Word: quartered
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...Revenue for the company's fiscal third quarter, which ended on March 31, fell 6% to $13.65 billion. Operating income was $4.4 billion, so Microsoft's software businesses still produces tremendous margins. The company blamed the weakness in the global PC and server markets for most of its troubles. The only really good news Microsoft had is that the latest versions of its flagship product, called Windows 7, will launch on time next year. (See 25 people to blame for the financial crisis...
...Most of the headlines about Microsoft are about how much it needs a deal with Yahoo! (YHOO) to bolster its online business. That may be true, but overall it is a tiny part of the world's largest software company. In the last quarter, Microsoft's online operation had modest revenue of $721 million, a drop of 15% compared to the same quarter a year ago. Yahoo! suffered a similar decline in its first quarter, so putting the two businesses together might not be as exciting a business prospect as most analysts believe...
...months or so in advance, so what this disconnect is telling us is that economic recovery is just around the corner. Sure, we're seeing some green shoots particularly in China, where industrial production rose 8.3% year-on-year in March, retail sales surged 15.9% in the first quarter, and investment in fixed assets jumped 28.6% in March after rising 26.5% in February. But it's difficult to see how Asia can return to real growth with export demand dead in the U.S. and Europe - and no one expects a resurrection there anytime soon...
Mere months after the financial system almost collapsed, banks are making money again. One after the other, they've reported big profits for the first quarter: $4.2 billion at Bank of America, $3 billion at Wells Fargo, $2.4 billion at JPMorgan Chase, $1.8 billion at Goldman Sachs, even $1.6 billion at Citigroup - which lost $18.7 billion...
Some of these windfalls were the chimerical sums of weird accounting conventions. Citi, for example, booked $2.5 billion in gains - without which it would have booked a quarterly loss - because investor fears that it would go under decreased the market value of its liabilities. (Really, it's as perverse as that.) Loan losses are also still rising and could eventually swamp earnings again at many banks. But the first-quarter profits weren't entirely imaginary. As we look ahead, banks really are in a position to make money. "This is a great time to be in banking, you know," said...