Author Archives: Scalper1

Workday Beats For 13th Time In 14 Quarters, But Outlook Short

All in a Leap Year workday’s work, Workday ( WDAY ) late Monday issued its fiscal fourth-quarter earnings that beat Wall Street views, but its Q1 revenue outlook missed forecasts and shares were down in after-hours trading. The company’s CEO, however, said Workday will expand its total addressable market. And the Q4 ended Jan. 31 marked the 13th time in 14 quarters that Workday beat consensus on earnings and revenue since going public in Oct. 2012, priced at 28. But CFO Mark Peek forecast Q1 revenue of $337 million to $339 million, up 35% at the midpoint but below the $343.3 million modeled by analysts polled by Thomson Reuters. Workday stock was down 3% in after-hours trading, after the company released its results. Shares rose 1.7% to 60.46 in Monday’s regular session. Workday stock hit a 39-month low at 47.32 on Feb. 9. The stock climbed over the past two weeks but is still down 24% this year. Investors in software stocks, battered in recent months, had hoped Workday might encourage upward movement in the sector like Salesforce.com ( CRM ) did last week when its stock jumped 11% after its fiscal Q4 earnings and its outlook beat expectations. The enterprise software sector dived Feb. 5 after Big Data developer Tableau Software ( DATA ) issue a disappointing Q4 and gave soft guidance. Tableau crashed 49.5% that day to 41.33 and still has not recovered. “We ended FY16 on a high note with a very strong fourth quarter across product lines and around the world,” Workday CEO Aneel Bhusri said in the earnings release. “Demand for our financial management and HCM (human capital management) products continues to rise, as do our competitive win rates. The year ahead brings us an expanded addressable market with the delivery of Planning, Learning Management and Student applications that allow customers to drive employee engagement and productivity in new and transformative ways.” Big legacy software developer Oracle ( ORCL ) unwittingly might be helping Workday by somewhat reducing its automatic promotional Software as a Service to customers, D.A. Davidson analyst Jack Andrews wrote in a research note before Workday’s earnings release. Workday’s helps companies manage their most important assets: people, in the form of the HCM applications, and money, with financial management software. The company posted a per-share loss minus items of a penny in Q4, better than its 6-cent loss in the year-earlier quarter, on revenue of $323.4 million, up 43%. Workday had guided Q4 to revenue of $317 million to $320 million. Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters had modeled $320.3 million when Q3 results were reported in November, but then revised it down to $319.6 million. Analysts had expected an adjusted loss per share of 5 cents.

Apple Music Rival Spotify Could Get $500 Million Injection: Report

Apple ( AAPL ) Music and Pandora Media ( P ) rival Spotify could get a $500 million injection from TPG Capital, a major U.S.-based private equity firm, according to a British media report. The reported financing of Spotify comes amid continuing growth in the music-streaming sector and follows a share sale last year which valued the privately-held company — which has nearly 30 million paying subscribers — at about $8.5 billion, according to a report by Sky News late Friday. TPG Capital is discussing an investment of as much as $500 million to Spotify, which competes with Apple , Pandora, Alphabet ( GOOGL )-owned Google and other music-streaming services, Sky News said. Sky News reported that the money could be used to fund acquisitions, with talk of a major investment in Spotify coming on the heels of another report, this time from the New York Post, saying Samsung, Spotify and Google all examined a potential takeover of music streaming service Tidal. Spotify has discussed creating an initiative that could produce a Tidal “powered by Spotify” partnership rather than an acquisition, the New York Post said on Thursday. An estimated 41 million people paid for a streaming music subscription services in 2014, according to IFPI, a London-based recording industry trade group that represents more than 1,300 record labels. TPG declined to comment on the report. Apple Music has 11 million paid subscribers, senior vice president Eddy Cue said earlier this month , up from 10 million paying customers at the beginning of the year. Apple Music began in June for Apple iOS users with three-month trial subscriptions, expanding to the Google Android operating system in November. Apple may be attracting members from its rivals, including Pandora, Amazon.com ( AMZN ), Google’s YouTube and Spotify. Apple stock slipped 0.3% in the stock market today , closing at 96.65. Pandora stock closed up 0.5% at 10.22. Image provided by Shutterstock .

Microsoft To Ship HoloLens Computer Glasses To Developers March 30

Microsoft ( MSFT ) announced Monday that it will begin shipping its HoloLens computer glasses to developers in the U.S. and Canada on March 30. It started taking pre-orders for the augmented reality goggles on Monday. The Development Edition of HoloLens costs $3,000 and is targeted to software developers and enterprises. Microsoft is taking a gradual approach to commercializing HoloLens. It wants to expand the software ecosystem and drive hardware costs lower before it expands availability for the product. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella told the BBC last July that it could be a “five-year journey” to roll out the devices to consumers. The HoloLens developer kit comes with a handful of initial apps, including a Skype app, a 3D modeling app called HoloStudio, and HoloTour, an app that provides 3D virtual trips to global landmarks. It also has included three mixed reality games in the kits. “Today represents a monumental step forward,” Alex Kipman, a technical fellow in Microsoft’s operating system group, said in a blog post . “This is the first step in our journey to consumers. A step focused on our commercial partnerships and on supporting developers, who will help pave the way to consumer availability with amazing and new holographic experiences.” HoloLens glasses overlay digital images in a user’s field of vision, creating new ways to interact with data. Users can control what they see with verbal commands and gestures. Some experts predict that holographic computing will be the next step in personal computers. HoloLens is a fully untethered, self-contained, Windows 10 device. It does not have to link to a separate PC or mobile phone to work. The headset features a custom-built Holographic Processing Unit and an Intel ( INTC ) 32-bit architecture. It sports 2 gigabytes of RAM, 64GB of flash storage, and Bluetooth and Wi-Fi connectivity. HoloLens contains a host of sensors, include an inertial measurement unit, an ambient light sensor, four microphones and four environment understanding cameras. It also has a 2-megapixel camera for taking photos and videos. HoloLens has see-through holographic lenses that use an advanced optical projection system to generate multidimensional, full-color holograms with low latency. The developer kit includes a new Clicker accessory for controlling HoloLens without gestures or voice commands. Battery life for active use is two to three hours. Alphabet ( GOOGL ) is developing its own augmented reality glasses in Google Glass.