(By Tim) Palm, Inc. (NASD: PALM) is scheduled to released the company's 2010 3rd quarter financial results on March 18, 2010. The quarter's results will be discussed in a conference call that will start at 1:30 EST.
Palm, Inc., a leader in mobile computing, strives to put the power of
computing in people''s hands so they can access and share their most
important information. The company''s products include smartphones,
under the Treo brand; mobile managers, under the LifeDrive brand;
handheld computers, under the Tungsten and Zire brands; as well as
software and accessories. Palm products are sold through select
Internet, retail, reseller and wireless operator channels throughout
the world, and at Palm Retail Stores and Palm online stores.
The consensus estimate for the quarterly earnings is a loss of 42¢ on revenues of $316 million. From the 25 analysts following the stock the earnings number ranges from minus 29¢ to a loss of 82¢. The revenue estimates are between $300 million and $412 million. With the consensus at $316 million that $412 million forecast seems to be an outlier. For the same quarter of 2009 Palm lost 86¢ per share on sales of $90 million.
For the last four quarters the actual earnings have been significantly different than the consensus estimates. The misses have been evenly split into positive and negative surprises. The 2010 2nd quarter was the closest with the consensus at a loss of 32¢ and the actual number was a loss of 37¢. Since the last earnings report the average estimate for this earnings period has slipped from an expected 4¢ loss to the current expectation of minus 42¢.
Palm is attempting to recover its fortunes by offering new products with an innovative operating system (webOS) into the very competitive smartphone sector. The Palm Pre phone was announced at the Consumer Electronics Show in January 2009 and shipment of the phone started in June, 2009. In November, the company released the Pixi phone, a compact, attractively designed phone at an attractive price point. Palm's website shows the Pixi available for $50 from Sprint with a new contract. Palm is attempting to break away from the smartphone pack with the Palm webOS. The operating system provides multi-tasking capability and provide application developers with a system that uses existing programming tools so they can easily produce additional software applications for the phones running webOS.
The competition to Palm include Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) with the iPhone, Blackberry products from Research in Motion (NASDAQ: RIMM) and products running Google's Android OS like the Motorola Droid and the HTC Nexus One sold exclusively by Google (NASDAQ: GOOG). The Apple iPhone has been the big winner in the smartphone race and the Palm Pre and Pre Plus have not been the breakout products the company was hoping for. Tech oriented magazines and websites generally put the Palm products well down the list when writing reviews and putting out top products lists on smartphones.
In February, Palm management issued new guidance that lowered the revenue expectations for the revenues in this quarter. The phrase "slower than expected consumer adoption" seems to just about cover the current state of Palm's business. The stock price lost 25% of its value on that announcement. At this point, there does not seem to be much possibility of any positive news coming from this earnings report.
