Continental earnings surpass expectations

Continental Airlines exceeded Wall Street expectations with third-quarter earnings of $61 million despite high jet fuel prices, the carrier said Tuesday.

Continental’s earnings of 80 cents per share, compared to a loss of $18 million, or 29 cents a share in the third quarter 2004, was nearly triple expectations of 27 cents per share from analysts surveyed by Thomson Financial. Excluding a $3 million special charge, the Houston-based airline earned $64 million, or 83 cents a share.

Continental attributed $109 million in third-quarter operating income — an $87 million hike over $22 million in the year-ago period — to revenue improvements and more than $400 million in savings from pay and benefit concessions.

•Strong demand for notebook computers powered by Intel Corp. chips helped boost third quarter profits by 5 percent, but the technology bellwether missed analyst expectations by a penny.

In the three months ended Oct. 1, the world’s largest maker of PC microprocessors earned $2.0 billion, or 32 cents per share, compared with $1.91 billion, or 30 cents a share, in the same period a year ago.

Revenue rose 18 percent to $9.96 billion compared with $8.47 billion in the year-ago period.

•Yahoo Inc.’s third-quarter profit topped analyst expectations as advertisers continued to flock to the company’s popular Web site.

The Sunnyvale, Calif.-based company said Tuesday that it earned $253.8 million, or 17 cents per share, during the three months ended in September. That was essentially unchanged from net income of $253.3 million, or 17 cents per share, at the same time last year when Yahoo realized a large windfall from the sale of its stake in rival Google Inc.

Revenue for this year’s period totaled $1.33 billion, a 47 percent increase from $906.7 million last year.