At Microsoft, we love to beat ourselves up, in some ways even more than others do (and that's saying something.) We focus so much on the clever things our competitors do (as if we're supposed to be the only ones with good ideas) or the successes they have that we sometimes lose track of the great things we've done.
I saw this article go by a few months ago and thought it was a good reminder of our success in one area at least: our financial success. I've been meaning to post this for a while now, but I think it's still relevant. Of course, we must never become complacent or too proud of what we've done, but it's good to have a little balance.
SeekingAlpha
10 Reinvigorating Facts About Microsoft's Profits
Monday April 30, 5:57 am ETJoe Panettieri (The VAR Guy) submits: I have written extensively about Microsoft's (NasdaqGS: MSFT) problems. But last week, I got a stunning reminder about the company's power. It takes Microsoft only 10 hours of business to exceed Red Hat's entire quarterly profit. Skeptical? Check out the math, and nine other facts about Microsoft's most recent earnings report.
Microsoft last week announced quarterly revenue of $14.4 billion and net income of $4.93 billion. In other words, Microsoft's daily net income is about $55 million. That's $55 million in pure profit every 24 hours. Do some quick math and you'll learn it takes Microsoft only about...
- 10 hours or so (yes, hours!) to exceed Red Hat's (NYSE: RHT - News) quarterly net income of $20.5 million.
- four days to exceed Research In Motion's (NasdaqGS: RIMM) quarterly net income of $187.9 million.
- four days to exceed Starbucks' (NasdaqGS: SBUX) quarterly net income of $205 million.
- one week to exceed Nike's (NYSE: NKE - News) quarterly net income of $350.8 million.
- two weeks to exceed McDonalds' (NYSE: MCD - News) quarterly net income of $762 million.
- two weeks to exceed Apple's (NasdaqGS: AAPL) quarterly net income of $770 million.
- 18 days to exceed Google's (NasdaqGS: GOOG) quarterly net income of $1 billion.
- 23 days to exceed Coca-Cola's (NYSE: KO - News) quarterly net income of $1.26 billion.
- five weeks to exceed IBM's (NYSE: IBM - News) quarterly net income of $1.85 billion.
- 10 weeks to exceed Wal-Mart's (NYSE: WMT - News) quarterly net income of $3.9 billion.
For a dead company, Microsoft's profits certainly look lively.
From http://biz.yahoo.com/seekingalpha/070430/33932_id.html?.v=1
(Fixed character problems)
chook Reply
That's a little bit deceptive. MSFT's last quarter was boosted by over a billion dollars of accrued net income. It's an outlier quarter. While the comparison is against what is traditionally a terrible quarter for tech companies.
If you look at annual numbers for, say, MSFT and IBM then you are looking at net incomes of $12.6B versus $9.5B. Clearly 5 months, let alone 5 weeks of operations isn't going to exceed IBM's net income.
I don't disagree with the main point but his analysis is extremely deceptive.