Yahoo makes its earnings announcement today after market close, with IBM also reporting today and Oracle, Google, and eBay scheduled to report this week.
Anticipation for strong results from Yahoo and others builds in the silence from the major Internet companies. News from them has been virtually non-existent in the early hours before the market opens, with everyone seemingly holding their breath until 4:30 pm New York time today.
Rather than risking the chance of turning blue and passing out, we’ll inhale and exhale regularly. Because no one wants to miss out on the news coming up later today and this week.
Yahoo took care of some preliminary activities last week, just before the end of the day on Friday. They filed paperwork with the SEC and noted how certain C-level executives had exercised stock options in 2005. CEO Terry Semel realized $173.6 million in profits from his options.
IBM also announces earnings later today. The company has been relatively quiet during the first quarter. They acquired a couple of small software companies, but most of their activity over the past year has been aimed at lifting a moribund stock price.
The most significant way IBM moved toward cutting away operations with minimal profit happened in 2005. IBM sold its personal computer business to Lenovo Group of China, rather than continue to battle in the cutthroat PC market.
Oracle’s Larry Ellison mused to the Financial Times that his company had considered purchasing Novell for its SuSE Linux distribution.
But Ellison worried about the open source nature of the business, and how a competitor could come along and suddenly usurp the market. A Linux OS distro made sense to Ellison since that would make Oracle a one-stop shop for a “complete stack” of software applications and operating systems.
Google has a lot of followers, and only the estimates of industry analysts to hint at what Google’s numbers may look like on Thursday after market close. As a matter of course, Google does not provide financial guidance to analysts or investors.
CEO Eric Schmidt did raise some eyebrows in the press by talking in March about Google becoming a $100 billion company. With the company’s market cap over $100 billion at the time, reporters asked if he meant revenue or market cap. “I’ll leave it to you to judge whether that is $100 billion in market capitalization or revenue,” Schmidt answered.
Also, eBay talks about earnings on April 19th at the end of the market day. The company’s PayPal division has been the focus of financial attention itself, though. Some taxpayers may be using PayPal to access offshore accounts and use money placed in them to avoid income taxes.
The IRS would like to see PayPal’s records, a permission recently granted by a federal judge in San Jose. It is expected the IRS will review records from 1999 through 2004.
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David Utter is a staff writer for Murdok covering technology and business.
