Randomly Noted

There is clearly a lot of positioning going on by AT&T to convince the public and U.S. regulators that its proposed acquisition of rival T Mobile from Deutsche Telecom shouldn’t be viewed as anti-competitive. One certainly might think that when two of  the top leaders in any industry join forces.

If you check out the AT&T website, already there is a video of CEO Randall Stephensen discussing, among other things, his respect for regulators. There is a brief presentation of the deal that shows how consolidation has not hurt pricing. to the contrary, prices have come down since consolidation has been underway.

Continue reading…

Hewlett-Packard reported earnings today and while the numbers for the quarter ended January 31 were generally good, investors focused on the tepid outlook. Initial analysis of the results zeroed in on soft PC sales for the recent quarter and the question raised by the company of whether consumers were really opening their wallets. The stock fell 12% in after-hours trading.

There’s another longer-term trend investors should consider when looking at companies that have a lot of exposure to the printer business – will the introduction of tablets like the iPad make printing documents less necessary? Combine that with the green movement and it could spell troubles for companies that make printers.

Continue reading…

Federal Express reported an 18% decline in second quarter earnings today. At first blush, that might appear to indicate that maybe the economy isn’t on the road to recovery after all. That’s because FedEx, and fellow shipping company UPS, are looked at as proxies for the economy. When businesses are building more products, they need to ship in tools that help them do that. And when consumers are opening their wallets, they buy products that are often shipped to them.

But read above the bottom line numbers at FedEx and you see some positive news.

Continue reading…

“We still have a few surprises left for the remainder of the calendar year.”

That’s Steve Jobs commenting on Apple’s strong quarter which saw big increases in computer sales, iPhone sales and the most recent product added to its must-have arsenal: the iPad. The company said it has sold 4.188 iPads in the most recent quarter. That pushes the number sold since launch to nearly 7.5 million units.

Jobs took aim at Smartphone competitor Research In Motion, saying Apple sold more iPhones this quarter than RIM sold Blackberrys in the most recently reported quarter.

One cna only image what Jobs has up his sleeve.

Add a new player to the smartphone market.

Dell unveiled the Aero earlier today and the key question will be what points of differentiation the new phone offers. It will run on Google’s Android software and that means users of this phone will have access to abut 40,000 applications. And it costs $99 if you sign-up for two years with AT&T. That’s the same price for buying the iPhone 3Gs (the older version) and Apple says its iPhone has more than 200,000 apps.

One big difference seems to be that the Dell phone will suport Adobe flash, which powers a lot of internet video. Apple has no plans to incorporate Adobe flash into its phones or tablets.

We already heard from Amazon earlier this week the stunning statistic that it is now selling 180 ebooks for each 100 hardcover books in its inventory. Today, as the company reported disappointing earnings, we learned that over the past year, it has sold $1 billion of product via mobile devices, a testament once again to the role that phones, and smartphones in particular, will continue to play in our lives and those of corporate America.

Another interesting stat from the company – the cash equivalent line on its balance sheet declined $215 million in the quarter. That number would have been $33 million better if it didn’t get hit by the effect of foreign currencies. In other words, it looks like forex reduced its cash position by nearly 13%. Bad hedging?

(Amazon’s earnings were lower than expected because operating expenses increased to meet demands for increased capacity. The stock fell 15% in after-hours trading.)

How companies go about handling their foreign exchange exposure can often play a meaningful role in their earnings reports. The latest example of this was with Best Buy earlier today.

The huge electronics retailer reported that its sales were up 7% for the quarter.  A chunk came from new store openings. But also a decent piece came from favorable foreign exchange in its international operations. Including favorable forex translations, international sales were up 11%. Factor out the forex element, and sales were up but 1.4%.

Now shift over to costs. Selling, general and administratives expenses (SG&A) came in at 23% of sales for the quarter, a whopping 1.1 percentage point increase. Part of that was due to new store openings and some other investments. but as the company said: “Also contributing to SG&A dollar growth was the impact of fluctuations in foreign currency exchange rates.”

So, it looks like part of the business got it right, while others didn’t…

The simmering feud between Apple and Google just got a little warmer. As part of Apple iPhone4 announcement on Monday, the company said it would allow Microsoft’s Bing to be an alternative search option to Google.  There had apparently been talk that Apple might consider using Bing as its default search option instead of Google. And while it didn’t go quite that far, this move is yet another example of how delicate the relationship is between the two companies. To see PC World’s story on this, click here.

Two technology giants are having a linear debate that boils down to this question: who’s a truck?