Displaying items by tag: fourth quarter

Google’s parent company, Alphabet, reported its fourth-quarter and full-year financial results. The company’s revenue grew from $39.3 billion in 2018 to $46.1 billion in 2019. The firm’s net income also expanded from $8.9 billion to $10.7 billion over the same time frame.

However, the figures, when compared to expectation, were mixed. Alphabet missed revenue expectations in the fourth quarter despite stellar growth at YouTube and in the cloud, earnings figures showed.

Detailing its cloud computing and YouTube revenues for the first time, Alphabet reported that profits rose 19 percent from a year ago in the quarter to nearly $10.7 billion as revenues increased 17 percent to $46 billion.

The company said its cloud computing services took in $2.6 billion in revenue during the last three-month period, up more than 50 percent and nearly $9 billion for the year.

Alphabet and Google chief executive Sundar Pichai touted YouTube as a revenue star at the company, with ad revenue reaching $15 billion last year in an increase of about 36 percent from 2018. YouTube music and television premium services now have more than 20 million paid subscribers, according to Pichai.

Despite assurances by executives that Alphabet sees plenty of money-making potential ahead and is investing to capitalize on long-term trends, Alphabet shares slipped more than four percent in after-market trades that followed release of the earnings figures.

The California tech giant, which dominates online search and makes the Android mobile operating system, has been working to reduce its dependence on the digital advertising which delivers most of its cash.

"Our investments in deep computer science, including artificial intelligence, ambient computing and cloud computing, provide a strong base for continued growth and new opportunities across Alphabet," said Pichai.

Chief financial officer Ruth Porat said Alphabet will ramp-up hiring this year. Much of that will be engineering talent for its cloud division which competes with cloud market-leaders Amazon and Microsoft.

 "We are leaning into investing for long-term growth," Porat said. "That has been a key principle here and continues to be," she added.

Google advertising took in the majority of revenue at $38 billion in the quarter, and more than 80 percent of its annual revenues of $162 billion. Colin Sebastian, an analyst at Baird, said the earnings report showed "a deceleration" in growth for Google, which may have been due to the impact of fewer holiday shopping days.

  

Analyst Nicole Perrin at eMarketer said the results highlight the significance of YouTube, the popular video service for which Alphabet had not up to now disclosed financial data.

"This is something investors have been looking for, but the information should also give advertisers valuable information about the importance of YouTube as a digital ad vehicle," Perrin said.

"YouTube is growing strongly according to this report, and revenues are above where eMarketer had thought they were."

China’s Lenovo Group announced results on Thursday May 25, for its fourth fiscal quarter and full-year ended March 31, 2017. It was a year of significant transformation for Lenovo which made good progress in implementing and executing its new “three-wave strategy,” designed to meet the critical business challenges of today, while positioning the company for continued long-term profitable growth.

As part of Lenovo’s transformation, the company put in place an aggressive new end-to-end ownership model to manage each business differently, led by strong new leaders, and is seeing improvements as a result. 

“Despite challenging market conditions, Lenovo saw revenue resume to growth in the fourth quarter, after five quarters of decline,” said Yang Yuanqing, Lenovo Chairman and CEO. “To drive further growth, we have clearly defined the three-wave strategy. We will maintain PC leadership in scale, profitability and innovation in the first wave, while building our second wave, mobile and data center businesses into growth engines. Simultaneously, we will execute our third wave of “Device + Cloud” and “Infrastructure + Cloud” to capture the opportunities brought by new technologies. With this new strategy, we are confident to achieve long term, sustainable growth.”

For the fourth fiscal quarter, Lenovo’s revenue was US$9.6 billion, an increase of 4.9 percent year-over-year, fueled in part by a good performance in the PC/smart devices and mobile businesses. For the full-year ended March 31, 2017, Lenovo’s revenue was US$43 billion, down 4.2 percent year-over-year.

The company’s gross profit for the fourth fiscal quarter decreased 9.8 percent year-over-year to US$ 1.4 billion, while for the full year, gross profit fell 7.8 percent to US$6.1 billion. Operating profit for the fourth fiscal quarter was US$74 million. For the full year, Lenovo’s operating profit was US$672 million. Fourth-quarter net income was US$107 million, while net income for the full year was US$535 million, an increase of US$660 million year-over-year.

Basic earnings per share in the fourth fiscal quarter was 0.97 US cents or 7.56 HK cents, and for the full year basic earnings per share was 4.86 US cents or 37.71 HK cents. Lenovo’s Board of Directors declared a dividend of 2.63 US cents, or 20.5 HK cents per share for the fiscal year ended March 31, 2017.

For Lenovo’s PC and Smart Devices (PCSD) business group, which includes PCs, tablets and smart devices, its quarterly sales were up 4.9 percent year-over-year to US$6.7 billion. Quarterly shipments grew one percent to 14.4 million, four points better than the overall market. Pre-tax income for the quarter was US$288 million, a decrease of 4.7 percent year-over-year.

For the full year ended March 31, 2017, Lenovo’s PCSD sales were down 2.3 percent, but beating the overall market, at US$30 billion. Shipments for the year beat the market significantly by 7.1 points, with 66.6 million, while pre-tax income margin stood at five percent, a slight increase year-over-year.

Importantly, Lenovo continued to deliver strong results in both the fourth quarter and full year in the hyper-growth categories in this business, such as gaming, detachables, Chromebooks and Millennial PCs (in China). For example, Lenovo’s gaming and Chromebook shipments were up 20.5 and 38.2 percent respectively in the fourth quarter. Meanwhile Lenovo’s detachables grew at a double digit premium compared to the market, and Millennial PC continued its rapid rise in China with triple digit growth for the fourth quarter in a row.

Lenovo’s Mobile Business Group (MBG), which includes Moto and Lenovo-branded smartphones, saw 19.7 percent revenue growth in the fourth fiscal quarter outside of China,

with total sales of US$1.7 billion. Fourth quarter smartphone shipments increased 17.4 percent to 11.3 million units outside China, beating the market significantly by 12.8 points. For the full year ended March 31, 2017, overall sales were down 5.4 percent and pre-tax income margin decreased 1.9 points outside China.

In Asia Pacific and Latin America, led by success in India and Brazil respectively, Lenovo’s mobile business continued to improve throughout the year. In Western Europe, shipments were up in France, Germany and the UK, while in North America, Lenovo’s channel expansion plans are on track. In China, Lenovo added new leadership, re-aligned its strategy and product portfolio, and cleared inventory to introduce a new product lineup.