Archive for the ‘Competitive Strategy’ Category

Twitter Becoming More Than Just A Start Up

Posted by Michael on April 16th, 2010

twitterTwitter has become a major player in the world of on-line social networking, and this week it took another big step into the world of the big players, hosting its first ever developer conference in San Fransisco.

As widespread as twitter has become, it is hard to remember that the twitter was lost just 4 years ago. It has come a long way in the past 4 years, and now twitter is trying hard to change its image from a start up internet company to one of the big internet companies.

(more…)

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Alcoa (AA) kicks off earnings season with mixed results

Posted by Michael on April 8th, 2008

Alcoa (NYSE: AA) got the earnings season under way last night by reported weaker than expected earnings, but the company was able to top Wall Street’s estimates for overall revenue.

For its first quarter the company showed that earnings were $0.37 EPS on $7.4 Billion in revenues. This fell short of the $0.48 EPS that analysts had been expecting, but it did surpass the $7.2 Billion revenue figure that Wall Street had been looking to see.

Alcoa was the first Dow 30 company to report earnings for the first quarter, and the company noted that its sales had dropped by a pretty heavy $6.7 million in the quarter, at $7.38 million, down from $7.91 million in the same period last year. Is this a trend that we will continue to see as the rest of the Dow components line up to report first quarter numbers? Time will tell, but it is definitely going to be a rough earnings period, and should give us a better idea of just how tough things really are out there.

Alcoa shares fell 4.0% in yesterday’s action, and following its earnings report the stock has dropped another 0.6% in extended hours trading.

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Posted in After the Bell, Bad News, Competitive Strategy, Earnings, Economy, Stocks to Watch No Comments »

Google paid ads create effectiveness debate

Posted by Michael on March 28th, 2008

googleGoogle (NASDAQ: GOOG), the search engine giant, relies heavily on its paid advertising… but just how good are things going for this part of the company’s business? That question is at the heart of the current debate of the future value of the California based search engine company.

The reason for the current controversy comes from a recent report from comScore Inc. which states that Google’s click through rates have slowed to a crawl this year. Looking at the February numbers, comScore Inc. reports that the company saw just a 3% increase from February 2007. If that sounds bad, the company also reports that January saw ZERO growth from January of last year.

These are not exactly the sort of numbers that Google investors are used to seeing. Consider that only a few months earlier the search engine giant was seeing growth rates in the upper 20 to 30% range. Definitely a large slowdown, assuming you can trust the comScore Inc. report.

Google itself announced last quarter that its click through rates had been falling, and that has led to the stock selling off pretty sharply over the past 3 months.

The company used to be the unstoppable Wall Street phenomenon, but that has clearly changed recently and now the analysts are turning against their once beloved high flying stock. Lehman has lowered their price target from $644 to $580 (Google stock closed yesterday at $444, so at least even though their lowered their price target, they still see some more upside potential). The main reason for the price target adjustment was blamed on the recent click through declines. Piper Jaffray used the same justification in their forecast that Google will miss earnings for the current period.

While many are debating that the current slow down is due to advertising trimming their budgets, not everyone is buying that. Some analysts debate that the reason for the drop is more a result that advertisers are typically buying sales, and not clicks, so if Google can improve the value per click the ad revenue will shoot higher very quickly.

Rob Sanderson, an analyst with American Technology Research stated that the comScore Inc. have a wide margin of error, and investor’s would be wise not to assume that the recent report will lead to a poor earnings report from the company. Only time will tell.

Google will next be reporting earnings on April 17, and you can be sure that we will see a big move one way or the other once traders get to se just how bad things have gotten over the past few months.

related: Google remains the king of search engine traffic

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Posted in Competitive Strategy, Consumer Experience, Earnings, Forecasts, Rumors, Technology 1 Comment »

Exxon Mobil (XOM) lifts spending in search of new reserves

Posted by Michael on March 6th, 2008

exxon mobilOil giant Exxon Mobil (NYSE: XOM) announced that it is going to be lifting its spending this year in order to find and capitalize on additional oil reserves around the globe.

The company is fighting against rising drilling costs and costs of engineering in its battle to locate new oil reserves.

Last year the company spent $21 billion on exploration and development, and this year it plans to boost that investment up to somewhere between $25 and $30 billion. Looking into the future, the company expects to maintain that level of capital expenditure through the year 2012.

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Posted in Competitive Strategy, Oil No Comments »

eBay (EBAY) sellers cast accusations suggesting eBay padding auction listings

Posted by Michael on March 5th, 2008

ebayAs we looked at last week, disgruntled eBay (NASDAQ: EBAY) users decided to get together and boycott eBay in reaction to a couple of key changes that were made on the site.

These changes were (in summary):

  1. Increased final selling fees
  2. Allowing PayPal to hold certain payments up to 21 days
  3. Removing the option for for sellers to leave negative feedback on sellers

The eBay boycott was supposed to last a week, but was extended to last 2 weeks, and the impacts of the strike are still up for debate. While eBay is denying that the strike had any impact on its business, sellers are furious and accusing the site of padding it’s listings in order to create the false allusion that the strike was of little or no success.

There have been several posts on the eBay forum with users posting what they consider to be viable proof of eBay’s shady practices, and one user has gone so far as to post a video on YouTube illustrating what he considers to be the fraudulent listings.

For now, eBay is claiming that it had a bug in its system which resulted in some fake item listings, but has denied any intentional wrong doing.

You can be sure that we have not heard the end of this saga!

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Posted in Bad News, Competite Strategy, Competitive Strategy, Consumer Experience, E-commerce, Technology No Comments »

Ford Motor (F) set for a slow start after Citigroup downgrade

Posted by Michael on March 3rd, 2008

fordFord Motor (NYSE: F), already troubled, is set to get off to a weak start this morning after the auto maker was downgraded this morning by broker Citigroup. The broker downgraded the stock this morning from a “hold” to a “sell” rating.

Citigroup cited several reasons for the downgrade, and in addition lowered its price target on the stock from $7.00 down to $5.50.

Here a few of the reasons for the downgrade:

  • low chance that the company is going to be able to maintain market share in 2008
  • continued weak housing market will apply additional pressure to the company’s heavy-duty truck lineup
  • worsening credit crunch in America to apply more pressure on the Ford Credit’s earnings stream

In the premarket, shares of Ford have not been beaten up too bad, with shares dropping 1.3%, down to $6.43. We will see just how hard Wall Street punishes the company once trading gets under way shortly.

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Posted in Bad News, Before the Bell, Competitive Strategy, Economy, Forecasts, Housing, Recession No Comments »

Disgruntled eBay (EBAY) sellers extend current selling strike

Posted by Michael on February 25th, 2008

ebayE-commerce giant eBay (NASDAQ: EBAY) has been dealing with a lot of user feedback, that has been coming in the form of a “sellers strike” being launched by its large sellers over the past week. But, as some users will argue… eBay has not been dealing with any thing at all.

The current strike stems from disapproval over a couple of new changes being made by eBay management. There are three main concerns that eBay sellers are upset about:

  1. While the site did lower its initial listing fees for selling items, it significantly raised its final transaction fees. This move has been seen by eBay power sellers as a move that is aimed directly at the more successful eBay users.
  2. A second change that has upset sellers is the decision by eBay to stop allowing sellers to post feedback on sellers. This decision has frustrated sellers who argue that this is a valuable tool for weeding out bids from buyers that are unlikely to follow through on their purchase.
  3. Finally, another decision that is backfiring in eBay’s face is the decision that it will being to hold certain PayPal payments by up to 21 days in an attempt to combat fraud on the site.

All changes combined were just too much for many eBay users, and have led to a widespread boycott of the site that took place all last week, and has resulted in a decrease of roughly 13% in the number of items that are listed for sale on the site.

While the boycott has definitely been impacting the number of items listed, it is still not clear if eBay is going to take action to reduce the level of animosity within its community. Sensing that eBay is not taking notice, the community has decided to extend its boycott by another week, with the extension pushing the strike all the way out to March 3.

What about you guys? Do we have any eBay users out there? Are you participating in the current boycott, and if so, what other options have you been exploring during your hiatus from eBay?

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Posted in Competite Strategy, Competitive Strategy, Consumer Experience, E-commerce, Technology 4 Comments »

Cisco (CSCO) earnings rattle NASDAQ

Posted by Michael on February 7th, 2008

CiscoToday looks like another rough one for the NASDAQ after tech giant Cisco Systems (NASDAQ: CSCO) warned that  this year.

The company reported fiscal Q2 earnings of 38 cents per share, which was in line with analyst estimates, but where the problems come in, is that the company warned that recession fears may weigh on the company for the next couple of quarters.

Wall Street had been looking to see the company put up 15% third quarter revenue growth, but now the company is estimating that the third quarter is only going to show about a 10% jump in revenue. With the lower than expected future revenue expectations, analysts are starting to worry that the slowdown that is happening across America has begun to spread out to European countries faster than analysts had expected, as the company is seeing sales slow down across Europe as well as back home in the states.

Shares of Cisco have dropped 9.2% so far this morning, and almost all tech stocks have been falling in sympathy.

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Posted in Bad News, Before the Bell, Competitive Strategy, Earnings, Economy, Forecasts, Recession, Technology 2 Comments »

Toyota Motor Corp. (TM) posts a 7.5% profit

Posted by Michael on February 5th, 2008

toyotaJapanese auto market Toyota Motor Corp. (NYSE: TM) posted a 7.5% profit during its fiscal third quarter.

Looking at raw sales figures, the quarter saw an increase of $5.2 billion to $62.5 billion. Sales in the American market however did dip in the quarter, seeing a decline of $77 million, or 0.3%. The hard times that the company is going through in the American market has so far been offset by rapid sales growth in China and Russia, as well as oil-rich regions of the world.

Toyota, which has been making strong gains in market share, left its full year projections unchanged, with a forecast of 8.93 million vehicles.

In addition, the company also announced that it had approved a share buybacks worth up to $1.1 billion, and announced plans to cancel 4.49% of outstanding stock in order to maximize return on capital.

Shares of TM are trading down 0.4% in the premarket.

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Posted in Before the Bell, Competitive Strategy, Earnings, Economy, Forecasts, Good News No Comments »

eBay (EBAY) faces possible user strike over new fee structure

Posted by Michael on February 4th, 2008

ebayE-commerce giant eBay Inc. (NASDAQ: EBAY) is facing a possible user strike in reaction to new fee changes proposed by soon to be CEO John Donahoe.

eBay users over the past year have been pretty vocal over the fact that they want the auction site to lower its fees, and some users are now stating that the new structure is a mere slap in the face to the company’s successful sellers.

So what is the problem here exactly? Simply put, eBay is now going to lower the fee that a user has to pay up front to list their product(s) for sale. But, at the same time, it will be raising the fees that it charges once a product has been successfully sold on the site. This is not really a fee increase, but for some products sold on the site the fees may rise a bit.

eBay thinks that the new structure is more beneficial to users, because it does not penalize users as much as the old system for listing products that are not eventually sold. This change is part of major transition that the company is banking will bring more users back to the site, and increase product placement. eBay has been steadily losing users that have opted to move over to the company’s main rival, Amazon.com (NASDAQ: AMZN), which provides free product listing, and only a fee if/when a product is actually sold.

But, eBay users are not happy. Seeing the new changes as a way of punishing the company’s more successful sellers, there is an outcry going on now for an all out strike by sellers against the site next week.

Personally, I think that the users that are complaining would find something to complain about regardless of what changes the company made, short of a massive fee cut, or a plan that directly imitated that of Amazon. Come on people, over the past year your greatest complaint is that eBay is not listening to you, and that the company does not care about your business. This is a good step forward for the company. While nothing will ever be good enough to please every one, all the time, let’s just take a second and admit that this is a step in the right direction, and eBay is making moves to make the “eBay experience” better for everyone.

What are your thoughts? Are you an eBay user? What are you initial feelings on this new fee structure? Obviously I am not as negative towards the changes as prolific eBay users out there are… so please, let us hear from you, and let us know what about the new structure really has you upset.

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Posted in Bad News, Competitive Strategy, Consumer Experience, Technology No Comments »