Shares of AOL (AOL) are up 37 cents, or 1.8%, at $20.77 after the company beat analysts’ Q1 revenue and earnings estimates following its purchase of The HuffingtonPost.com and TechCrunch on March 7th

Q1 revenue fell 17% to $551.4 million on an 11% decline in ad revenue, but still beat the consensus $536 million estimate. EPS of 22 cents, excluding restructuring and other costs, was ahead of the average 19 cents estimate.

The drop in ad revenue stemmed in part from a continued wind-down of operations in Europe, the company said, which hit both display advertising and search. But search revenue was also hit by the drop in subscribers.

While AOL saw a 24% drop in subscriber churn on a 22% reduction in the number of subscribers, CEO Tim Armstrong noted that churn was down 17% at 2.5% versus 3% a year earlier.

The purchase of HuffingtonPost.com added $5.2 million to display advertising in the quarter, the company said.

That would appear to be consistent with Armstrong’s remarks back in February that he expected Huffington Post to generate over $50 million in revenue this year. $5.2 million in less than a month during which AOL controlled the property implies $15 million or so per quarter, or $60 million annually.

Spending was up, with operating cash flow of negative 9.3 million and negative free cash flow of $41.5 million. Acquisitions cost the company 370 million, reflecting the purchase of HuffingtonPost.com for $296 million, and total cash burn in the quarter was $420 million.

Article courtesy of Tech Trader Daily

Plenty of nice things being said about Chinese solar technology provider Suntech Power (STP), but also some lingering caution, following its analyst day in New York yesterday. The shares are nevertheless down 4 cents today at $9.
In conjunction with the meeting, the company forecast $2.78 billion to $2.83 billion in [...]

Article courtesy of BARRONS.com: Tech Trader Daily

On a conference call with the Street this afternoon following its FY Q1 earnings report, ArcSight (ARST) CEO Tom Reilly declined to talk about the recent Wall Street Journal report which asserted that the security software company has put itself up for sale.
Here’s what he said:
Before reporting on our financial [...]

Article courtesy of BARRONS.com: Tech Trader Daily

Texas Instruments (TXN) shares are trading lower following its Q2 earnings report last night – and for that, you can blame Nokia (NOK).
While EPS were in line with the Street at 52 cents a share, revenues at the chip maker were a hair below the Street, at $3.496 billion, versus [...]

Article courtesy of BARRONS.com: Tech Trader Daily