Palm Reports Quarterly Earnings

Posted By: Ed Monday, September 23, 2002 7:09:49 PM

Palm Inc. has reported the results for its most recent financial quarter. It was not a very good quarter. It had revenues of $172.3 million, which is slightly below analyst's expectations. The company posted a pro forma net loss of $36.4 million, or 6 cents per share, which is a penny better than what analysts had predicted. The company also lost 6 cents per share the same quarter last year.

There were some bright spots in Palm's results. Gross margins for its handhelds are up to 31.4% vs. 27.1% the same quarter last year. It has reduced operating expenses and inventory. According to NPD, 59% of the handhelds sold in U.S. retail stores during the last week in August were made by Palm.

The company had $238 million in cash and cash equivalents at the end of this financial quarter, which was August 31.

Palm's sales have suffered along with the rest of the handheld industry as a result of the weak world economy. "Consumer spending remains somewhat fragile and enterprise spending remains weak," said Judy Bruner, Palm's chief financial officer.

Palm shipped about 819,000 handhelds during the quarter, bringing cumulative shipments to nearly 19 million.

Palm expects revenues to increase next quarter. Bruner predicted today that revenues for the current quarter will be between $245 and $265 million. She also predicted that the company's pro forma results will be close to breaking even, with a slight net loss. Analysts are predicting the company will lose 2 cents a share.

PalmSource, which is still a subsidiary of Palm, also reported its quarterly financial results. It had revenues of $15 million and a pro forma loss of $4.1 million.

Palm CEO Eric Benhamou was asked during a conference call this afternoon if Sony was going to invest in PalmSource when it separates from Palm. He said, "We might be approaching some strategic investors in PalmSource, and take a minority position in the company. I don't have anything to report at this time."

These results were announced after the stock market closed. The company's shares are up slightly in after-hours trading.

Related Information:

PR: Palm Q1 FY'03 Revenue Totals $172.3 Million; Pro Forma Net Loss of $36.4 Million, or $0.06 per Share

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$36.4 million loss last quarter

I.M. Anonymous @ 9/23/2002 6:58:37 PM #

Palm lost $36.4 million on sales of $172 million. Cash assets over liabilities are under $200 million. That's less than 2 years run rate before they go under, unless their financials turn around with these new products. Still, shipping 819,000 handhelds in this economy isn't too shabby. It's a lot better than any other company.

RE: $36.4 million loss last quarter

I.M. Anonymous @ 9/23/2002 9:33:43 PM #

That isn't the correct measure for viability. Cash flow is the number you're looking for. One charge to earnings, depreciation (running at about 15 million a quarter) is a non-cash charge.

RE: $36.4 million loss last quarter

I.M. Anonymous @ 9/23/2002 10:48:47 PM #

They burned $40M in cash this quarter. That is 5qtrs at that speed. They have burned nearly $800M since going public.

RE: $36.4 million loss last quarter

I.M. Anonymous @ 9/23/2002 11:24:29 PM #

I'm no accountant but at the end of the same quarter last year they had $278,547,000 in cash and cash equivalents and at the end of this one they have $238,348 ,000. Doesn't sound like they are burning money too fast too me.

RE: $36.4 million loss last quarter

I.M. Anonymous @ 9/23/2002 11:27:11 PM #

Where did you come up with that $40M? C|net says:

In addition, Palm used about $30.4 million of its cash reserves, leaving the company with about $238.3 million in cash and cash equivalents, it reported.

Off-Topic

I.M. Anonymous @ 9/24/2002 3:49:15 AM #

Sorry, I don't understand what all these numbers mean at all. Is there any educated sites that teach you how to read and calculate those numbers?

RE: $36.4 million loss last quarter

I.M. Anonymous @ 9/24/2002 8:14:39 AM #

try ragingbull.com, motleyfool.com or fidelity.com

RE: $36.4 million loss last quarter

I.M. Anonymous @ 9/24/2002 3:22:53 PM #

Palm's real loss was $258.7 million. $219 million of that was related to what essentially amounts to a write-off of about 85% of the company's deferred tax assets (in a simplified sense, Palm's future taxability.)

Typically, the only time you write those off is when you don't expect to be paying taxes for a while... which means Palm (most likely at the insistance of their auditors) doesn't expect to make much of a profit any time soon.

It's a huge number, but it's not that big a deal. As much as I don't like pro forma numbers, I can see why they'd use it this quarter.

RE: $36.4 million loss last quarter

I.M. Anonymous @ 9/24/2002 3:43:10 PM #

"Deferred tax assets" = "future tax deductions."

In Palm's case, mostly net operating losses.

I interpret this as good news.

I.M. Anonymous @ 9/23/2002 7:30:15 PM #

Am I wrong?

RE: I interpret this as good news.

I.M. Anonymous @ 9/23/2002 7:31:41 PM #

Not good news. I would say from a stock perspective: neutral news.

Some aspects of the business are firming. Other aspects are trailing.

We'll see if they achieve break even as they say in future quarters.

I'm glad I sold my shares 2 years ago along with my other tech stocks in my retirement portfolio. Otherwise I wouldn't be retiring and would be working until I fall dead in some crummy McDonald or Walmart like other senior citizens. Now, I can 3A/Mre and live a reasonably good life in Florida.

RE: I interpret this as good news.

I.M. Anonymous @ 9/23/2002 7:40:51 PM #

PalmSource is gaining money and for a Software company lots of money is not required other then getting new liscensees, advertising, payroll, and infrastructure.

I would say their doing great.

And hey, Palm has a good future forecast!

~Words of an optimist/realist.

RE: I interpret this as good news.

I.M. Anonymous @ 9/24/2002 11:37:31 AM #

Don't forget the extra cash and resources Palm poured into R&D for the products about to be released.

When Pro Forma is Bad Form

drw @ 9/23/2002 8:18:25 PM #

check this out:

http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,48877,00.html

What is palm trying to hide by using Pro Forma numbers intead of GAAP numbers?

---
David

RE: When Pro Forma is Bad Form

I.M. Anonymous @ 9/23/2002 11:51:44 PM #

Does it matter in America?
Bashing Palm is like basing someones grandfather because he did not invent wings..Palm started it all (modern PDA) Why go out of your way to say bad things?
Despite the balance sheet tnis is American business...I hope for the international global commerce for the company works out...I am sure it will.

RE: When Pro Forma is Bad Form

I.M. Anonymous @ 9/24/2002 1:02:02 AM #

on the side note ... Palm start it all by looking at a sony PDA .. LoL

RE: When Pro Forma is Bad Form

I.M. Anonymous @ 9/24/2002 8:17:56 AM #

pro forma is probably appropriate with the spin off of palmsource. clearly a one time event, skews the focus on core business for both, etc, etc. gaap numbers are still issued though so if you want them, dig in and get them.

I have a feeling...

I.M. Anonymous @ 9/23/2002 8:40:50 PM #

that Palm Inc. has more marketing people than engineers.

RE: I have a feeling...

I.M. Anonymous @ 9/23/2002 9:25:42 PM #

Yeah me too

RE: I have a feeling...

I.M. Anonymous @ 9/23/2002 10:01:53 PM #

Unfortunately you are right.
In addition Metrowerks is with the next release stopping their Mac devision for Palm - no more dev tools for Mac people. They stopped hiring Mac programmers more than a year ago and subsequently made a fact what a lot of us saw as a poor product upgrade.
With version 9 Metrowerks is going only for the Windoze crowd and abandoning all its roots. Most Palm developers that use Macs have already threatened a boycott of all Metrowerks products which includes the still profitable Macintosh line. Apple has, with its Mac OS X released a very potent set of tools for free and is against anybody's expectation actually supporting it.
Metrowerks is therefore getting out of the market that once made this company possible when another company named Symantec also got out of the way of producing compilers for the Mac.
Metrowerk's decision to no longer support the Mac as a platform had nothing to do with the platform itself, but with money. "Metrowerks doesn't exist in a vacuum", was quoted to an unannounced source as being the reason for shutting down the entire Mac devision - including the further development of the famous Emulator.
Since this and recent decisions regarding the reverse split of shares have totally driven Palm into the ground a RIP is required. Rest in Peace Palm!

RE: I have a feeling...

I.M. Anonymous @ 9/23/2002 10:57:02 PM #

No, Palm has more BAD marketing people. Palm and Palmsource are run by ex Apple and ex Be marketing people. Apple and Be known for great technology, and inept marketing.

RE: I have a feeling...

I.M. Anonymous @ 9/23/2002 11:48:56 PM #

Apple and Be's marketing ppl were not that bad .... the Management people were really bad ... Apple got really lucky though since they have a huge loyal user base and they made **** load of money at the dawn of personal computing, otherwise we'll probably see apple being bought and sold like Palm Inc. now. or maybe just die like Be Inc.

Metrowerks and Mac OS-hosted development

bcombee @ 9/24/2002 2:18:23 AM #

I would like to personally squash this rumor.

As mentioned on palm-dev, the V9 release of CodeWarrior for Palm OS will be released for Win32 first. We are strongly considering releasing a version for Mac OS X also, but we will not schedule that work until the Win32 version is completed. Saying that the Mac-hosted version is cancelled is a gross exaggeration; I would use the term delayed. We have a small team, and supporting both platforms simultaneously with a release as ambitious as we're planning would be suicide.

We don't have any malice towards developers using the Mac; they are an important part of the developer community, and we feel our current V8 tools, along with PalmSource's SDK, work well on that platform. There are some problems, mostly related with supporting Mac OS X, which I will remind, wasn't even supported by PalmSource with their SDK when we released V8.

Metrowerks does not produce the Palm OS Emulator. That project is an open-source project that is headed by engineers at PalmSource.

I won't respond to the rest of this rant. If the author wishes to reveal himself, and to state his sources, then I'll address them, but I view his comments as wild rumors, and they don't correspond with the reality I see here as head of our Palm OS technical team at Metrowerks.

--
Ben Combee, CodeWarrior for Palm OS technical lead
Programming help at www.palmoswerks.com

RE: I have a feeling...

I.M. Anonymous @ 9/24/2002 10:06:41 AM #

Maybe Ben, maybe... but it's not common for companies to back away from "killing" products - even under massive complaints from the userbase.

I know you never categorically stated that the Mac platform has been/will be abandoned, but the writing is obviously on the wall for us Mac-hosted Palm developers.

Don't take this as flaming - I understand "economic realities" all to well. I just hope you (MW that is) realise that there are a lot of people like myself who've supported MW since DR1 for Mac development came out in the early nineties... and we simply want to be heard. I've emailed Ron, and got back his canned response - so I've done all I can for the time-being.

Back to our regular programme...

Gavin.

Palm's stock hovering around 70cents

I.M. Anonymous @ 9/23/2002 9:36:37 PM #

Some time back I wondered if I should take a position when Palm's price was around a dollar. I'm sure glad I didn't and looking at the latest numbers the share price could still potentially underperform for the foreseeable future.

This is kind of sad because Palm is actually the category leader but looks like they have lost ground and not able to gain it back.

Now Palm's only potential positive news is the spin-off of PalmSource in near future. Leaving only hardware business behind in dog-eat-dog consumer electronics space.

There was a rather disturbing precedence that of Palm spun off from 3COM, and subsequently everything goes downhill from there. This means post spinoff the price could potentially drop even further.