There’s been a flurry of Q1 financial results released by big hitters in the tech world and I thought I would update you on the results. These kinds of financials and reports don’t just look at what’s happened they sometimes contain interesting statements about future company strategy. AMD, Intel, Microsoft and Google have all reported this week. We’ll look at them in turn, starting with the two chip makers.
AMD
AMD reported its Q1 2013 financial results yesterday evening. The headline figure for AMD was a net loss of $146 million. This result is a lot better than a year ago when AMD posted a net loss of $590 million. “Our first quarter results reflect our disciplined operational execution in a difficult market environment,” said Rory Read, AMD president and CEO. He added that restructuring was almost over, which explains the much smaller losses on less revenue.
Looking at recent highlights and future possibilities the design win for the Sony PS4 was mentioned as was the success of the Never Settle: Reloaded promotion. The financial statement also noted that Richland APUs are currently shipping to manufacturers, featuring “improved performance and battery life” as well as system enhancements like AMD Face Login and AMD Gesture Control.
Intel
Earlier in the week we heard from Intel. The chip giant reported a Q1 2013 net income of $2 billion for $12.6 billion revenue. While that sounds great it is a step down from Q4 2012 when the company made $2.5 billion profits.
“Amidst market softness, Intel performed well in the first quarter and I'm excited about what lies ahead for the company,” said Paul Otellini, Intel president and CEO. Looking forward he said that “The transition to 14nm technology this year will significantly increase the value provided by Intel architecture and process technology for our customers and in the marketplace”. HEXUS reported on a couple of notable stories coming from the Intel investor conference call earlier this week; the high hopes for Haswell and the next generation of Ultrabooks and also the Atom based Windows computers that will be heading our way for as little as $200.
Microsoft
Microsoft posted its financial Q3 2013 earnings report last night. The software and devices firm’s headline results were revenue of $20.5 billion and a net income of just over $6 billion. Compared with a year ago those are nicely improved figures, up by nearly 20 per cent. The figures don’t scream ‘PC industry decline’ but historically a recent new version of Windows launching would have given the company more to cheer about. Furthermore statistics reported by Net Applications suggests that Windows 8 uptake is slower than for Vista.
Also of note is that Microsoft CFO Peter Klein has given his notice. He will depart at the end of Microsoft’s fiscal year in June.
Google reported its Q1 2013 financials last night. The headline figures were that Google brought in $14 billion in revenue and from that made a net income of $3.35 billion. This represents a healthy 31 per cent year on year increase in revenue. However, the Motorola acquisition has not been financially positive for Google as yet, in fact Motorola experienced a pretty steep dive in revenue from $1.51 billion in Q4 2012 to only $1 billion in Q1 2013.
Reuters reported that analysts thought of the Google results as “solid but unexciting”, one was quoted as saying “Its classic Google. There’s plenty of things to like and some things not to like”.
