Centro a bright spot in Palm's quarterly results
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Record sales, but numbers still down Palm is still losing money, despite the Centro selling in record numbers (for Palm). The company lost $9.6m in the three months to 30 November, on revenues which are down 11 per cent on last year to $349 million.â¦
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(InfoWorld) - Palm Inc. has lowered its financial forecast for the current quarter because of delays in bringing its latest Treo smartphone to market. Palm on Monday lowered its revenue forecast for its fiscal 2007 second quarter, which ends Dec. 1, to a range of US$390 million to $395 million from an estimate made Sept. 21 of $430 million to $450 million. It also pared its earnings forecast to a range of $0.10 to $0.11 per share from the earlier estimate of $0.15 to $0.18. Not counting special items, the estimate has been trimmed to $0.15 to $0.16 a share, from an earlier $0.20 to $0.23. Although its line of smartphones is selling well and the new Treo 750v introduced in Europe is popular, Palm hasn't been able to get the Treo 750 introduced in the U.S. as planned, according to the company. "Our Q2 FY07 revenue will be constrained by a delay in certification of a key product. We now expect to start shipping the Treo 750 for the U.S. market early in Q3 FY07," Palm President and Chief Executive Officer Ed Colligan said in a prepared statement. Palm (NASDAQ:PALM) waited until the market closed Monday to announce the news. After closing for the day at $15.37, about three hours later its stock had fallen by $0.64 in after-hours trading.
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Treo smartphone maker Palm Inc.  could bring a buyer a decade's worth of digital assistant design and mobile phone know-how, but at a hefty price for a company no longer viewed as cutting edge.
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(InfoWorld) - One of the main attractions of Palm's business was its software expertise, according to private-equity firm Elevation Partners, which plans toÂ acquire about 25 percent of the struggling mobile device maker. Ending speculation that Palm would be gobbled up by mobile phone vendors Motorola or Nokia, Elevation said Monday it would pay $325 million to buy approximately one quarter of Palm's shares. Subject to shareholder approval and other closing conditions, the deal is due to be completed in the third quarter of this year. Elevation has been looking closely at Palm for the last six to seven months, said Roger McNamee, a managing director and cofounder of the private-equity company. He believes limits are being reached in hardware design for mobile devices with a sense that the devices can't be shrunk any further without losing the functionality customers expect. McNamee admitted that Palm had been out of sync with developments occurring in the mobile hardware device market. "They'll close that gap relatively soon, then the game will be all about software," he said. "Software is where this company [Palm] truly excels." The company has struggled in the face of strong competition from Motorola and Nokia with their smartphones and has found it hard to sell its products to corporations hooked on Research In Motion's BlackBerry devices. At the same time, Palm anticipates that more and more people will access the Internet from mobile devices. "We're incredibly well positioned to pursue that opportunity," said Ed Colligan, Palm president and CEO. "We have a broad range of software efforts underway here. Software is the battleground of the future." Palm continues to design systems infrastructure, applications, and services, which it's extending into different form factors, including its newÂ Foleo handheld computer, he added. Once the deal closes, McNamee is set to join Palm's board of directors along with his colleague at Elevation, Fred Anderson, Apple's former CFO. The debut of Apple's iPhone, the company's first ever cell phone, due out June 29, will benefit Palm, McNamee said. "We've every reason to believe that the iPhone will be incredibly successful," he added. "It's a chance to bring software to the fore. Palm has a long tradition of great user interface design." Elevation's investment in Palm is all about providing the vendor with better resources to execute on its current product road map, McNamee said, to both retain its current employees and attract new talent. The investment will also enable Palm to continue making small acquisitions, Colligan added, with the company expecting to have more than $300 million in cash on its balance sheet once the Elevation deal closes. Palm and Elevation are pinning their hopes for positive changes to Palm's development processes on a third new board member, Jon Rubinstein, who will join Palm as its executive chairman. They're looking forward to the combination of Rubinstein and Palm's founder and current technical guru Jeff Hawkins. While Rubinstein helped in the creation of Apple's iPod music player and iMac computer, Hawkins pioneered both the first handheld and smartphone devices. "It's a team that can't be beat," McNamee said. Colligan added that while Hawkins has a good feel for the "next big thing" in technology, Rubinstein is very strong on the execution of product development.
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PalmOne leads in the US - Nokia everywhere else
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Despite Europe's support of the Symbian operating system, Palm will woo users there with its homegrown OS and Windows Mobile.
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A healthy Latin American economy bodes well for the company.
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Treo smart-phone maker Palm Inc. could bring a buyer a decade's worth of digital assistant design and mobile phone know-how, but at a hefty price for a company no longer viewed as cutting-edge.
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Handheld computer maker Palm Inc.   on Thursday posted lower first quarter net income as  costs rose and the company began expensing stock options, but  the results topped Wall Street forecasts.
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The medical-device maker puts in a nice quarter despite its recent recall trouble.
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(InfoWorld) - Palm's troubles continued on Thursday as the company posted a profit of $15.4 million for the fourth quarter, a 44 percent drop from its $27.2 million mark one year earlier, despite strong sales of its Treo smartphone. The company reported revenue of $401.3 million for the quarter ending June 1, down slightly from the $403.1 million it earned in the same quarter in 2006 and also below Wall Street's forecast of $406.6 million, according to analysts polled by Thomson Financial. The results come just weeks after the company faced rumors it would be acquired by rivals MotorolaÂ orÂ Nokia. Instead, Palm raised $325 million of extra money byÂ selling a 25 percent stake of the company Â to private equity investors. Palm is shifting its product portfolio from PDAs to smartphones, which are far more popular and offer a potential for greater profit margin because of their higher price tags. In the past quarter, Palm drew 86 percent of its revenue from smartphone sales, a huge swing for a company that in 1996 drew its entire revenue from the PalmPilot PDA. Palm's smartphone revenue of $344.2 million for the quarter was up 14 percent from the same quarter in 2006. "Our record Treo sell-through reflects strong fundamentals in the core focus areas of our business," said Palm CEO Ed Colligan. "I'm confident that in fiscal year 2008, more and more standard handset customers will demand the capabilities and ease of use of Palm smartphones, which aligns us well for future growth and profitability." Despite Colligan's optimism,Â Palm's smartphone sales did not help its results. Palm earned a profit of $0.15 per share in the fourth quarter, matching analysts' expectation of $0.15 but coming in far below the $0.25 it made a year earlier. Looking into the future, the company predicted revenue between $355 million and $365 million for the coming quarter, the first period of Palm's fiscal 2008. If the company meets the higher end of goal, it would beat its mark of $355.8 million in revenue for the first quarter of 2007. However, Palm may be distracted by change in its boardroom. As a condition of buying a large share of the company, the investment group Elevation Partners insisted on installing a new chairman, former AppleÂ vice president Jon Rubinstein. Palm also raised questions among investors in May when itÂ launched the Foleo, a miniature laptop Â intended to sell as a "smartphone companion." That product quickly faced criticism that its $599 price was too high and that its 10-inch screen was too large. Also on Thursday, Palm reported revenue of $1.56 billion for the full fiscal year 2007, down 1 percent from the $1.58 billion it earned in 2006. Palm earned profit of $56.4 million for the year, far below its $336.2 million profit in 2006, although the 2006 figure included a one-time tax rebate of $219.5 million.
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Handheld computer maker Palm Inc.   PALM.O on Thursday posted lower first quarter net income as   costs rose and the company began expensing stock options, but   the results topped Wall Street forecasts.
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(InfoWorld) - Palm Inc.'s financial future looked a little more secure Monday as private-equity firm Elevation Partners said it will pump US$325 million into the mobile device manufacturer. In recent months, rumors have swirled that Palm would beÂ acquired by either Motorola Inc. or Nokia Corp. as theÂ company faces increasingly aggressive competitionÂ in the smartphone market. The recapitalization plan followsÂ months of rumorsÂ that Palm was seeking a buyer, or help from the banking community to fuel a turnaround. The deal has Elevation taking a 25 percent equity stake in Palm, valuing the company at $8.50 per share, a premium of around 16 percent compared with the stock's performance over the last 10 trading days. Elevation is a $1.9 billion private-equity firm and one of its five partners is Bono, the lead singer of Irish rock band U2. The investment in Palm is by far the largest the firm has ever made. The device maker has also secured $400 million and a $40 million revolving credit facility. Palm will use the proceeds from the sale of its stock and the proceeds from the new debt to fund a $9 per share cash distribution to its shareholders, excluding Elevation. The total amount of money shareholders will receive will be around $940 million. Palm expects the move will leave it with more than $300 million of cash on its balance sheet. Subject to shareholder approval and other closing conditions, Palm expects to complete the recapitalization in the third quarter of this calendar year. Once the deal closes, there will also be changes in Palm's board of directors. Jon Rubinstein, Apple Inc.'s former vice president of hardware engineering and head of its iPod division, will become executive chairman of Palm's board. He will also head up Palm's product development efforts. Besides helping create the iPod music player, Rubinstein had a hand in building the iMac computer. He's seen as instrumental in Apple's successful turnaround, responsible for revamping the company's engineering teams, product road maps and manufacturing processes. Current Chairman Eric Benhamou and board member D. Scott Mercer will resign from Palm's board and will be replaced by Rubinstein along with Fred Anderson and Roger McNamee, managing directors and co-founders of Elevation. Palm will increase the size of its board from eight to nine members. Anderson was Apple's chief financial officer from 1996 to 2004 and McNamee is a long-time venture capitalist. The transaction means that Palm will strengthen its leadership team and "create a more effective capital structure," putting it in "a great position to attract new talent, significantly strengthen our execution capabilities, and deliver long-term shareholder value," Ed Colligan, Palm president and CEO, said in a statement. Along with its handheld devices and Treo smartphones, Palm last weekÂ debuted a handheld computer called Foleo, which it calls a smartphone companion device.
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PalmOne Inc.  on Monday swung to a quarterly profit from a year-earlier loss on a 62 percent jump in revenue, spurred by solid sales of its Treo 600 mobile phone and other handheld digital devices.
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Falling sales to blame Palm has issued a profits warning ahead of its Q1 results, due in full on 1 October.â¦
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Analysts said the smartphone enhancements hold the potential to bring PalmSource into an expanding market that still has room despite early inroads by Symbian and Microsoft.
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Mobile software provider PalmSource is leaping into a market with a potentially huge upside with the acquisition of China MobileSoft (CMS), and at the same time is giving a big boost to the open source developer commmunity.