parislemon

Amazon’s Revenue Up 34 Percent While Profit Down 35 Percent

I can’t think of another example of a company seeing revenue rise that much while seeing profit fall almost the exact same percentage.

The race is on for Amazon to get to Walmart scale, where margins do not matter. But it’s getting to be a bumpy ride because of things like Amazon’s adventures into hardware.

The company made $13.18 billion in revenue for the quarter, but only $130 million in profit. That’s less than the right side of the revenue decimal point. And the profit continues to go the wrong way.

On the bright side, at least they didn’t actually lose money (as they keep warning they might). Next quarter, they’re projecting anywhere from $40 million in profit to $260 million in loses. Even if they beat the range (which they should), they’ll still be inching closer to $0.

And what happens if Google is actually able to undercut the Kindle Fire in price with their Nexus tablet?

Scale fast. Scale fast. Scale fast.

Tags tech amazon stocks google

Apple: $1,111 Per Share and a $1 Trillion Market Cap in the Next Year

Meanwhile, on the opposite end of the “doomed” spectrum…

Tags tech apple stocks

Facebook Preparing For IPO In May

Mark Zuckerberg turns 28 on May 14. That is a Monday.

Tags tech facebook stocks ipo

Apple's Stock Closes Above $500 A Share

Shocking…

…to fools like this guy. And these people.

Remember when Apple passed Microsoft in market cap? You should, it was only May 26, 2010. (Also, remember how some people thought I was insane when I predicted it would happen in March of that year?)

Since then, Microsoft’s stock has done very well — their market cap has risen from $227 billion to $259 billion.

Of course, Apple’s market cap has risen from $227 billion to $468 billion in the same time frame.

Yes, Apple’s market cap is now over $200 billion ahead of Microsoft.

Tags tech stocks microsoft apple

Skinny Dip

On Saturday, I wrote a post entitled: Just A Friendly Reminder: If You Sold Your Apple Stock In October, You Were, In Fact, An Idiot

A few hours later, my TechCrunch colleague Robin Wauters took a shot at it with: Selling Apple In October Wasn’t The Best Move, But Not Buying Google Was Worse

I was going to respond yesterday, but figured I would wait a week or so until the market proved this point was silly. Turns out I only had a wait a day.

After a 27-point (just over 4%) plunge today, buying Google’s stock with your Apple proceeds all of a sudden doesn’t look so hot. Apple’s stock, meanwhile, once again hit a new all-time high today (before closing down a tad).

While Robin was trying to make the point that you can’t predict the future — you didn’t have to. As I wrote in my post, Apple’s own executives were predicting this coming quarter to be a record one. And if you know Apple, you know they would not have done that unless they were damn well sure it would be (and then some). So holding on to your Apple stock was the right call as we’re seeing now (and as we’ll continue to see). And those people who sold in October were idiots.

Unless they bought again when it bottomed out in November, that is. Then they’re geniuses.

Tags tech stocks apple google

Apple Pushes Past Exxon To Become The Most Valuable Public Company In The World

Well, it lasted for a few hours, then Exxon had a massive rally at the end of the day to close just ahead of Apple again.

Still, considering what Apple is planning for this fall, I fully expect them to gain and hold the title for some time.

Tags tech stocks apple exxon

Benchmark’s Bill Gurley rips into the subtle and not-so-subtle remarks all day today that the stock market collapse means the end of the tech “bubble”.

a) The collapse has absolutely nothing to do with the tech scene.

b) The tech “bubble” talk remains for the most part ridiculous.

c) Common sense: great companies are great companies not matter what the U.S. credit rating is.

Tags tech bubble stocks bill gurley

The entire stock market tanked today. That included Apple’s stock, which was down a shade under 2 percent. But that also included Exxon’s stock, which was down a shade over 2.2 percent.

This change moved Apple to just $25 billion away from being the most valuable public company in the world.

Tags tech stocks apple exxon

The HP Revenue Crown

Now that Apple has far surpassed Microsoft in every financial category (market cap, revenue, profit), what do we watch for? I think one interesting thing will be when Apple passes HP in revenue.

While Apple’s market cap is roughly five times that of HP, the world’s largest PC-maker still pulls in more revenue. How much more? About $25 billion, over the last four quarters. But Apple’s revenues are growing so fast that this could fall in the next year.

Of course, while Apple is behind in revenue, they’re far ahead in profit. Even though HP pulls in $125 billion a year in revenue, they’re only doing about $11 billion in profit. Apple has done over $23 billion in profit in the past year.

Meanwhile, I have to run the numbers again, but I think Apple is now making more yearly revenue than another old-school powerhouse: IBM.

Update: Apple still slightly behind IBM over the last four quarters in terms of revenue: $104.6 billion to $100.32 billion. That will change next quarter, I imagine.

Tags tech apple money stocks hp ibm