GoodData is a privately-held company, but that’s not stopping it from crowing about its revenues — to a point.

The business-intelligence service provider (aka cloud-based big data company) plans to announce tomorrow that its first-quarter revenues in 2013 were three times bigger than the same period a year before. The company isn’t saying say exactly how big those revenues are except to note they are “double digits.”

We got a peek at a few more numbers:

• GoodData has increased its total number of customers from 8,000 at the end of Q4 2012 to 10,000 at the end of the first quarter.
• Also in that period, it closed seven annual contracts worth $250,000 or more.

But that’s as far as its quarterly disclosures go. There were no specifics about any other performance metrics from the quarter.

GoodData may be warming up for the kind of quarterly earnings disclosures that it might do at some future point as a public company — and founder Roman Stanek has stated his intentions for an IPO in the past. But it’s a pretty limited warmup for now.

This much we do know: The six-year-old company has raised $53.5 million to date in several rounds of funding, and employs about 200 people. Its headquarters are in San Francisco. And it’s really hard to find art to illustrate business intelligence or big data, which is why we are giving you this photo of small and big Datas.

Photo credit: JD Hancock via photopin cc

If you’re a founder or an investor, you’re going to love the new marketplace for trading shares in private companies that the Nasdaq is setting up with SharesPost.

That’s because this market, called the Nasdaq Private Market, will provide a lot of liquidity. Those pre-IPO shares in a once-promising company that hasn’t shown much growth in the past year? They used to be a drag on your portfolio — now you’ll be able to unload them and turn them into cash.

“From an entrepreneur and VC perspective, this is a good thing,” Ajay Chopra, general partner at Trinity Ventures, told me via email today. “One more avenue for capital formation and liquidity, particularly in turbulent times when the IPO window is closed, is hard to argue with.”

It’ll be good for founders who have spent years of toiling away on their startups while drawing minimal salaries and still have nothing to show for it because all their equity is locked up in private company shares. Instead of having to structure strange investment rounds where the majority of the cash goes right into the pockets of the founders as a way of giving them an early payday, those founders will be able to list some of their shares on this marketplace and sell them more efficiently.

It will also relieve some of the pressure for companies to go public before they’re ready. An IPO has a lot of downsides, not least of which is the enormous time and expense of setting up the IPO, going on a roadshow, defending your financials, and more.

“An increasing number of companies are choosing to remain private longer, which requires an efficient means to access liquidity for employees and investors,” Nasdaq said in its press release. “NPM will offer a complete, end- to-end solution that will enable a private company to control the marketplace for its shares. Transactions on NPM will meet NASDAQ OMX’s industry-leading standards for security, compliance and client support.”

But here’s the troubling thing — at least for me, as a journalist. There’s a disturbing trend toward secrecy and opacity in the tech markets, and I’m concerned that NPM will only contribute to that.

Private companies are not held to the same standards of disclosure as public companies are. Once a company has held its IPO, it has a responsibility to file quarterly earnings reports and to publicly disclose anything material to its business. (Sometimes those requirements become ridiculously bureaucratic, as when a company is required to file an SEC disclosure every time its chief executive tweets something about the business, which is one reason companies find them so annoying.) The Sarbanes-Oxley Act imposes additional restrictions, making executives personally liable for misstatements in a public company’s reporting. And then there’s no telling which direction the “wisdom” of the markets will push your share price, as Facebook discovered last year to its chagrin.

Or, as a spokesperson for SharesPost competitor SecondMarket told our reporter today, “Coupled with the recent reports that Nasdaq itself was considering going private, this announcement is a telling admission that companies increasingly wish to avoid the casino-like atmosphere of the U.S. public markets.”

Merely filing for an IPO carries with it certain disclosure requirements, which help would-be investors evaluate the company and decide whether it’s worth buying the stock. Or, it did — until the JOBS Act passed, and with it, provisions for companies to start the IPO process in secret.

What’s more, even an ordinary public offering has built-in ways to give certain investors more information than others, as we saw during the Facebook IPO. The biggest Wall Street investors were privy to details about Facebook’s revenues (specifically, its difficulty in making money from mobile traffic) that were withheld from the broader market. At the time, that seemed to me like it was in direct conflict with the purported mission of making information as widely available as possible in order for the stock market to function freely and fairly.

Now, in addition to preferential pre-IPO treatment for certain investors, companies also have the option of “testing the waters” by secretly filing pre-IPO paperwork. Or, through a private marketplace like the NPM, they can skip the IPO process entirely and create a private, less-regulated market for their shares.

I asked Chopra if he shared my concerns, and here’s what he said: “If a company really wants to place securities using a private exchange, they may have to be more forthcoming with disclosing their financial information.”

But then he acknowledged that high-profile companies have more latitude, because there’s a lot of demand for their shares, with or without transparency.

“In which case potential investors have to weigh the risk vs rewards of consummating such a transaction,” Chopra added.

As VentureBeat’s Jolie O’Dell reported earlier today in her analysis of the NPM, “companies will exercise vast amounts of control in Nasdaq’s version of the private, secondary market.”

Bottom line: This liquidity is a welcome change for investors, founders, and employees with stock in the startups they work for. I’m just not sure it’s the best thing for the public, or for anyone on the buying side of these increasingly private marketplaces.

Without full transparency about these companies and their financials, anyone purchasing shares on a private market will need to remember two important words:

Caveat emptor.

Photo credit: NASDAQ

For a company that is supposedly struggling, and whose stock price has shed almost $200 billion from its $700/share high in September, Apple did pretty well in the first quarter of 2013. With the new iPhone 5, the iPad Mini, and the iPad 4 leading the way, Apple had  record quarterly revenue of $54.5 billion and record quarterly profit of $13.1 billion.

The only problem? Wall Street’s consensus numbers were $54.58 billion (Apple just beat that), 50 million iPhones (Apple actually sold 47.8 million), 23 million iPads (Apple just about made it, selling 22.9 million), 12 million iPods (under Street estimates), and 5 million Macs (well under Street estimates).

Still, the numbers compare very nicely to the same quarter a year ago, where Apple recorded $46.33 billion in revenue and a $13.06 billion profit on 37 million iPhones and 15.4 million iPads. Even more impressive: That quarter was 14 weeks long, while this year’s Q1 was only 13 weeks long. So normalized, Apple would have done even better.

“We’re thrilled with record revenue of over $54 billion and sales of over 75 million iOS devices in a single quarter,” said Apple CEO Tim Cook. “We’re very confident in our product pipeline as we continue to focus on innovation and making the best products in the world.”

All those iDevice sales have filled Apple’s full pockets even fuller. The company already had a hundred-billion-dollar cash stash, and this quarter, with $23 billion in total cash flow and average weekly revenue of $4.2 billion, will add to that amount.

The problem is that record revenue and more cash in the back doesn’t seem to be enough. In after-hours trading, Apple stock is down from it’s daily high of $514.17 to $488.11, as investors’ fears about slowing growth and growing vulnerability to cheaper phones and tablets running Android appear to be confirmed.

Source: Google Finance

Apple stock down in after-hours trading

photo credit: Thomas Hawk via photopin cc

Apple, which usually issues very conservative guidance, had said it would do about $52 billion this quarter. And analyst expectations had been around $55 billion in revenue and $13.41 a share, with 50 million iPhones, 23 million iPads, 12 million iPods, and 5 million Macs.

Here’s what Apple actually did:

Financials

• Revenue: $54.5 billion
• Profit: $13.1 billion
• Earnings per share: $13.81
• Profit margin: 38.6 percent

Devices

• iPhone: 47.8 million
• iPad: 22.9 million
• Macs: 4.1 million
• iPods: 12.7 million

These numbers compare to last quarter’s 27 million iPhones and 14 million iPads, with revenue of $36 billion and profit of $8.2 billion, and Q1 2012′s 37 million iPhones and 15.43 million iPads with $46.33 billion in revenue, and $13.06 billion in profit.

photo credit: WanderingtheWorld (www.LostManProject.com) via photopin cc

That’s up 18 percent year-over-year for the fourth quarter, and it’s up 21 percent for the full 2012 earnings.

“We had a great finish to an excellent year, with fourth quarter results exceeding our expectations,” eBay president and CEO John Donahoe said in a statement. “eBay Marketplaces in particular had a terrific fourth quarter, with growth in the U.S. accelerating three points, outpacing ecommerce.”

Source: Google Finance

eBay stock today

Key payments division PayPal, which has been a critical revenue driver for eBay in previous quarters, continues to do well, with payment volume up 24 percent … which, given PayPal’s fairly linear revenue structure, means that earnings were also up 24 percent.

PayPal clients sent nearly $24 billion to each other in 2012 — 250 percent more than in 2011 — and PayPal reported adding two million accounts a month in the fourth quarter, which the company says is PayPal’s fastest growth ever.

PayPal’s growth is important for eBay, as mobile payments is an increasingly growing market. PayPal put mobile commerce first explicitly in July of 2012, when mobile boss Hill Ferguson was elevated to VP of global product and saw a huge jump in mobile payments this past Thanksgiving. The company also teamed up with NCR to attack Square just a few days ago.

eBay as a whole generated $2.6 billion of cash flow in excess of expenses in the past year and is now sitting on a nice little nest egg of $11.5 billion in cash, cash equivalents, and non-equity investments. Not exactly Apple-sized, but certainly nothing to sniff at.

And for 2013?

eBay expects to earn $16-16.5 billion and make between $2.23 and $2.29 per share. The company’s stock is up $0.40 on the day.

photo credit: Ryan Fanshaw Photography via photopin cc

It was another bad month for game companies. Video game sales fell 42 percent percent in April, with total industry sales falling to $630.4 million from $930.9 million a year ago, according to market researcher NPD Group. The early Easter holiday this year may have contributed to the lower than expected sales numbers, along with a relatively light game release schedule for the month.

The poor performance in April was worse percentage-wise compared to March, when sales fell 35 percent, and February, which was down 20 percent year-over-year. April, like February, had a relatively light release schedule for core console games.

In April, hardware sales were $189.7 million, down 32 percent from last April’s $279.9 million. Software was $292.1 million, down 42 percent from $503.2 million a year ago. Accessory sales held steady with $148.6 million, a one percent increase from last year’s $147.8 million.

The estimated total consumer spending on games includes physical video and retail games, used games, game rentals, subscriptions, full-game digital downloads, social network games, downloadable content, and mobile games. Not counting hardware, sales were $307.2 million, down 42 percent from $533.7 million a year ago. The poor software sales were even lower than what a number of analyst firms predicted. Of course, these sales do not reflect the digital side of games, including social, mobile, and online.

The top-selling game of the month was Activision Blizzard’s Prototype 2 (pictured). Lucasarts’s Kinect Star Wars and Activision Blizzard’s Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 were the next top selling games for April, at number two and three, respectively.

Here’s some more analysis from NPD Group’s Anita Frazier:

Overall new physical sales

“This year, Easter fell very early in April, which means most Easter-related purchases may have fallen into March this year, whereas last year, Easter fell late in April causing most sales to fall in that month. We usually find that Easter-related purchases generate an extra 10 percent in revenue in the month they occur, so some of the softness compared to last April could be attributed to the shift in Easter timing.”

Hardware

“One thing to keep in mind is that the 3DS has outsold the DS by about one million units in their respective first 14 months in the market, and the DS went on to become the best-selling gaming hardware system ever.”

“The average selling price for hardware increased over last April, with one of the drivers of that increase being the Star Wars Kinect 360 bundle, which included the Xbox 360 console and controller, a Kinect sensor, and Kinect Star Wars game.”

Content

“I think what the new physical retail content sales reflect a very light release schedule in terms of the amount of compelling new games. Last April, the top seven titles outsold the top-selling title this year, and, simply stated, there were notably fewer new market introductions. I think it’s a simple as that because when we see compelling content come into the market, the games are still selling as well as ever – we just saw a lot less this April as compared to last.”

“Kid Icarus: Uprising on the 3DS ranked among the top 10 SKU’s for the month, and would have made the list if we were reporting on SKU rather than total title level.”

“For some insight into digital purchasing of content, we can look at the performance of points and subscription cards which was up 75 percent in units over last April. These could very well have been last minute additions to Easter baskets early in the month.”

Accessories

“Skylanders characters remain a strong driver of accessory sales. The three character pack SKU’s have sold just under 10 million units in the U.S. since their launch into the market last October.”

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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In the massively multiplayer online game space, World of Warcraft has long been the juggernaut to beat. In a press release today, as well as in an call with investors, Activision Blizzard reaffirmed that WOW continues to hold the top spot as the number-one subscription-based MMO with 10.2 million subscribers as of the end of March.

The release of the beta for upcoming expansion Mists of Pandaria on March 21 is most likely a big part of this, as MMOs see an increase in activity around large add-on releases. With a beta test in play, the expansion is poised to help grow the subscriber base in the wake of competitors like number-two MMO Star Wars: The Old Republic as well as Rift and Tera. In response to a question about the subscriber base, the company also noted that a large content update at the end of the fourth quarter helped maintain what they call “player engagement.” In addition, Activision Blizzard reports a renewal of their license with NetEase to distribute World of Warcraft on mainland China for the next three years.

During the call today, Robert Kotick, CEO of Activision Blizzard, also tipped his hat to the publisher’s continued success in terms of Diablo III pre-orders, StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm expansion, and an expected unnamed new MMO.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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Citing low sales from its flat-panel TV business, Sharp announced a loss of $4.7 billion during the 2011 fiscal year – the largest net loss in the company’s history.

Sharp expects things will get worse before they get better, and predicts a further 18.7 percent drop of its TV business in the current year. However, the company expects to see growth and larger profits from its mobile-display business and is trying to focus its efforts on small screen sizes for mobile devices instead of large screens for HDTVs.

“In the second half, we think that we can become profitable again mainly through expected improved results in our displays for mobile devices,” Executive Managing Officer Tetsuo Onishi told reports at the Wall Street Journal.

In order to stay flush with cash, just last month Sharp jumped into bed with Hon Hai which bought a 46.5 percent of Sharp’s display business and 50 percent of LCD production at Sharp’s Sakai, Osako-based plant, for around $800 million.

Sharp is not the only Japanese consumer electronics manufacturer that has been struggling with profitability; Sony and Panasonic have both alluded to posting similar record annual losses when their reports come out next month. South Korean giants Samsung Electronics and LG Electronics dominate the market.

Image via Danijel Šivinjski/Flickr

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Nokia warned investors this morning that its first quarter performance was lower than expected, ahead of its earnings report next Thursday. The company also doesn’t expect things to shape up for the second quarter, which means this will be a difficult year for the company overall.

But on the bright side, Nokia revealed it sold 2 million Lumia devices in the quarter at an average price of 220 euros. The company says it has seen sequential growth in Lumia activations since the devices launched in November, making it clear the new smartphone line is off to a strong start.

Nokia said that the operating margin for its Devices and Services division was negative 3 percent for the quarter, when it previously expected to break even. For the second quarter, the company expects performance to be “similar or below” what it saw this quarter.

Not surprisingly, Nokia cited “competitive sales dynamics” that hurt its feature phone and smartphone business. The company said that competition was especially tough in India, the Middle East, and China

“Our disappointing Devices & Services first quarter 2012 financial results and outlook for the second quarter 2012 illustrates that our Devices & Services business continues to be in the midst of transition,” Stephen Elop, president and CEO of Nokia, said in a statement today. “Within our Smart Devices business unit, we have established early momentum with Lumia, and we are increasing our investments in Lumia to achieve market success. Our operator and distributor partners are providing solid support for Windows Phone as a third ecosystem, as evidenced most recently by the launch of the Lumia 900 by AT&T in the United States.”

The company estimates that net sales in its Devices and Services division were 4.2 billion euros for the quarter. Feature phone sales were estimated at 2.3 billion euros (or 71 million units sold), while smartphone sales were 1.7 billion euros (or 12 million units sold). Nokia expects its Devices and Services gross margin to be around 25 percent. The company says it will have around 4.9 billion euros in net cash and other liquid assets by the end of the quarter.

On a call with investors this morning, Elop said the rate of low-end Android devices entering the market, along with their dirt cheap prices, were a big problem for Nokia. He also said competitors had “particular products at particular price points” where Nokia isn’t even a competitor, like high-end touchscreen feature phones.

Via The Verge

Software titan Microsoft beat Wall Street expectations with record second quarter revenues of $20.9 billion, a 5 percent increase from the same quarter last year.

“We delivered solid financial results, even as we prepare for a launch year that will accelerate many of our key products and services,” said Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, in a statement. “Coming out of the Consumer Electronics Show, we’re seeing very positive reviews for our new phones and PCs, and a strong response to our new Metro style design that will unify consumer experiences across our phones, PCs, tablets, and television in 2012.”

For Q2 2012, Microsoft’s operating income was $7.99 billion compared to $8.17 billion in the year-before quarter. Net income was virtually unchanged at $6.62 billion versus $6.63 billion in the year-before quarter. Diluted earnings per share amounted to $.78 per share against $.77 per share a year ago.

The company barely beat Wall Street’s revenue estimates, as some analysts were expecting earnings of $.76 per share. Microsoft beat that by two pennies per share.

Microsoft’s Business Division had an especially strong quarter with $6.28 billion in revenue, a 3 percent increase from the prior-year period. The company was fueled by sales of Microsoft Office 2010 licences, of which it has sold about 200 million since its launch 18 month ago. Revenue generated from SharePoint and Exchange also grew by 10 percent (or more) versus the year-before quarter.

On top of that strong business-focused performance, Microsoft’s Server & Tools category posted $4.77 billion in second quarter revenue, an 11% increase from a year ago.

“We saw strong demand for our business products and services, despite the soft PC market and continuing economic uncertainty in key parts of the world,” said Peter Klein, chief financial officer at Microsoft, in a statement. “We delivered record earnings per share by continuing to manage our costs while investing for future growth.”

The company’s only major drop in revenues by division appeared in its Windows/Windows Live Division with revenue of $4.74 billion, a 6 percent decline from the year-before period. The Online Services Division reported revenue of $784 million, a 10 percent increase from the year before.

Finally, Microsoft’s Entertainment & Devices Division posted revenue of $4.24 billion, an increase of 15 percent from the year before. That highlights the success of its Xbox 360 game console and the motion-controlled Kinect sensor. Microsoft has sold 66 million Xbox 360 consoles and 18 million Kinect sensors to date. And the Xbox Live service now has 40 million members, a massive increase of 33 percent from the prior-year period.

The social network giant had $714 million in net income on revenue of $2.5 billion between January and September of this year, a source with knowledge of Facebook’s financials told Gawker. Given that trajectory, it seems likely that Facebook will pass $1 billion in profits — or at least get agonizingly close — by year-end.

While exact details on Facebook’s financial history are fuzzy, the company is on track to earn double what it reportedly made last year, and quadruple what it made two years ago.

Facebook also has plenty of money in the bank: $3.5 billion, according to the report. That doesn’t compare with a massive war chest like Apple’s $81.6 billion, but it’s certainly enough to make big acquisitions when necessary. And as Gawker points out, it’s an amount that would make the likes of Yahoo and Adobe jealous.

Gawker’s source also reiterated previous reports about Facebook’s upcoming IPO, in which the company is expected to raise $10 billion at a $100 billion valuation. Basically, expect Facebook’s pocketbook to grow next year, and for some big spend acquisitions to follow.