Earnings Roundup: Apple shines brightly; Google, Yahoo miss

Google’s recent privacy changes and social-networking efforts have some critics howling that the company is set to take over the world—but its most recent earnings announcement told a slightly different story. While Google is still going strong, this time Apple was the one that blew past expectations, setting a new earnings record. The company reported earnings of $13.1 billion, or $13.87 a share, up from $6 billion, or $6.43 a share. That meant it more than doubled its earnings from a year ago and far exceeded the $10.08 per share analysts had been expecting. “A company this big is not supposed to be able to nearly double revenue year-to-year. Nor are they supposed to more than double profit. But Apple did both,” wrote TechCrunch’s MG Siegler. The company’s fourth quarter was bolstered by sales of the iPhone—a whopping 37 million units, with the 4S responsible for most of the frenetic sales. Following its earnings announcement, the company’s value on the stock market briefly hit $400 billion. “Apple’s market cap is higher than the gross domestic product of Greece, Austria, Argentina, or South Africa,” quipped CNN Money’s David Goldman.

Google, on the other hand, while still itself undoubtedly a powerhouse, had less to crow about. Despite adding 90 million users to Google+, the search giant’s profits came in lower than Wall Street expectations. The company had been expected to report earnings of $10.49 per share, but saw only $9.50 excluding special items. “The surprise miss overshadowed what was otherwise a pretty decent quarter for Google, but seems right at home amid the disastrous few weeks the company has had to kick off 2012,” noted paidContent’s Tom Krazit. Yahoo, too, fell short of analyst expectations, as the embattled company saw revenue and profits drop yet again in the fourth quarter. New CEO Scott Thompson vowed to turn the company around and to put an end to the debate of whether Yahoo is a tech or media company. “There’s a longstanding debate within the company, but we better be darn good at both. In fact, we need to be great at both when it’s all said and done. We are going to stop this debate,” he said during the earnings call.

• Apple Reports Blowout Earnings, Shares Surge After Hours (Wall Street Journal)
  
• Apple’s Massive Numbers And Some Context (TechCrunch)
  
• At $400 billion, Apple is worth more than Greece (CNN Money)
  
• Apple’s Monster Quarter (AllThingsD)
  
• Apple’s Growth Rate Is Simply Incredible … And It’s Accelerating (ReadWriteWeb)
  
• Google Miss Sends Stock Down 9 Percent On Cost-Per-Click Questions (paidContent)
  
• Google Cools Off, and Stock Drops (Wall Street Journal)
  
• Google finds new tech expectations hard to meet (Reuters)
  
• Can Yahoo’s new CEO really end the media vs. tech debate? (GigaOm)
  
• New Yahoo CEO Scott Thompson Has Big Plans, but Can’t Tell You About Them (AllThingsD)
  
• Jerry Yang Has Left the Building; Resigns From Yahoo, Alibaba Boards (paidContent)