Fight or flight?
Microsoft has announced its latest quarterly financial results and its revenue of $14.45 billion was slightly over Wall Street expectations.
“Our third-quarter results demonstrate the benefit of our diversified business model,” said Chris Liddell, chief financial officer of Microsoft. “Our broad span across geographies, product categories and customer segments is a tremendous asset and supports our outlook for double-digit revenue, operating income and earnings per share growth for this fiscal year and also for fiscal year 2009.”
The software giant seemed particularly chuffed with sales of its games console: Xbox 360. Apparently it flogged over 19 million consoles in the quarter, which was 74 percent more than the same quarter a year ago. Revenue for ‘Entertainment and Devices’ grew by 68 percent.
Operating income for the quarter was $4.41 billion and that was allowing for the $1.42 billion fine it had to pay the European Commission, which is doubtless already being spent by an army of Eurocrats on trying to break the world record for ‘longest lunch’. It also puts into perspective how easy it was for Microsoft to pay the fine.
Yahoo!
In a conference call to discuss the results, Liddell was asked about the Yahoo! take-over attempt. On 5th April, Steve Ballmer sent a letter to the Yahoo! board, giving them three weeks to accept the deal or else. 5+21=26, so we should expect some development tomorrow.
‘As outlined in our recent letter to the Yahoo board, unless we made progress with Yahoo towards an agreement by this weekend, we will reconsider our alternatives,’ said Liddell during the call. ‘These alternatives clearly include taking an offer to Yahoo shareholders or to withdraw our proposal and focus on other opportunities.’
Ballmer was quoted two days ago as saying: ‘We are prepared to go forward without a merger,’ but most experts reckon that was just designed to put extra pressure on the Yahoo! board, presumably from shareholders who fancy the deal.
Either way, something’s going to happen tomorrow. What fun!
