 percent from a year earlier, and added 5.1 million new subscribers net in the quarter. However the company is expected not to forecast those figures for the coming quarter, nor does it plan to continue reporting those numbers in future quarters.

Among the things investors are likely to be interested in is what the company forecasts as far as shipments to Verizon in a quarter during which many expect the carrier to start selling the iPhone. Motorola has already warned that it expects its shipments to Verizon to take a hit.

Mobilized will have live coverage of the conference call starting at 2 pm PT.

1:55 pm: RIM shares, which had been trading lower in after-hours trading are now up around 3 percent.

2:02 pm: Call just getting underway with the usual warnings, caveats, etc.

2:06 pm: BlackBerry Torch now in 75 markets, just rolling out in Latin America.

2:06 pm: BlackBerry Style is one-third of BlackBerry sales at Sprint.

2:08 pm: Our relationship with Verizon remains strong, RIM says. A number of new products coming for Verizon including adding the BlackBerry 6 OS to the curve and Bold lines early in the new year.

2:08 pm: Recap of recent developer announcements, including payment service, launch of WebWorks, etc.

2:10 pm: Now more than 16,000 applications in BlackBerry App World, RIM’s App Store.

2:11 pm: PlayBook tablet expected to ship in first quarter in U.S. and will be Wi-Fi only. Other markets and models with cellphone radios will follow.

2:14 pm: Review of Q3 results. Average selling price for BlackBerry was approximately $315, with half of shipments coming in last month of the quarter as resellers prepared for the holidays.

2:16 pm: Company says it is comfortable with inventory levels.

2:19 pm: On to outlook. No plans for PlayBook revenues, with first revenues not expected until following quarter. Sounds like the availability of PlayBook won’t be until at least March. (RIM’s current quarter goes through Feb. 26)

2:24 pm: On to Q&A.

BB6 will eventually work on QNX operating system, but the company says it hasn’t given any sense of timing.

As for what QNX can deliver, co-CEO Jim Balsillie says “You’ll see more at CES.”

2:25 pm: Sorry, some technical problems here at Mobilized. We got disconnected a couple of times, but have switched to the Webcast and are back on.

Seems like the talk is on average selling prices.

2:32 pm: North America is still performing very, very well but dynamics here are different.

Balsillie says he expects stronger year here next year based on product plans in place.

“I feel very, very good,” he says.

“I feel great about where we are sitting in North America for 2011,” Balsillie says, and the company has “knocked the cover off the ball” in a lot of other markets.

2:37 pm: Question on China market. “I think you should have very positive expectations in China,” Balsillie says.

“China does well,” he says. “You’d always want them to do better….All you can do is keep doing the right things and investing in these places. The market is just so big.” Sometimes markets come faster than you expect, sometimes they come slower, he says. But, he says, “I’ve never seen a market not take off.”

Demand strong, he says, for PlayBook in China and Japan.

2:41 pm: Question on payments. Balsillie says one wouldn’t be going out on a limb to predict Near Field Communications integration.

2:44 pm: A lot of talk on why PlayBook is a good bet for businesses with Balsillie talking about its enterprise strength. Not much new information there.

2:46 pm: Will there be a media strategy to promote the tablet’s media abilities to consumers?

“Oh yeah, yeah,” Balsillie says–again, without giving any new details. Lots of game and media partnerships.

2:50 pm: Everything is fine. Things are great. (That pretty much sums up Balsillie’s statements the last few minutes–Just insert a different question or topic).

2:56 pm: “I think the PlayBook redefines what a tablet should be,” Balsillie says, adding that the fact one can create apps without needing to learn a new language are strengths that RIM’s approach s bringing to the table. “We’re way ahead on that and CIO friendliness, we’re way ahead on that too.”

3:02 pm: Call’s done.

Sales were $8.6 billion, helped mostly by new software license sales that grew 21 percent to $2 billion, while updates and product support revenue grew 12 percent to $3.7 billion. The consensus estimate was $8.34 billion. Sales grew 47 percent from the same period a year ago.

Non-GAAP per-share earnings were 51 cents, beating the 46-cent forecast estimate of analysts surveyed by Thomson Financial. Earnings after one-time items were 37 cents, up from 29 cents a year ago.

Gross margins on Sun-branded hardware increased to 53 percent.

Shares are up almost 4 percent in after-hours trading.

There’s a quote from CEO Larry Ellison, reminding us how fast his new products are, and digging once again at the competition:

“Sun’s new SPARC Supercluster computer shattered the world record for database transaction processing performance by running 3 times faster than IBM’s fastest computer, and a stunning 7.5 times faster than HP’s best ever database performance,” said Oracle CEO, Larry Ellison. “Our new generation of Exadata, Exalogic and SPARC Supercluster computers deliver much better performance and much lower cost than the fastest machines from IBM and HP.”

Here’s another quote, from Oracle co-President (and former HP CEO) Mark Hurd, about the Exadata product line:

“Since joining Oracle I’ve met with and visited many customers that have expressed a high level of enthusiasm around our strategy of engineering hardware and software that works together,” said Oracle President, Mark Hurd. “That enthusiasm translates into an Exadata pipeline that has now grown to nearly $2 billion. That number is a good leading indicator that customers are planning to increase their investment in Oracle technology.”

Yes I would say there’s enthusiasm. It was precisely because of the Exadata line that Macquarie Research upgraded Oracle today.

More from the conference call, which starts at 5 pm ET.

4:53 pm: Seven minutes to go before the Oracle earnings conference call starts. Right now it’s all mellow classical guitar.

Call is running a little late.

5:10 pm: And we’re underway with the safe-harbor statement.

Ellison, Hurd and president Safra Catz are on the call.

Americas grew 32 percent in U.S. dollars.

5:15 pm: Balance sheet: $24.8 billion in cash and short-term investments.

Generated $3.7 billion in free cash flow.

5:15 pm: Safra Catz is now speaking. We exceeded the high point of license guidance. Even excluding a payment for legal fees, we beat guidance by 4 cents.

5:16 pm: All geographies reported double-digit growth.

5:16 pm: “We continue to take share from SAP.”

5:17 pm: With Sun, included operating margins were 44 percent, which is better than SAP. [Another dig.]

5:18 pm: Hardware guidance: $1.1 to $1.2 billion in revenues.

Non-GAAP EPS expected to be 48 to 50 cents, and 34 to 36 cents on a GAAP basis.

Here’s Larry:

5:19 pm: Our goal is to be No. 1 in high-end market for servers. Right now our numbers are behind HP and IBM.

5:20 pm: IBM’s and HP’s servers are slow, and software is slow and expensive and have no software value-add. [Another dig at the competitors.]

5:22 pm: Exadata pipeline continus to grow. We expect our new generation of Sun machines will enable us to win significant share, and position us in the No. 2 position behind IBM very soon. And then we’ll fight it out for No. 1.

5:23 pm: Now Mark Hurd is speaking.

5:23 pm: I want to focus on our opportunities to grow significantly.

5:24 pm: Deal volume was spread across companies of all sizes and strength in the public sector as well.

5:24 pm: All of our customers and competitors are reacting to us.

5:25 pm: 150,000 Middleware customers. We ended the quarter with a record hardware backlog.

5:26 pm: Now going to Q&A:

A question from UBS. Are you starting to see a halo impact on adoption of the Oracle suite?

Larry: Close rates are improving. You’ll see great improvement in Exadata sales from Q2 to Q3. Because it’s new, people were running a lot of benchmarks and trying it out first. We’ll sell a lot more Exadata in Q3 than in Q2.

As for the halo effect, when you buy these servers you buy them to run specific software. Engineer them at the same time and make sure they run well together. We have a huge advantage over IBM and HP. The notion of systems, hardware and software that run well together will dominate the high end of the business.

Q: You clearly have a lot of irons in the fire with Fusion apps coming up and Exadata. Focus on Exalogic. Can you share early feedback from customers and compare that to Exadata ramp.

Mark: Exadata experience benefits Exalogic. We’ve matured the use case, we think we know where the targets are. The Exadata experience is a big deal for us.

5:31 pm: A question about Fusion Middleware.

Larry: We’ve been in the middleware business for a long time. With release 11 everything has been rewritten. It’s a much better user experience, you can patch our entire suite with a single file. We think the fact that we have an integrated suite gives us a huge advantage over IBM.

5:33 pm: A question about Europe. It was better than expected. Apps business was really strong. Look at competitors. You’ve been gaining share against SAP. We are seeing a pickup in general environment.

Hurd: I’m not an economist, but we’re doing well in Europe. It was broad-based. It was not singular to a deal or country. It was broad-based to countries where we have been gaining share. It’s been one quarter after another, a pretty steady beat.

Larry: We had a wonderful set of industry specific applications, in telecommunications and banking and retail, and that’s unique vis-a-vis SAP. that has helped us a lot to establish us in a lot of industries. Also Fusion is right around the corner.

5:35 pm: Q: How frequently is an Exadata deployment resulting in the displacement of a competitor’s product?

Hurd: About 70 to 75 percent of the time. About 20 to 25 percent of the time it’s a consolidation.

We’ve sold Exadata now in 50 countries, and 30 to 35 percent of our customers have made a second purchase. You’re starting to see repeat purchases. We’ve learned a lot about this and so as we launch Exalogic we can accelerate our learnings.

5:36 pm: Q: Margin was also great. What can we expect going forward and what were one-time items?

Catz: In general, it’s the business. The only nonrepeatable thing is the $120 million legal settlement, which we will not repeat. Hardware margins and operating margins, this is something we’ve done for many years.

5:38 pm: Q: What is visibility for database licenses?

Larry: A couple quarters ago, someone noticed database licenses were growing nicely. We think Exadata is going to be a nice turbocharge to our database business. Across the board our database business is going to get strong with Exadata.

I just looked at after-hours trading in Oracle shares and they’re up more than 4.5 percent.

Hurd: “The secret to Exadata is bringing the smarts to the data, versus bringing the data to the smarts.”

5:42 pm: Q: What continues to drive the database business? Is it just core database, add-ons?

Larry: We think our technology is getting faster and more reliable at a faster rate than that of our competitors.

5:43 pm Larry: As far as applications, we think there are lots of reasons we continue to gain share every quarter over the last few years over SAP.

It’s the industry-specific applications. We have telecom companies that are running only Oracle software. We have some banks that are making the same kind of commitments up and down the stack. SAP just doesn’t have that.

5:44 pm: Larry: We’ve got this extremely modern Java-based suite called Fusion that is going to strengthen our competitive stance against Salesforce.com and against Workday.

5:46 pm: That seems to be it. The call is concluded.

Nokia says the cuts have been on the table since October, when it announced a personnel restructuring during its Q3 results. And indeed it has. From a press release issued that month:

“Altogether, the planned changes are expected to result in a reduction of up to 1,800 employees globally, as activities are planned to be discontinued and integrated. Nokia will begin applicable consultations with employee representatives about these plans.”

News of the layoffs comes on the same day that Nokia said it will miss another shipping deadline for its new E7 smartphone. That device, which will run the next iteration of the company’s Symbian OS, was expected to launch this year. Now its debut has been postponed until early 2011.

Interesting, when you consider that prior to 2010, the Chinese smartphone market was ruled largely by Nokia’s Symbian OS and Windows Mobile.

How quickly things change. According to McCourt, Android now represents nearly 50 percent of smartphone volume in the country, up from zero last year. And Apple’s iOS, while a niche player with less than 500,000 iPhones sold last quarter, is ramping up quickly, thanks to the successful launch of the iPhone 4 in the country last month.

“Apple (must be) viewed as somewhat disappointing through Q3:10, but we suspect iPhone 4 and a WiFi-capable iPhone 3GS will substantially improve iPhone results in Q4:10 and beyond in China,” McCourt said in a note to clients. “The bigger picture is that the Chinese market for smartphones is exploding, but is at a much earlier stage of development than North America or Western Europe.”

Which means it’s a major geographic growth opportunity for the smartphone industry. Certainly, Apple views it that way. As COO Tim Cook said during an earnings call earlier this year, “If you look at greater China, which we define as mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan, the iPhone units were up year-over-year over nine times. We added another 800 points of distribution in China. The revenue, we have never released this number before but I will do this in this particular case, through the first half of the fiscal year that we just completed, for the six month period, our revenue from greater China was almost $1.3 billion and this is up over 200 percent year-over-year. So we are well pleased with how the company is positioned to take advantage of the growth in greater China.”

Read the rest of this post on the original site

The good news for Armstrong is that he has now conditioned Wall Street to expect these drops, as he works on a turnaround effort that began in the spring of 2009.

And because some of the ad drop is “self-inflicted”–the result of AOL’s decision to focus on quantity instead of quality as it revamps its ad team and strategy–it’s possible to add a more positive spin to the data. For instance: AOL’s domestic display ads, where the company has the most control of results, are only down 8 percent.

Armstrong’s vision is that eventually his company will once again be one of the industry’s top players: “AOL’s goal is to be competitive with Google and Facebook,” he said during his earnings call this morning. “We’re not trying to be competitive with people farther down the chain.”

Okay. But when? Today Armstrong announced that he expects AOL’s ad sales to mirror the broader industry’s by the second half of 2011. That will be more than two years after he took over.

Then again, you can argue that AOL languished within Time Warner’s grasp for the past 10 years. By comparison, that’s a reasonably speedy turnaround–and bear in mind that any Internet turnaround is a very rare thing.

So here’s the question: Will Wall Street wait to find out if he can do it?

—————
EARLIER:

A quick first look at AOL’s Q3: Revenue of $563 million and adjusted earnings of $0.93 a share. The Street was looking for $557 million and adjusted earnings of $0.50 per share.

AOL’s ad slump continues, though Wall Street expected that: Ad revenue was down 27 percent this quarter, and display ads were down 14 percent. Domestic display was down 8 percent.

Things to look for in the company’s financials and during its conference call this morning: Most important, an update on its attempt to turn around its ad sales unit, which has been a mess–analysts are still expecting AOL to post a substantial ad sales decline this quarter; additional news about the company’s renewed search pact with Google; and perhaps insight into Tim Armstrong’s M&A plans following a shopping spree that included TechCrunch and 5Min.

AOL says it spent $97 million on TechCrunch, 5Min and Thing Labs, and that it could spend up to $23 million more on earnouts/retention bonuses over the next three years. $65 million of that total went to 5Min.

Here’s what AOL’s ad story looks like, quarter by quarter:

And here’s what AOL wants you to think about as you evaluate its ad decline–moves it has made on its own that will cut down sales in the short term, like its decision to more or less shutter its European operations.

I’ll update with notes following the company’s 8 am earnings call.

Three months ago, the New York Times seemed to have halted its advertising skid after a very long slide.

Perhaps it has started up again. Ad revenue dropped one percent during Q3: Digital revenue jumped 14.6 percent, but that wasn’t enough to counter a 5.8 percent drop in print ads–which CEO Janet Robinson had thought would move up again this quarter. This morning, though, she cited “uneven economic conditions” and “marketplace volatility.”

Meanwhile, circulation revenue dropped 4.8 percent, and the company’s overall revenue sank by 2.7 percent.

The Times isn’t terribly optimistic about the fourth quarter: It thinks prints ads may improve “modestly,” while digital will grow by 10 percent, which is a deceleration from both this quarter as well as the previous quarter’s 21 percent growth rate.

Here’s the full breakout for the Times’ digital properties (NYT.com, About.com, etc), which appear to be doing pretty well:

• Total Internet revenues increased 13.3 percent to $89.4 million from $78.9 million.
• Internet advertising revenues increased 14.6 percent to $78.3 million from $68.3 million.
• Internet advertising revenues at the News Media Group increased 21.6 percent to $47.4 million from $39.0 million, mainly due to strong growth in national display advertising.
• Internet businesses accounted for 16.1 percent of the company’s revenues for the third quarter of 2010 versus 13.9 percent for the third quarter of 2009.

Meanwhile, the Times doesn’t have anything new to say about its plan to move its main Web site to a “metered model” pay wall next year. Perhaps we’ll hear something about it during the 11 am earnings call.

Talking about Google’s characterization of the Android platform as open and Apple’s as closed, Jobs said, “We find this a bit disingenuous.” The open vs. closed argument is a “smokescreen,” Jobs said. The real issues, in terms of satisfying consumers, are the advantages of Apple’s integrated approach in contrast to the multiple flavors of Android as adapted by various manufacturers and carriers.

Noting too that there will be at least four Android app stores, as opposed to Apple’s one-stop shop, Jobs said that “this is going to be a mess for both users and developers.”

Android may be Apple’s biggest competitor in the mobile market, Jobs said, but Apple’s goal is to create products that “just work” and “their approach is very different from that.”

Furthermore, he said, “Even if Google were right, and the real issue was closed vs. open, it’s important to remember that open systems don’t always win.”

“We are very committed to the integrated approach, no matter how many times Google tries to characterize it as closed,” he said.

Unofficially, that is. For the record, GE says that Jeff Zucker and company booked flat revenues and saw operating profit drop by 15 percent. But a year ago NBC had booked a gain after moving around ownership stakes in the A&E TV venture it co-owns with Hearst and Disney.

Strip those one-time benefits out, GE says, and its 2010 Q3 would show a seven percent revenue hike and a five percent bump in operating profit.

That’s better. “A pretty solid quarter,” in the words of GE CFO Keith Sherin.

Here’s GE’s highlight reel for the business, which Comcast will likely own by the end of the year. (Click to enlarge.)

Meanwhile, Zucker, who has a few months left on the job, is much, much more enthusiastic about his company’s performance. Here’s his all-hands letter to employees sent out this morning:

GE reported its earnings today, and I wanted to take the opportunity to congratulate everyone on NBCU’s very strong results. Looking just at our operations, these are our best third-quarter results since the NBC-Universal merger more than six years ago. Truly a record performance.

Although our segment profit as reported by GE shows us down, this is driven by the impact of one-time, non-operating events and transactions that took place in the third quarter of last year (such as the one-time gain from the change in our interest in A&E Networks). On an operating basis, our profit was up 32% versus last year (or 5% excluding the impact of charges taken by certain divisions in the third quarter last year). Given that the economy, although improving, is still far from robust, these are excellent results driven by superior execution throughout our operations.

We had exceptional performances from a number of our divisions, including Cable Entertainment, Local Media, Film, and Theme Parks. Cable Entertainment posted a double-digit increase in operating profit, behind great results at each of our networks. Local Media was up an amazing 87%, as increased revenues from a resurging local ad market hit the bottom line. Film op profit was up 57%, driven by Despicable Me, which performed well ahead of expectations. And Theme Parks had the best quarter in its history, with op profit up 59%, the result of the new Harry Potter attraction in Orlando and the new King Kong 360 in Hollywood.

Here are some of the other highlights:

· USA was the No. 1 cable entertainment network for the 17th quarter in a row, an incredible string of success, and Syfy finished the quarter ranked No. 8 in adults 25-54

· Bravo had its best quarter ever and now has 20 consecutive quarters of ratings growth, and Oxygen had its best 3rd quarter ever

· CNBC posted increases in both revenue and op profit, and MSNBC continues to operate from a position of strength, beating CNN in primetime for the 4th quarter in a row and beating CNN in total day for the first time in a decade, while also launching a very exciting new marketing campaign

· Through the first five weeks of the NFL season, Sunday Night Football is averaging nearly 22 million viewers, the most for the first five weeks of a primetime NFL package in 14 years

· NBC is tied for No. 2 through the first three weeks of the new season, up 4% versus a year ago to make it the only major English-language network to grow year-to-year

· Jay Leno continues to be No. 1 since returning to his old timeslot, and Jimmy Fallon holds a 35% lead over CBS in his time period

· NBC News remains No. 1 across the board and recently hosted a fantastic public-service programming event called Education Nation, an effort that should make us all proud to be part of this company

· Telemundo has the highest-rated novela in its history with Donde esta Elisa, and mun2 had its best quarter in all key demos

There is so much to be proud of! Congratulations and thanks again to everyone, because I know, whether you are part of one of the businesses mentioned above or not, you are working hard to keep this company great, and I truly appreciate it.

At the same time we are notching these business successes, our transition teams are hard at work preparing for the new NBC Universal. We’re on track for a close of the transaction with Comcast, hopefully by the end of the year. As I’m sure you know, the timing will ultimately be determined by the FCC and the Department of Justice. We’ll have a clearer idea about timing as we get into November.

One other thing about the transition. You have received information about your new benefits, and I urge you to pay attention: review the information on the intranet, attend the benefits sessions, and enroll yourself and your family in both the GE and the new NBC Universal benefits plans. I hope each of you give this the attention that it deserves.

The company is really in a terrific place right now. We have a Cable Entertainment group that is on track to record its fifth straight year of record earnings. A Theme Parks division that is on track to have its best year ever. A Local Media division that will likely more than double its earnings from a year ago … and much more. And making it all happen are 15,000 employees who love this company, understand what we do, and are committed to doing it better and better every day. Thank you very much. Your strength of character, and the strength of our operations, will ensure a strong end to this year.

Here are the three data points that the search giant showed off during its earnings call this afternoon. All of them “begin with the letter B,” as product SVP Google Jonathan Rosenberg noted, and all of them come with caveats:

• $2.5 billion: Non-text display ad revenue run rate. That number includes ads from its DoubleClick unit as well as YouTube.
• 2 billion: YouTube monetized views per week.
• $1 billion: Mobile annualized revenue run rate.

All of those seem big–and they are! But they’re also deliberately fuzzy enough that it’s hard to tell exactly what they mean.

For instance: As Henry Blodget notes, those display-ad dollars are gross revenue, which means that Google only keeps a portion of them. And while that two billion YouTube views number is up from a billion a year ago, it’s proportionally the same: A year ago YouTube said it was monetizing a billion views a week while serving up a billion views a day; now the video site says two billion views a week and two billion a day.

Meanwhile Google officials, who routinely announce that YouTube is close to profitability, refused to tell analysts whether YouTube is actually profitable.

No matter! The point of b-as-in-big numbers was to impress Wall Street with Google’s ability to create new revenue streams beyond its core search ads. And the data, along with the company’s impressive Q3 performance, seems to have worked: Shares are up nine percent in after-hours trading.

——————

EARLIER

There’s the beat Wall Street was looking for. Google reports earnings of $7.67 a share and net revenues of $5.48 billion. The consensus was for $6.67 and $5.25 billion. GAAP EPS was $6.72.

Google (GOOG) has been plowing money into capital expenditures and people–it now has 23,300 employees, up from 21,800  months ago, a 6.8 percent increase–but it has been able to keep operating income quite healthy, anyway. Adjusted operating income was $2.93 billion, well above the $2.77 billion consensus.

GOOG is up considerably, now seven percent, in after-hours trading. Robot cars for all!

You can listen to (and watch) Google’s 4:30 pm ET earnings call by clicking on this YouTube link. I’ll add updates from the earnings call occasionally starting here:

As in recent quarters, CEO Eric Schmidt is sitting this one out.

CFO Patrick Pichette starts off. Aha! Teases that “we may have” Schmidt available for the first 30 minutes of Q&A before he gets on a GooglePlane.

300 of those new 1,500 employees came from acquisitions.

Discussion of “long-term” growth–”the next 5 to 10 years.” “Simply put, we’re on this growth agenda at full throttle…investing heavily in people and in product.”

There’s a “war for talent” in our industry, which is “out of synch” with the broader economy. Currently exploring how to attract and retain people. Winners and losers determined by this battle.

Re: Product investment, which you’ll hear about from product SVP Jonathan Rosenberg. He’s going to tell you about some numbers, but don’t expect to hear an update on these–they’re merely “proof points” about Google’s success.

Here’s Rosenberg, teasing new previously unreleased numbers.

Here they come. Starting with search and Google Instant:

Impact has been “very minimal” on revenue and “quite expensive” from a resource perspective.

But! “We launched it because we could.”

As search gets better, ads have to keep pace. Great momentum with AdWords.

New ad formats appear on more than 10 percent of query. Some formats show clickthrough rates as much as 10 percent on some, up 30 percent in others.

Big numbers, “which all begin with the letter B.”

$2.5 billion: Non-text display ad revenue run rate. That includes DoubleClick, YouTube.

2 billion: YouTube monetized views per week

$1 billion: Mobile annualized run rate

Mobile search queries up 5 times in the last few years.

Back to Pichette, to tamp down numbers.

In some cases, there is overlap with numbers. For instance, with AdMob, numbers counted in both display and mobile.

Time for Q&A, Schmidt is now on the line.

Schmidt says query growth is pushing click growth, and so are new ad formats. Ads are more compelling, etc.

Pichette notes that AdX numbers are included in the $2.5B display total.

Q: Please talk about YouTube. Of the two billion monetized views, what percent is that of total views? And are you profitable yet?

Pichette: Re: Profitability, “We have not made any comments on it.” [Except of course when they do, over and over.]

Rosenberg: Note that we’ve said we do two billion views per day–that will give you context.

Sorry, missed a Q.

Schmidt says growth of Android is “well past what I had ever hoped for.”

90,000 apps on Android “and growing very fast.”

Question about “proprietary benefits” of Android.

Schmidt: Android is the “largest single platform play” in mobile today.

We’re growing it by giving software away. How does that help us? Well, for starters, people who use Android search two times more than anyone else. Obvious benefit for us there, and search is more lucrative for us there as well, and that makes Android “hugely profitable.”

And we can add other value-added services to Android, but that’s not the focus right now.

Questions on cost: Cost per employee has declined. Can you continue that? And on mobile, will you stay with the “indirect monetization” Android strategy?

Pichette: Wouldn’t read anything into the cost-per-employee numbers. But we’re continuing to be frugal and generous.

Ad boss Nikesh Arora: We’re excited about the revenue model we have. We have no reason to change the model we have with Android.

Schmidt: And display will become a very big component of mobile.

Q: On display, can you break out YouTube and AdX numbers? And what do you think of competitive Android marketplaces?

Pichette: No breakout of numbers. [Duh.]

Schmidt: Goal of the app store is to make money for developers. Not a revenue goal for Google. More stores are a “win for everybody.”

Question about CPC on mobile devices. Rosenberg: They’re lower than desktop, because there aren’t many practical ways to consumate transaction. But on the iPad, activity looks a little bit more like it does on a PC, because there’s more room to enter credit card numbers, etc.

Q: Please discuss cannibalization between smartphone and PC–are iPad and tablet searches incremental or cannibalization? And can you give us color on international 26 percent growth?

Rosenberg: We don’t see cannibalization. We see mobile as complimentary to desktop. Different use patterns–mobile search is on weekends, during lunchtime, etc.

Arora: Generally, trend positive across the board. U.K. a bit weaker, but some of that is FX. Southern Europe way better than Northern. Asian markets robust.

Q: Competitors make $300 profit per handset sold over the lifetime of a device.You’re approaching this with a different model, but do you think that’s an upper limit on that number?

Schmidt: Our model is that handset makers and manufacturers make a lot of money from the phone, and we make money from advertising. So can’t compare the two, and premature for us to guess what we can do. “It should be highly lucrative” and a “very very strong revenue stream compared to a PC.”

Q: On social search. How do you “capture the signal” without access to the data feeds, as you have with Twitter.

Schmidt: “There are some ways we can do that” now, and we’re working on new ways.

Sorry, stepped out. Back now.

Q: TAC rate seems to be lowest since IPO. Sustainable? Growth has been driven by volume, not price. Sustainable, and/or will pricing increase going forward?

Pichette: MySpace deal is now over. That saved us a bunch of money. And mix of our partners will effect our TAC. That’s about it.

Rosenberg: Can’t answer volume/price question without “being forward-looking.” [Heh]

Q: Microsoft/Facebook deal was exclusive. But do you think you’ll see exclusive data deals? And what about Groupon, etc.? Can you compete there?

A: Value of exclusive data is “swamped” by “vastness” of the Web. So no concern there.

Schmidt: Always a concern that large chunks of data are not accessible to search engines….long pause… up to the content owner to decide how much to expose. We believe the world is better off if more information is searchable. “We fundamentally believe that.”

Rosenberg: Daily deals are very exciting. “A lot of small companies doing a fabulous job there.” We participate a little bit via sitelinks. But no question “that’s a very exciting and hot space.”

Q: When will Google Instant be on the BlackBerry or iPhone? What’s Android activation rate? And why not let advertisers bid directly on mobile inventory?

Rosenberg: Instant availability on other platforms “relatively soon”–probably this fall.

Not updating Android activation numbers.

Q: Given that non-core search is more material, do you think you’ll keep allocating resources with your 70-10-10 model? And when do you anticipate mobile overtaking desktop?

Schmidt: On mobile vs. display: Even if we knew I don’t think we’d talk about it.

On core vs. emergent: We talk about this all the time. Depends. Android is very small, and growing fast, so they get all the resources they need. We end up still at 70-10-10, but that’s not really a formula for us.

Pichette: What really matters the most to us is as Eric says, “When you see a hockey stick, pour gasoline on that fire.”

Q: Big-picture data question: What does Google think about leveraging user data to better target ads (see Facebook, Yahoo, etc.)–particularly with search data and display?

Schmidt: “We have a pretty strong opinion that we’re not going to do very much of it.” We’re intensely serious about privacy.

So “we’re not going to do the kinds of things that we could do with it… without your explicit permission. And in many cases we probably won’t do it forever.”

A question on display, which I’ve missed but will have to return to.

Pichette wraps things up. Today’s data points “are not about giving you information” for coming quarters, but to give you confidence that we’re building long-term businesses.

Call ends.

Mark Mahaney’s cheat sheet will help you decipher the numbers:

AMD also said it expects Q4 revenue to be sequentially flat with the third quarter. That would imply $1.62 billion; the Street has been forecasting $1.67 billion.

On a GAAP basis, the company lost $118 million, or 17 cents a share.

“AMD’s third quarter performance was highlighted by solid gross margin and a continued focus on profitability, despite weaker than expected consumer demand,” CEO Dirk Meyer said in a statement. Gross margin in the quarter was 46 percent.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

Robot cars! Wind farms! And since the press release won’t hit the wires until this afternoon, there’s still time for Google (GOOG) to tell us about the consumer jet pack technology it’s been secretly testing in Siberia.

If Google does fall flat today, then the company”s emphasis on its “things that don’t make us money” unit seems like a liability–the kind of thing you want to button up in advance of an earnings call.

But note that Wall Street seems to have plenty of confidence in the ad giant: GOOG is up $8, to $544, since the company began rolling out its space-age announcements over the weekend.

Like your Google analysis a bit more polished? Fine–here’s Citigroup (C) ace Mark Mahaney’s quarterly cheat sheet. I’ll be back this afternoon for more knuckle-dragging (click to enlarge):

[Image credit: Steve Jurvetson]

In both cases, that lurch on the right hand side shows you how unpleasant things got post-Lehman, and the subsequent recovery shows that we’re getting close to where we were back in 2008. So that’s good.

The only problem with the data is that it only goes through this summer, and we’re just about to get a new set of Q3 numbers, starting with Google’s (GOOG) on Thursday. So best to check back then to get an updated sense of how things really stand.

As Kara Swisher has reported, Google (GOOG) and MySpace owner News Corp. (NWS) are close to a “realistic” search deal to replace the famous three-year, $900 million pact signed during the Web 2.0 boom. The old deal expired this summer, and the two companies have been negotiating a replacement while working through a couple of one-month extensions.

News Corp., which also owns this Web site, doesn’t have much leverage here. Its once-hot social network has long been eclipsed by Facebook, and Microsoft (MSFT) doesn’t seem inclined to make a competitive bid for the MySpace business.

Translation: The new deal should save Google $200 million in traffic acquisition costs, Khan says. And he figures that those savings will show up as soon Google’s Q3 results, due out next week: He’s boosted his net revenue estimate to $5.33 billion, up from $5.32 billion.