A few days ago, Google slipped up in releasing quarterly earnings reports before they were PR-ified, popular media referred to their results as ‘terrible’:
What Page couldn’t apologize for, however, is that Google’s results were pretty terrible. The company’s profits plunged 20 percent from a year ago, according to the Wall Street Journal (source)
Today, AMD released their quarterly, and results were also ‘terrible’:
Just one day after the company posted pretty terrible quarterly earnings (“Net loss $157 million, loss per share $0.21, operating loss $131 million”), followed by a 16 percent drop in the company’s stock price and job cuts of 1,800 (15 percent of its global workforce), two financial analysts have now downgraded the company. (source)
In both cases, the companies made less than expected, except, Google’s so-called ‘terrible’ results are a profit of $1.74B on $14B of revenue (which was a 45% increase from a year previous). In other words, Google’s margins are getting tighter, but they’re still making nearly 2 billion dollars in profit every 3 months.
When google’s quarterlies came out, the world was aflame with news stories heralding the coming of the end times. A day later, AMD is making zero profit at all, and somehow in the same category of ‘terrible’ as far as investors (or at least investment media..) are concerned.
Investors want you to set a target, and exceed that target, so they grow rich off of you breaking your back for their hft algorithms that make money while they sleep. Don’t hit your mark, eat a little cost, and make $2 billion dollars while doing it, and their good will and faith goes right out the door.
