Company News: Microsoft riding high on ‘Halo 3’ sales
Microsoft Corp. said Thursday its fiscal first-quarter profit rose 23 percent as brisk sales of the new “Halo 3” video game, Windows and Office helped the software maker breeze past Wall Street’s expectations.
Investors cheered, sending shares up from $31.99 to $35.55, about 11 percent, in after-hours electronic trading.
For the quarter ended Sept. 30, the software maker’s profit climbed to $4.29 billion, or 45 cents per share, from $3.48 billion, or 35 cents per share, during the same period last year.
Revenue grew 27 percent to $13.76 billion from $10.81 billion in the year-ago quarter, beating analysts’ forecast by more than $1 billion.
The business unit responsible for Vista contributed $4.14 billion in revenue in the quarter, 25 percent more than a year ago.
Healy also said Microsoft booked 27 percent more annual license agreements for Windows than in the year-ago quarter, a sign businesses are committed to following Microsoft into the Vista era.
Sales from the unit that makes the Office 2007 software suite rose 20 percent to $4.11 billion.
In addition to scaling back its investment banking operations, Bank of America Corp. is exiting the wholesale mortgage business and eliminating about 700 jobs, bank officials said Thursday.
The nation’s second-largest bank will stop offering home mortgages through brokers at the end of the year to focus on direct-to-consumer lending through its banking centers and loan officers. The move also eliminates the jobs in the bank’s consumer real estate unit.
The cuts are part of a 3,000-job reduction engineered by chief executive Ken Lewis after the nation’s second-largest bank reported a huge decline in third-quarter earnings.
Motorola Inc.‘s third-quarter earnings plummeted 94 percent but the cell-phone company still managed to impress Wall Street with its progress, improving from its dismal first-half performance and serving notice its turnaround effort may be taking hold.
The world’s third-largest handset maker slightly outpaced expectations Thursday and forecast a bigger step forward in the fourth quarter as a slew of new products start hitting the market.
A profit of $60 million and narrowed loss in the cell-phone unit provided a modest endorsement of Motorola’s steps toward recovery and could buy more time for embattled CEO Ed Zander.
Investors agreed, pushing up Motorola shares 75 cents, or 4 percent, to $19.30 Thursday.