Palm Reports Bad Quarter, But Not as Bad as Expected
Palm, Inc. has reported the results for its fourth quarter of fiscal 2001. It has narrowly beat both analysts' expectations and its own revised projections, posting a loss of $153.6 million, or 16 cents a share. It reported revenues of $165.3 million. Analysts had been expecting losses of 19 cents a share on revenues of $145.5 million.
In comparison, in the same quarter last year, Palm reported revenue more than twice that and last quarter its revenue was almost three times greater.
The total of Palm's quarterly loss did not include considerable restructuring and inventory write-offs. During the quarter, Palm took a charge of $268.9 million to write-off components, work-in-process, and finished goods not expected to be used or sold.
The company also took a restructuring charge of $60.9 million relating to real-estate consolidation costs and employee severance expenses. The severance charges related to previously announced layoffs involving over 500 employees and contract workers.
Actual losses were $392.1 million, or 69 cents per share.
Though some have predicted that Palm will soon run out of operating cash, Palm ended its fiscal year with $513.8 million in cash and established a $150 million asset-backed, borrowing-base credit facility.
In its upcoming quarter, the first of its 2002 fiscal year, revenue is likely to fall between $200 million and $220 million, lower than the $239 million analysts had expected. Chief Financial Officer Judy Bruner said yesterday that Palm is starting to see increased demand as its new products hit the market.
Palm CEO Carl Yankowski said that "volume shipment of the m500 series and close collaboration with our channel partners helped spur end-user demand, resulting in overall reduction in channel inventory levels during the fourth quarter."
Palm's management teams expects the company to turn a profit by the second quarter of fiscal 2002, which ends November 2001. This turnaround will be powered by sales of its new products and cost-cutting efforts, including laying off about 25% of its employees.
"We remain very encouraged by Palm's very strong product positioning," Mr. Yankowski said yesterday. "The long-term value proposition of the handheld sector remains huge with the promise of exceeding the penetration rate of personal computers."
Palm shipped 6.4 million handhelds during this fiscal, bringing the total number of Palm-branded devices ever shipped to about 13.7 million.
In after-hours trading, Palm shares rose 90 cents, or 17.3%, to $6.09. During the regular session, shares fell 4 cents, or 0.8%, to $5.19.
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RE: Palm is dead.
Beat would you, go play Brittany Spears on your mp3 player.
RE: Palm is dead.
your dear palm inc.
RE: Palm is dead.
Here's why:
The m505 is perfect for me.
Not for you.
That's why having a choice is so great.
RE: Palm is dead.
What I'd rather have someone explain to me is where all the IM's with their "Palm is dead" rhetoric come from every time a Palm financial story is posted.
Sony's Divisions
Huh?
Do you realize what happens if Palm dies?
In order for Sony to continue to produce Clie's, they must aquire Palm, which has some weird money issues that would require Sony to spend billions. If Palm goes down, you can kiss your Clie goodbye, or hope Sony can make a decent OS. (Have you seen the Playstation Browser?) They're great hardware, not software.
RE: Palm is dead.
Second, if Palm goes bankrupt and dies, that does not many that the Palm OS will die too. Sony, Handspring, or whoever can easily aquire the Palm OS for a fraction of the cost of buying the company. In other words, the Palm OS does not need a viable Palm Inc. to survive.
Third, from reading these boards, it is apparent that everyone can see that Palm is in trouble. What I find amusing is how defensive people could get.
Come on people!!! Reality check!!! The people who are saying "Palm is dead", "Palm sucks", "The m505 is crap"... they are talking about a little machine that keeps your appointments. They are not talking about your wife, or your mama.
In other words, chill out!!!
RE: Palm is dead.
if they sell out too soon, the taxes will be payed from the split with 3com
that's a lot of taxes
RE: Palm is dead.
RE: Palm is dead.
> San Francisco that you might be interested in buying...
As far as I'm concerned its OK that you think the whole Palm platform is doomed. Lots of other people think that, too. But if you haven't got anything new to add to a conversation, chiming in with some cliché isn't necessary. I'm opposed to all "Me Too" messages and these boards are full of them. If someone else has already said exactly what you think, then you saying the same thing again is a waste of your time and all of ours, too.
Palm is NOT dead.
Now we have clueless uninformed idiots saying Palm is dead. Wonder if it's the same idiots or if there are just a whole hell of a lot of idiots out there....
RE: Palm is dead
RE: RE: Palm is dead
Palm is dead
To be a troll, you must make statements that are untrue and enlist a flame response. But most of the comments that are critical of Palm _IS TRUE_!!!
Now who are the trolls?
Lets face the reality
OK, economy slowdown could contribute something but is it the main cause?
To me (I am not religous to any OS, I use whichever better suit my purpose), Palm Inc. gradually lossing its strength. You can see from two parts
(1). Software part -- the evolution of Palm OS is really slow and quite limited. I am not saying the current OS is no good, I am just saying that different people have different needs, but Palm OS only supports one, which is a simple PIM plus some other things. To make the Palm OS better, I think Palm should have different version of Palm targeting at different level. The highest level Palm OS (which is most expensive one) can compete with WinCE and the lowest one can grab the lower end market. But now you can see no matter which Palm PDA, they all come with the same OS supporting almost same thing (except for version difference). That is why PPC start catching up in the higher end market. (some people may not care about the battery life, size...)
(2) Hardware -- There is really nothing new in the Palm harware after Vx came out. Same old hardware with a little improvement. Palm has always lagged behind other competitor in harware.
Therefore, my opinion is that there are explanations to Palm's recent failure, we can not blame economy totally!
Well, yes and no...
When the next batch of machines come out with the ARM processors running at speeds up to 200 MHz, the sky will be the limit on speed for even the most complex tasks.
The specs on a WinCE/PPC machine may be jazzier, but the machines just are not efficient. In the volume-purchasing corporate market and most of the business and professional market, efficiency is what counts most - how well does it do what you are purchasing it for. A lack of extra features is a BENEFIT, not a detraction in this market.
As Palm makes their adjustments after their marketing disaster with the m50x series, and begins to really target this, their natural market, I think we will see the company flourish once again.
- David H. Stern, M.D.
RE: Lets face the reality
I am in a little doubt here. I played with iPAQ a lot, it is a really interesting machine, very small & light without expansion sleeve (in PPC term) and easy to hold. The speed is really fast and the screen is very beautiful, it has many features which will attact the high end users who don't quite care about the size and weight and battery life that much (BTW, iPAQ battery life is not that bad considering its computing power). I agree that the software part in PPC is the weakest part though (and M$).
I have been a Palm user for some time, I don't see Palm evolve that fast which might not be a good thing since people needs are changing. Look at the old days, monitors were green, 40 lines, DOS command prompt, then 286, 386.... People that time already questioned why computing power was important! But 15 years later, nobody questiones it anymore since computer has evolved from a simple word processor to a home entertaining device with full multimedia function which is what we could imagine 20 years ago (I started playing with computer since the very first personal computer came out). So same thing could happen to PDA even though I don't think it will replace laptop PC totally. If Palm could catch up, I am afraid it will become like dcalculator manufacturer.
Well, until we get to the point...
The quest to be all things to all people leads to compromises everywhere. Some will compromise battery life, some screen resoluotion or readability in certain circumstances, some will sacrifice bells and whistles that have little to do with their target audience.
I think for Palm to be successful, they are going to have to identify their primary targets for marketing AND development, and then get very cozy with them. I don't think that market is going to be in the "gee-whiz" gizmo sector. I don't think anyone can out-compete Sony in that sector. They have a 25 year head start. But nobody REALLY targets the corporate and professional market adequately.
Palm appears to be making an effort to do so, and I believe it will serve them well. And using the Palm OS, they will continue to run small, efficient, well-designed programs compiled for packing a lot of punch into a very small space. (Unlike the MS-based stuff, IMHO.)
The extent to which trolls have taken over suggests...
comp.sys.palmtops.pilot, I have noticed a dramatic increase in
PocketPC trolling over just the last 6-9 months. Now, I'm not one
to regularly attribute to malice what could be adequately explained by
stupidity, but I remember when Microsoft got outed in 1998
by the LA Times for attempting to orchestrate an astroturf campaign
against the federal antitrust action. (See http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/content/pcmo/0414/306632.html
http://www.computerworld.com/cwi/story/0,1199,NAV47-74_STO30565,00.html
http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,17745,00.html
for more info.) The gist of it was MS was, through a gaggle of PR
agencies headed by Edelman PR, attempting to plant paid-for company propaganda
through editorials, letters to the editor, and op-ed pieces.
(This is called an astroturf campaign, because it's supposed to look like real, grass-roots support.)
I'm starting to wonder if something similar is going on here, only this time,
the PR agency they hired (assuming it's not an internal initiative) hasn't allowed
an outsider to get ahold of their playbook. Almost all the posts repeat the
"Palm is dead!" line, which suggests a bit of "memetic engineering," of the same
sort that Microsoft used during the antitrust campaign ("Freedom to Innovate!).
This is a basic propaganda technique - repeat the message long enough and it
gains credibility, even if it's completely false or irrelevant. In the antitrust case
the idea was to shape the public image of the case away from Microsoft's behavior
and towards the feds by planting the meme that the antitrust case is "anti-innovation"
through repetition (and of course saying nothing about the fact that the antitrust action was brough
in the first place because of Microsoft's crushing of innovative competition through the wielding of monopoly power.)
Here, it seems the idea is to neutralize Palm's overwhelming market share by
planting the "Palm is dead" meme in the minds of early-adopters, ignoring the overwhelming
marketshare and installed base of the PalmOS. (I'm not saying that Palm's in great financial shape,
I'm just questioning the motives of some of the more vocal and repetitious "palm is dead" posters,
who really add nothing to the discussion.)
Anyhow, just a thought.
RE: The extent to which trolls have taken over suggests...
It's easy
It's probable
It could very well be true
Well, the Webmaster could do a little log checking...
- David Stern
Palm shoots itself in the @ss. Don't blame MSFT.
RE: The extent to which trolls have taken over suggests...
The Good News
Another source of happiness is that demand for Palm products is picking up, as Bruner said. That's good news for *all* the Palm makers.
Palm is now down to ten weeks of inventory in the channel and they are working to reduce that to eight weeks. That is a good sign of growing demand and, looking long term, will also make the company more able to make quick changes.
In conclusion, I'd like to say that I also am beginning to suspect that the people who post the "Palm is Dead" slogan are in the employ of competitors.
PocketPC is Dead!
After shooting both feet MSFT has apparently taken to other forms of self mutilization as they cater to Compaq, HP, and Casio. The only way they're going to reach critical penetration is if they take a huge loss on the os (which they can afford), and backstab their closest allies (which isn't contrary to their nature) by letting all comers produce pocketpc devices.
Any bets as to whether the X-box will last longer than the XFL?
Palm Financial Analysis
Yes, there was a $153M operating loss, but that only equates to a $89M net loss. Also, Palm wrote off a lot of capitalized costs that would have otherwise had to be depreciated in the future. By writing these assets off their profitability will look alot better in the future.
Also, did anyone note that revenues increased 50% and a 75% unit sales increased for the year just ended?
Basically they had a bad product transition by announcing the new products too soon. For those who felt that the 500/505 were not significant improvements, I'd say that thousands of people disagreed with you as they held back their purchases to wait for it.
The poor product transition, inventory problem and bad economy hit Palm hard in the 4th quarter but if you look at the 3 quarters before it, they were all strong:
Q1 - $401M
Q2 - $523M
Q3 - $471M
Q4 - $166M
So which of these problems were caused by Palm management? Well, the product transition was poorly handled, and they have acknowledged this in the press already, plus the inventory problem, although MANY companies have inventory problems.
Now what are some good factors for the company?
- They are winning the war against Microsoft, despite MS endless bucket of money and clout. Palm has an installed base of almost 16M units, with PPC only 1.25M.
- Palm OS has a 80% new sales market share
- Palm has an active and growing developer base, and third party partners
- Licensees such as Sony can match Microsoft, Compaq, HP, blow for blow in marketing and R&D
- Palm secured some financing, and have a half-billion dollar cash reserve
- Palm 505 is now selling in volume
- Palm has recongnized that the BUSINESS market is key to their long-term success and profitability. If you look at their website, you will notice the change in focus
I could go on, but I doubt many people will even complete reading my post as it's so long and boring.
RE: Palm Financial Analysis
I don't think that Palm is on life-support, but I think that they are close to it.
If you look at earning:
Q1 - $401M
Q2 - $523M
Q3 - $471M
Q4 - $166M
There is a huge drop off between Q3 and Q4. There are a lot more factors involved than just a poorly handle product transition. You cannot blame Palm's current condition on just the mistake of announcing the m500 series too early. Palm's condition is a combination of multiple mistakes.
1. the m500 and m505 failed to meet user expectations.
2. the m505 has a poor and dim screen.
3. Palm did not incorporate any ground breaking features in the m505 and m500. Compared with Handera's soft-screen and Sony's high resolution, the m500 and m505 were overshadowed and out-staged.
4. no ground-breaking freatures
5. no ground-breaking freatures
Now, I disagree that Palm has weathered the worst of the storm. I think the worst is still yet to come. In the past year, Palm only had Handspring as a competitor in the Palm OS PDA arena. Even with a small start-up company like Handspring, Palm lost over 20% of their market share to Handspring.
Now the weaken Palm Inc. has Handspring, HandEra, and Sony to fight over market shares. If a small company like Handspring can take a chunk of Palm's market share, what kind of damage could a gaint like Sony do? Already Sony has introduced 3 new models that competes with Palm's new model lines, and Sony can offer them at a better price.
Palm is definantly not out of the rough water yet... the worst is still to come.
RE: Palm Financial Analysis
Palm appears to be moving in the right direction by taking up the $150M credit line. This is a savvy move in this climate of weakening interest rates.
What Palm needs now is CASH - lots of it. Anyone who's ever in business knows that cash is king and the life blood that keeps the commerce wheels moving. To make it through, Palm shall have to aggressively monitor their cash burn rate and to avoid any further liquidity crunch.
RE: Palm Financial Analysis
Also, your point about Sony being a tough competitor is well taken. Although I'd rather have Sony on "my side" rather then in the PPC camp.
A recent article I read in a IT trade magazine says that Palm should have partnered better with IBM. He felt that Palm--Notes would be a strong advantage in the sought-after corporate market. So far, IBM has been on the side-lines in the PDA market (besides rebranding the Palm units).
The main point of my post was that from a financial point of view, they are not as bad off as some are saying here. They have a relatively good current ratio and debt to equity ratio, and have written off a lot of assets that would have otherwise hit their expense line over the next few fiscal years. Also, their poor sales was a single quarter problem that hopefully is behind them now.
RE: Palm Financial Analysis
(1) You can not look at the previous quarters and say the company will be still strong. There have been too many hi-tech companies died even though they were monstrous before (look at Lucent, previously known as Bell Lab, too many great thing came out from there, but they are in serious trouble recently due to bad management. Many friends of mine can not even believe that Lucent is going to disappear, Alcatel was trying to buy Lucent).
(2) Remember couple months ago, Apple went through the same thing, they introduced G4 Cube which won Apple many awards but didn't sell. There were hugh inventories and they had a hugh net loss that quarter. Fortunately, they came out from the valley soon, but Palm can not be the same since Mac society is well establaished. There is no competetors in that area (except for Wintel). But in PDA, there are too many competetors, Handspring, TrgPro, Sony, PPC, numerous small companies doing Linux PDA..... Unless now Palm decides to cut back the clone plan, otherwise they just can not compete.
RE: Palm Financial Analysis - it's all BAD
Gloom and doom from a lot of people, but how many even know how to read an
income statement or balance sheet?
[Probably a few. Sounds like you're not one of them]
Yes, there was a $153M operating loss, but that only equates to a $89M net loss.
Also, Palm wrote off a lot of capitalized costs that would have otherwise had to be
depreciated in the future. By writing these assets off their profitability will look alot
better in the future.
Profitability will look better than it OTHERWISE WOULD HAVE. Now that Palm has competition and is only selling second-rate hardware, people who are familiar with PDAs will avoid Palm.]
Also, did anyone note that revenues increased 50% and a 75% unit sales increased
for the year just ended?
[What percent of revenue came from the high profit Vx that Palm adroitly turned into a lame duck PDA? Palm lost their revenue all star Vx and replaced it with the "where's the profit here, guys" m10x series as their main seller. What happens when your top seller goes from being your most profitable to being your least profitabe? You hemorrhage millions a day like Palm is doing now.]
Basically they had a bad product transition by announcing the new products too
soon. For those who felt that the 500/505 were not significant improvements, I'd say
that thousands of people disagreed with you as they held back their purchases to
wait for it.
[Thousands held back, waited, and then realized that the m50x series was not what they were looking for.]
The poor product transition, inventory problem and bad economy hit Palm hard in the
4th quarter but if you look at the 3 quarters before it, they were all strong:
Q1 - $401M
Q2 - $523M
Q3 - $471M
Q4 - $166M
[471 - 166 = 305 MILLION dollar drop. At this rate, they will have -139 million income this quarter. (Sales occur in a parallel universe, but actually cost Palm each time a PDA is sold)]
So which of these problems were caused by Palm management?
[All of them?] Well, the product
transition was poorly handled, and they have acknowledged this in the press already,
plus the inventory problem, although MANY companies have inventory problems.
Now what are some good factors for the company?
- They are winning the war against Microsoft,
[Palm was the leader in PDA sales because their devices cost very little compared to Windows CE/PocketPC.] despite MS endless bucket of money
and clout. Palm has an installed base of almost 16M units, with PPC only 1.25M.
- Palm OS has a 80% new sales market share
- Palm has an active and growing developer base, and third party partners
- Licensees such as Sony can match Microsoft, Compaq, HP, blow for blow in
marketing and R&D
- Palm secured some financing, and have a half-billion dollar cash reserve [and may end up blowing it over the next three months as they try to stave off bankruptcy.]
- Palm 505 is now selling in volume [that's LOW VOLUME]
- Palm has recongnized that the BUSINESS market is key to their long-term success
and profitability. If you look at their website, you will notice the change in focus
I could go on, but I doubt many people will even complete reading my post as it's so
long and boring.
RE: Palm Financial Analysis - it's all BAD
Points for thought
Let's look at some of the advantages of having the real MS products. Of course I hope you noticed that the major applications are prefixed with the word "Pocket". This is because they are not full versions. Pocket Excel cannot match desktop Excel, Pocket Work cannot match desktop Word. But here's a revelation for those who have not seen both systems at work in the exact same environment trying to do the same thing: Pocket Excel also cannot match MiniCalc, Pocket Word cannot match WordSmith.
Some interesting angles come along when a PPC user starts up with yet another "I can guide the space shuttle with this" discussion. One of those recently went like this over a lunch: PPC user-"I spent $200 more for my device, but look at the money I saved in applications."
Palm user-"WordSmith and Minicalc together cost about $50".
PPC user-"Yeah, but mine syncs with the desktop version."
Palm user-"Likewise... and your advantage is...?"
PPC user-"Yeah but, umm, well, how's the casserole?"
Similar discussions arise in regards to numbers like speed. "My CPU is faster than yours!". "Then how come you have an hourglass?"
So we come down to one that has the names, and one that has the better abilities. One that has the high cpu rate, and one that has the agility. One that has the entertainment value, and one that has the functionality value. There are also reasons why Windows for PPC changes more rapidly than Palm OS. WinCE had a bad start and needed drastic changes to make it usable. MS even droped the WinCE name because it gained a bad reputation. The scenario is not unlike a child who is born sickly. They get more medical attention, and when they finally leave the hospital they have gone through more changes than the child who was born healthy. Palm OS was a healthy child who did not need regular surgery. Windows for PPC was nearly stillborn, but MS kept it alive and has managed to make it almost as useful as Palm OS. Almost.
Short term decisions
Obviously, Palm didn't expected so fierce competition from Sony. With their previous "partners", they used to remain in "control".
Now with the 2 new Clie announcement, it's obvious that Palm didn't saw that one coming, and the worst part is... Sony is going directly to their natural market; the non-business consumer.
I think at this point, Palm hasn't any technological PDA ready to compete (price wise and feature wise)with the Clie.
What they should do to minimize the losses is put on the market a M505x, the same way they did with the Vx. They could put a 16 megs memory, improve the screen, maybe put in it a SD memory card and brand it as "new and improve". They can do that with no major investment in R & D. Maybe price it at the same price as the actual M505.
Let's say they put it out in September, about the same time as the Clie 600 series. That wouldn't be the 8th marvel of the world PDAs, but at least, it would mean that Palm is serious about retaining their market shares.
P.S.: I think instead of Palm is dead motto, you should look closely at Handspring, those are the one closer to their grave. The Edge was never in content, and with the Sony's coming out so strong, it's gonna be a battle between SD and MS. Forget about springboards and mini springboards, developpers won't invest in them anymore.
Solo
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Palm is dead.
They lost almost $400 MILLION dollars, their sales in the upcoming quarter will be dismal (why would anyone buy an m505 when they can get a CLIE?), they will run out of cash within a quarter, PocketPC4 will be out soon, the m505 has been a disaster, and they have no new models that can turn things around.
Someone please explain how Palm has a hope in hell of surviving.