Filed under: Products and services, Google (GOOG), Marketing and advertising

Google, Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) is rolling out another serious swipe at advertising in a relatively new category: mobile phone screens. Although mobile advertising is nothing new, Google’s intense focus on this new platform for display ads is ramping up excitement in some circles. After all, there are many more cellphones with mobile web capability than there are Personal computers worldwide. The trick is to get consumers and businesses using the mobile web. The iPhone has helped kickstart interest in this that had been pretty much dormant before last year for a range of reasons.

Google co-founder Sergey Brin even stated at Google’s current quarterly results conference call that “The mobile ads work very well … there’s nothing to dissuade me it would be any worse than traditional desktop search.” If that holds true — and we all know how desktop search has panned out — mobile search may be a large blockbuster.

Faster data connections are available with many wireless carriers now, smartphone shipments are increasing, and attention to the mobile web has gained a massive amount of steam due to the iPhone and its full web browsing abilities. Once Google’s Android operating system begins shipping and the mobile web is a single button press away, Google’s next frontier to attack will be the mobile search market. And, of course, selling display ads along with all those searches.

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Filed under: Deals, Marketing and advertising, Private equity, New York Times’A’ (NYT), News Corp’B’ (NWS)

Fortune and BusinessWeek are piling on the story of Harbinger Capital Partners, a $19 billion hedge fund, seeking to take over the New York Times (NYSE: NYT). Harbinger now owns 19% of its Class A shares. Of course, Harbinger is not the only threat to management of the Times — News Corp.’s (NYSE: NWS) Rupert Murdoch is doing his part as well. Will Steve Rattner, a long-time friend of Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger and Managing Principal of Quadrangle Group, come to the rescue and take the Times private?

In play here are Phillip Falcone, a Harbinger partner who made $1.7 billion last year, and the quaint idea of protecting a media company’s founding family by maintaining two classes of stock: Class A for the public to make insiders liquid and Class B for the insiders. Murdoch and Sulzberger enjoy protection for their family dynasties thanks to that two-tiered structure.

Falcone thinks that the Times is leaving massive amounts of money on the table by not “monetizing” all the comments on its stories. What sparked this idea was a January view piece by Caroline Kennedy comparing Barack Obama with her dad, President John F. Kennedy. There were only a few comments about the article on the newspaper’s Web site, nytimes.com, but there were hundreds on Huffington Post and Digg.com. BusinessWeek quotes Scott Galloway, founder of hedge fund Firebrand Partners and Falcone friend who said: “We came to the collective conclusion that there was so much upside in terms of billions of pages the paper wasn’t monetizing. He [Falcone] never looked back.”

Falcone recently got two of his allies onto the Times’ board. How did he do it? This January, with the stock trading at $15, Falcone purchased a 4.9% of the publicly traded Class A shares for $105 million over several weeks. (The Class B shares are held privately by the extended Sulzberger family, allowing them to retain control of the company.) Falcone and Galloway swiftly launched a proxy assault, pushing the Times board to add four of their picks as directors. They only backed down in March when the Times concurred to accept two of the nominees for its 15 person board.

If the Times was doing well financially it might not be so vulnerable. Earlier this month, the Times reported that it lost $335,000 in the first-quarter 2008 in a performance that fell far short of both analysts’ expectations and its $23.9 million profit in the 2007 quarter. Its newspaper and on the internet advertising revenues were down 10.6% and digital advertising growth slowed to 16% from 21.6% a year earlier.

Last year newspaper industry ad revenue fell 8% while the Times’ ad revenue fell 4.7%. So it looks like the industry and the Times are doing worse. And its stock has fallen 15% in the last year. Even though since Harbinger purchased in, the stock has risen 33% to $20.58.

Nevertheless, the Times is under siege and it could use a savior. Will Rattner ride to Sulzberger’s rescue? Rattner is a former Times reporter and Lazard Ltd. (NYSE: LAZ) executive who now runs the $6 billion Quadrangle Group. Vanity Fair reported that Rattner, who raises money for Hillary Clinton, persuaded Sulzberger to endorse Clinton — overruling the Times editorial board.

I don’t think Falcone will be able to reverse what ails the Times with his plan for digital advertising — there’s just not enough revenue there. But he’s already made a nice profit on his shares. Meanwhile, Rattner appears to be the only source of capital who would protect the Sulzberger family in a going private transaction. But I don’t know if the banks have an appetite now for such a deal.

I don’t know what will happen next but it seems clear to me that the Times needs a change in management if it’s going to remain a viable business.

Peter Cohan is President of Peter S. Cohan & Associates. He also instructs management at Babson College and edits The Cohan Letter. He has no financial interest in the securities mentioned.

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Filed under: Before the bell, International markets, Earnings reports, Good news, Products and services, Management, Competitive strategy, Marketing and advertising, Goodyear Tire and Rubber (GT)

Shares of tire maker Goodyear Tire and Rubber (NYSE: GT) are trading up nicely in the premarket after the Akron, Ohio based company posted a profit of 60 cents a share for its first quarter, easily surpassing analyst estimates.

During its first quarter last year, the company posted a $174 million dollar loss, or -94 cents a share, and going into today’s earnings report Wall Street had been looking to see the company show Q1 earnings of 47 cents. So with the actual numbers, Goodyear is looking for a good day in today’s action. Excluding one-time items, the company stated that it had earned 67 cents per share.

Currently the stock has moved up 4.5% in premarket trading following its earnings release.

One of the factors contributing to the dramatic reversal of fortunes from last year’s first quarter was the 12-week United Steelworkers strike that impacted its Q1 2007 quarter. To refresh your memory, the strike started in October 2006 and ran into the start of 2007. Another difference is that the 2007 quarter contained the company’s engineered products business. Goodyear sold off nearly all of this division in August to The Carlyle Group for a reported $1.4 billion.

The company noted that a big reason for this quarter’s knockout numbers was its focus on higher-end tire products which enabled it able to thrive despite the current economic slowdown in America. While the company sold fewer tires world wide, the average price per tire rose by an impressive 7%.

All in all a great quarter for America’s largest tire maker.

Michael Fowlkes has worked as a stock trader for seven years and spent the last four years working as an analyst for the on the internet investment advisory service Investor’s Observer.

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Filed under: Wal-Mart (WMT), Marketing and advertising

As Doug McIntyre reported earlier today on BloggingStocks, Wal-Mart (NYSE: WMT) is taking another shot at the fashion industry that dealt it a crushing blow a few years back.

Norma Kamali will be creating a line of Wal-Mart exclusive, and Op and l.e.i. lines will also be found in the stores. Perhaps most interestingly, Wal-Mart has shifted a huge part of its fashion operation away from Bentonville — and into New York City.

Let’s face it: the notion of Wal-Mart entering the fashion business is about as awkward as Karl Rove rapping. Doug doesn’t think the fashion foray will work, but I think it might for the same reason that Wal-Mart has succeeded: it can offer a compelling value proposition.

If it wants to find success, Wal-Mart should look at Steve and Barry’s — a college-town discount clothing retailer that has found tremendous success selling clothing at incredibly cheap prices like basketball shoes worn by an NBA star for $8.88. Everything in the entire store is $8.88 or less — sweatshirts, winter jackets, etc.

And Steve & Barry’s is a relatively small company — Wal-Mart’s scale and legendary efficiency should enable it to offer products of similar quality for even less. Another key to Steve & Barry’s success has been the buzz its generated with athlete and b-list celebrity endorsement deals: Amanda Bynes, Venus Williams, Bubba Watson, Stephon Marbury, and a Sex and the City line coming soon.

Wal-Mart should look hard at the formula that has made Steve & Barry’s successful. Maybe they should even purchase the company.

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Filed under: Earnings reports, Apple Inc (AAPL), Marketing and advertising

Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) reported earning after the close of business today and in after hours trading the stock got an initial pop of 5%. After the initial free-for-all wore off, the stock retreated and settled in close to unchanged. What is the story with this?

Here are the initial Briefing.com reports:

23-Apr-08
16:37 AAPL Apple beats by $0.09, beats on revs; guides Q3 EPS below consensus, revs in line

• Reports Q2 (Mar) earnings of $1.16 per share, $0.09 better than the First Call consensus of $1.07; revenues rose 42.7% year/year to $7.51 bln vs the $6.96 bln consensus.
• Co issues in-line guidance for Q3, sees EPS of $1.00 vs. $1.10 consensus; sees Q3 revs of $7.2 bln vs. $7.16 bln consensus.
• Gross margin was 32.9% vs 33.8% Street expectations, down from 35.1% in the year-ago quarter.
• International sales accounted for 44% of the quarter’s revenue.
• Apple shipped 2,289,000 Macintosh computers during the quarter, representing 51% unit growth and 54 percent revenue growth over the year-ago quarter.
• The co sold 10,644,000 iPods during the quarter, representing one percent unit growth and eight percent revenue growth over the year-ago quarter.
• Quarterly iPhone sales were 1,703,000.
• Statement from Apple: “We’re thrilled to have generated $4 bln in cash flow from operations in the first half of fiscal 2008, yielding an ending cash balance of $19.4 bln.

Let’s spend a moment and take a closer look at those numbers:

As was anticipated, Apple beat and did it nicely. The gross margins, a closely watched figure was a bit disappointing as this shows the effects of higher priced parts and labor. It is becoming increasingly clear that the outrageous price of commodities is starting to trickle down (maybe it is a torrential downpour) to consumers.

The shipments of Mac computers was exceptionally strong, but the iPod sales were lackluster, at ideal.

(As I write this, the stock is starting to fade appreciably. Now it is trading at $158 and it looks as though there’s a touch of concern about the iPod and iPhone sales)

The cold truth is that any company beating numbers these days have done a great job at controlling costs. The fall of the dollar has benefited the international sales for Apple, yet there’s that edge of wonder if that’ll continue. Revenue of $7.51billion in tough times is nothing to sneeze at, especially for high-priced and somewhat discretionary products.

I don’t think that the disappointment will last long as Apple still has a few tricks up its sleeve. Remember that the iPhone is still not available worldwide and the 3G model has not been announced for the U.S. Add that to the enormous opportunity it has with the iTunes store and there’s no reason that Apple should not continue to dominate and turn in good results in the context of a global slowdown.

Disclosure: Horowitz & Company clients hold LONG positions of AAPL as of the date of publish.

Andrew Horowitz is a Money manager and author of the bestseller - The Disciplined Investor - Essential Strategies for Success. Click for The Disciplined Investor Blog.

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Filed under: Earnings reports, Products and services, Marketing and advertising, AT and T (T)

AT&T Inc. (NYSE: T) today posted strong first quarter results thanks to the continuing popularity of the iPhone and its ability to squeeze more savings from the BellSouth merger.

Net income rose to $3.46 billion, or 57 cents a share, from $2.85 billion, or 45 cents. Sales climbed 6% to $30.7 billion. On an adjusted basis, profit was 74 cents. The results matched the estimates of analysts surveyed by Thomson Financial, which in this market is good news. Shares of the telecommunications company were trading up in early morning market action.

“Revenue growth continues to ramp, we have good momentum across key growth areas, major cost initiatives are on track, and our operational results reinforce the confidence we have in our outlook,” stated Chief Executive Randall Stephenson in the earnings release.

Among the highlights:

• Total wireless revenue increased 18.3% year-over-year to $11.8 billion. Wireless service revenue, which excludes handset and accessory sales, grew 17.1% to $10.6 billion. Growth was driven by strong subscriber gains and continued improvement in ARPU (average monthly revenues per subscriber).
• Wireless data revenues grew 57.3% to $2.3 billion, reflecting surging demand for World wide web access, e-mail, messaging, data access and media bundles.
• The first quarter net gain in wireless subscribers totaled 1.3 million. AT&T ended the quarter with 71.4 million subscribers.
• AT&T’s broadband revenue grew 13.2% in the first quarter to $1.4 billion.
• Total video connections, which include AT&T U-verse service and bundled satellite television service, increased by 264,000 to 2.6 million.

The mean price target of Wall Street analysts is $44.39, well above where it currently trades. Perhaps investors are expecting the next earnings report to show signs of a slowdown.

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Filed under: Earnings reports, Products and services, Marketing and advertising, AT and T (T)

AT&T Inc. (NYSE: T) today posted strong first quarter results thanks to the continuing popularity of the iPhone and its ability to squeeze more savings from the BellSouth merger.

Net income rose to $3.46 billion, or 57 cents a share, from $2.85 billion, or 45 cents. Sales climbed 6% to $30.7 billion. On an adjusted basis, profit was 74 cents. The results matched the estimates of analysts surveyed by Thomson Financial, which in this market is good news. Shares of the telecommunications company were trading up in early morning market action.

“Revenue growth continues to ramp, we’ve good momentum across key growth areas, major cost initiatives are on track, and our operational results reinforce the confidence we’ve in our outlook,” said Chief Executive Randall Stephenson in the earnings release.

Among the highlights:

• Total wireless revenue increased 18.3% year-over-year to $11.8 billion. Wireless service revenue, which excludes handset and accessory sales, grew 17.1% to $10.6 billion. Growth was driven by strong subscriber gains and continued improvement in ARPU (average monthly revenues per subscriber).
• Wireless data revenues grew 57.3% to $2.3 billion, reflecting surging demand for World wide web access, e-mail, messaging, data access and media bundles.
• The first quarter net gain in wireless subscribers totaled 1.3 million. AT&T ended the quarter with 71.4 million subscribers.
• AT&T’s broadband revenue grew 13.2% in the first quarter to $1.4 billion.
• Total video connections, which include AT&T U-verse service and bundled satellite TV service, increased by 264,000 to 2.6 million.

The mean price target of Wall Street analysts is $44.39, well above where it currently trades. Perhaps investors are anticipating the next earnings report to show signs of a slowdown.

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Filed under: Management, Marketing and advertising, New York Times’A’ (NYT), News Corp’B’ (NWS)

The New York Times reports that Marcus Brauchli, managing editor of News Corp’.s (NYSE: NWS) Wall Street Journal is leaving his post. It does not appear to know whether he resigned or was fired. But a quick look at this morning’s Journal tells me that Murdoch is determined to take business news out of the Journal and cover politics.

This morning’s Journal doesn’t have a single business story on the front page of its first section. The one business-like story, about Saudi Arabian oil supplies, is a thinly veiled defense of record high oil prices.

Increasingly since Murdoch took over, the Journal has featured stories on domestic and international politics on its first section. And it seems to have cut back on the kind of in-depth analysis of business stories or identification of new business trends that made the Journal a must-read for me.

Murdoch is now trying to take market share from the Times, which reports that Brauchli had been frustrated with some changes and seemed not to have the control over the newspaper that he was promised. It looks to me like Murdoch is trying to turn the Journal into the print version of Fox News. So when renewal time comes up next year, there’s a good chance I’ll be among those who cancel my subscription.

And if the Times is smart, it will hire the ideal of the disaffected Journal editors and reporters to take up the slack in business coverage that Murdoch is leaving — perhaps starting with Brauchli.

Peter Cohan is President of Peter S. Cohan & Associates. He also instructs management at Babson College and edits The Cohan Letter. He has no financial interest in the securities mentioned.

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Filed under: Utilities, Windows, Productivity, Microsoft, Freeware

PreviewConfig is a utility that gives Vista users the power to add file type support to the Explorer preview pane, which can be activated via “Organize.” Though the preview pane can be an interesting and useful feature of the OS, it really lacks in file support. It’s possible to add support for more without a 3rd celebration program, but that requires some risky and time-consuming registry tweaking.

But fear not lazy and/or less-advanced Vista users! PreviewConfig makes it easy to add support for more file types. Simply open the application, select the file type on the left and select how to preview it on the right. In the photo above, you can see the results of adding support for a multimedia file — in this case an MP3 — which is previewed through Windows Media Player.

Though it was easy to add support for MP3 files, adding more would require the user to go through the process again. This isn’t a huge deal if you’re looking to add a few more, but adding support for 20, 30, or more file types could prove to be extra boring. Then again, it beats doing the registry hack over and over again.

[via the How-To-Geek]

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Filed under: Features, Linux, Productivity, Open Source, Beta

Do you forget stuff? Do you wonder where the heck you put the keys when they’re in your right hand? Do you get in the shower with your socks still on? Do you ever get to the bus stop, and realize you can’t recall if you’ve put on pants? We’re the only ones? Really? Damn.

We’re willing to bet you can still benefit from Tasque, even if you just need reminders about the things normal people put on their to-do lists.

There are a few other to-do list applications in Linux, but most lack the finesse that Tasque is already bringing to the table. Tasque is a newcomer (it got its start at last year’s Hackweek), and seems well on its way to becoming a huge player.

Tasque (pronounced “Task”) is a unified frontend for a number of backends. Honest to god, we don’t mean anything obscene by that. What we mean is, it’s a very standard graphical interface that works with a number of to-do and database types to make your to-do list dynamic.

Continue reading Flipping the Linux switch: Forgetful penguins love Tasque

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