PublishersLunch
Apple reported record earnings for the first quarter of its fiscal year, ending December 31, and beat Wall Street expectations so handily the stock was halted after hours Tuesday, rising more than $30 a share. The company sold 15.4 million iPads and 37 million iPhones during the quarter on net income of $13.1 billion, and $43.4 billion in revenue. Profits more than doubled compared to the first quarter of 2011.
Apple sold over 40 million iPads in 2011, and has moved more than 55 million units since launching in early 2010.
Release
Release
Though Random House was among the four reported final bidders (along with Amazon) vying to buy AllRecipes.com from Reader's Digest, in the end the buyer turned out to be more in line with expectations, as Meredith bought the online recipe repository for $175 million. That's almost three times what Reader's Digest paid for the site in 2006 (and more than what Google paid last year for Zagat's.) The NY Post says the site is "modestly profitable on revenues of just under $30 million," but it leads the field with over 25 million monthly unique visitors. Meredith said they expected the sale to close later this quarter and that the acquisition "should drive incremental revenue and profit growth starting in fiscal year 2013." They also expect fiscal 2012 earnings to drop by about 10 cents a share.
WSJ
WSJ
In the UK, consistent with their 10-week sales report in November, WH Smith said in a brief trading updatethat sales for the past 21 weeks, ending January 21, declined 6 percent on comp basis at their high street stores, and fell 5 percent overall.