WORLD TOP COMPANIES UNDER FINANCIAL PRESSURE...

Amazon reports first quarterly net loss in years

AGENCIES

Posted: Friday, Oct 26, 2012 at 1828 hrs IST

San Francisco: Amazon.com Inc reported its first quarterly net loss in more than five years on Thursday as the world's largest Internet retailer spent heavily and suffered from an economic slowdown in Europe.

Amazon shares slipped slightly to $220.75 in after-hours trading after the results.The company said its third-quarter net loss was $274 million, or 60 cents a share, versus net income of $63 million, or 14 cents a share, in the third quarter of 2011. Part of the loss related to an impairment charge from Amazon's investment in daily deal company LivingSocial.

Third-quarter revenue was $13.81 billion, up 27 percent from a year earlier, Amazon also said.Amazon was expected to lose 8 cents a share in the third quarter on revenue of $13.9 billion, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S. The last time Amazon reported a quarterly net loss was in the third quarter of 2003, according to Thomson Reuters data……..http://www.financialexpress.com/news/amazon-reports-first-quarterly-net-loss-in-years/1022443/0

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Apple's weak margin outlook surprises analysts

AGENCIES

Posted: Friday, Oct 26, 2012 at 1840 hrs IST

At least three brokerages cut their price targets on Apple Inc by up to $50 a share after the iPhone maker surprised analysts by forecasting lower gross margins for the current quarter.

Apple shares edged lower 0.1 percent to $608.85 in premarket trading.

For the December quarter, Apple forecast revenue of $52 billion, below estimates of $55 billion, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S. It expects margins of 36 percent, far lower than analysts' expectations of 43 percent.

Analysts focused on the decline in margins and played down the significance of a fall in iPad sales in the last quarter, as users waited for the iPad mini, and they did not expect this to continue.

Apple's forecast decline in gross margin, even assuming it was deliberately aiming low, still pointed to an unusual decline, Evercore Partners analysts Rob Cihra and Edison Yu said in a research note. Evercore cut its price target on the stock : At least three brokerages cut their price targets on Apple Inc by up to $50 a share after the iPhone maker surprised analysts by forecasting lower gross margins for the current quarter……..http://www.financialexpress.com/news/apples-weak-margin-outlook-surprises-analysts/1022450/0

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Apple warns of holiday earnings drop

AGENCIES

Posted: Friday, Oct 26, 2012 at 1543 hrs IST

New York: Apple has a new iPhone, two new iPads and three new PCs as it heads into the holiday quarter, the biggest selling season of the year. But, paradoxically, it expects these new gadgets to bring down its profits compared to last year. The reason: the new gadgets are expensive to make, Apple executives said Thursday, and the company is not interested in cutting corners for the sake of short-term returns.

On top of the holiday-quarter warning, the company reported earnings for its just-ended quarter that missed Wall Street's expectations for the second quarter in a row – something that hasn't happened in more than a decade……http://www.financialexpress.com/news/apple-warns-of-holiday-earnings-drop/1022381/

Citigroup fined $2 million over facebook IPO

Associated Press | Updated On: October 26, 2012 22:36 (IST)New York: The top securities regulator in Massachusetts has fined Citigroup $2 million, charging that an analyst there leaked confidential information about Facebook's initial public offering.

Secretary of the Commonwealth William Galvin announced the charges Friday. Citi agreed to the settlement without admitting or denying wrongdoing.

Citi was part of the team of banks that helped underwrite the deal that made Facebook a public company in May. When a bank helps underwrite such a deal, it has information about a company that the broader investing public does not have. The bankers who underwrite the deal are not supposed to act on that information or share it with any favored clients, because it would give them an unfair advantage over the public.

The arrangements can also bring accusations of conflicts of interest; banks not only help companies go public or do other deals, they also have units that provide research on the companies. The research is supposed to be impartial, but the banks have a stake in how a company does if it is helping it with underwriting.

According to Galvin's office, a junior analyst in Citigroup's San Francisco office was assigned to help research Facebook. On May 2, the junior analyst sent an email to two employees at the technology website TechCrunch.com, with proprietary information about Citigroup's research on Facebook.

"I am ramping up coverage on FB and thought you guys might like to see how the street is thinking about it (and our estimates)," the junior analyst wrote.

A TechCrunch employee wrote back: "There's no way I can publish this doc from an anonymous source, right?"

A minute later, the junior analyst replied: "My boss would eat me alive."

The analyst and the TechCrunch employee were friends, according to Galvin's office, and had gone to Stanford together.

Citigroup fired the junior analyst in September. The bank told Galvin's office that the junior analyst acted alone. In addition to agreeing to the $2 million fine, Citi also agreed to review its policies for overseeing analysts' communications, and to strengthen compliance training for the analysts.http://profit.ndtv.com/news/international-business/article-citigroup-fined-2-million-over-facebook-ipo-312538?pfrom=home-latest