Yahoo! Reports Solid 1Q'12 Results

Yahoo! (YHOO) reported 1Q'12 results today (02012.04.17) after the market closed. I'm not going to listen to the conference call, but that will probably determine how YHOO trades tomorrow when the market opens.

"In the first quarter, Yahoo!’s results came in at the high end of our guidance range and beat consensus on revenue and profits." -- Scott Thompson, CEO of Yahoo!

My notes... Free cash flow was $196 million. "Cash" on 31 March 02012 was $2.652 billion. During 1Q'12 Yahoo! repurchased 5 million shares for $71 million ($14.20 per YHOO share).

YHOO closed 02012.04.17 at $15.01. 52-week range: $11.09 - $18.84.

[update::02012.04.18] I might read this... SeekingAlpha.com::Yahoo!'s CEO Discusses Q1 2012 Results - Earnings Call Transcript. Duh! quote: "In short, this quarter (2Q'12) has more potential for variability than other quarters." And I agree with CEO Thompson: "I am convinced that we don't need to reinvent who we are."

GOOG Down Pi Percent Two Consecutive Days

For two consecutive days Google (GOOG) has been down Pi% (3.14%) and I have the print screens to prove it.

Note: 3.14 is not the mathematical constant Pi (3.141592653589793238), but 3.14 is Pi rounded to the nearest hundredth.

Bruker Issues Another Slew of Scientific Press Releases

Borrowing from Britney Spears... Oops, it's happened again... Bruker (BRKR) has issued a slew of press releases and I don't know what they mean.

04/16/12... Bruker Introduces the S1 TITAN(TM), an Advanced Handheld XRF Analyzer for Metals Alloy Verification, Recycling and Scrap Sorting

04/16/12... Bruker Introduces High Definition (HD) and the revolutionary NMR Thermometer(TM) to NMR with the Most Sensitive, Accurate, High Definition NMR Spectrometer

04/16/12... Bruker's New CryoProbe(TM) Prodigy TCI 600 Delivers a 2.5x Proton Sensitivity Boost, Providing a more than 6-fold Throughput Enhancement for Routine and Research NMR

04/16/12... Bruker Announces BNL, a Nitrogen Re-Liquefaction Accessory for More Efficient, Sustainable and Economic Magnet Operation in NMR

All I do know is that BRKR closed last week (02012.04.13) at $14.55. 52-week range: $11.48 - $21.44.

NaND (Not a Nice Day)

At 8:02am MST on 02012.04.13 (Yes. A Friday the 13th.) the NASDAQ was down 1.2%. DJIA was down 0.72%. I found this FT.com (Financial Times) headline interesting: "US stocks drop on China GDP miss".

Google (GOOG), which reported 1Q'12 results after the market closed yesterday, was down ~3% at 8:08am MST on 02012.04.13.

[update::02012.04.13 at 1:37pm MST The markets have closed for the week. Yeah. Today was NaND (Not a Nice Day). The DJIA was down 1.05%; the NASDAQ was down 1.45%; the S&P 500 was down 1.25%; the Russell 2000 was down 1.31%.

GOOG lost 4% of its market value today. The 2:1 stock split doesn't appear overly popular, but there is also concern about CPC (Cost Per Click). The following is from Google's CFO via Tiernan Ray at Blogs.Barrons.com...

"So the dynamics around CPCs and paid clicks are just simply very complex because of all of these big factors and chain continue continually so trying to pick a horse so-to-speak just doesn’t make sense. We internally track all these factors. Who dig into all these details on an ongoing basis. So we won’t go into that level of detail every quarter. But again, the key thing to understand is that we believe that shifts in CPC or paid clicks taken independently simply don’t reflect the fundamental health of our business which we believe is actually very healthy."

I have to believe that Google is "very healthy." In fact, my gut tells me Google is very, very, very healthy. But, as with most things, only time will tell.

Google Reports 1Q'12 Results

Google Announces First Quarter 2012 Results and Proposal for New Class of Stock

capital expenditures: $607 million
workforce increase: +1.9%
effective tax rate: 18%
free cash flow: $3.09 billion
cash & equivalents: $49.3 billion

GOOG closed on 02012.04.12 at $651.01. 52-week range: $473.02 - $670.25.

From the 02012 Founders' Letter...

Today we announced plans to create a new class of non-voting capital stock, which will be listed on NASDAQ. These shares will be distributed via a stock dividend to all existing stockholders: the owner of each existing share will receive one new share of the non-voting stock, giving investors twice the number of shares they had before. It’s effectively a two-for-one stock split—something many of our investors have long asked us for.

GOOG is up in after-hours trading.

Illumina Stock Price Heavily Dependent on Roche

Illumina (ILMN) related headlines (with time stamps) seen on 02012.04.12...

Illumina Falls As Roche Doesn't Raise $6.5 Bil Offerat Investor's Business Daily(Thu 1:44PM EDT) ... Illumina Drops Below $51 Offer Price on Concern Roche Will Walk at Bloomberg(Thu 12:17PM EDT) ... Roche Sales Slip, But Hints at Willingness to Lift Illumina Offer at Fox Business(Thu 11:26AM EDT) ... Roche CEO: 'No Reason Whatsoever' To Boost Illumina Bid at The Wall Street Journal(Thu 11:00AM EDT)

ILMN closed at $49.56 down $3.01 (or 5.73%) on 02012.04.12. The NASDAQ was up 1.36% for the day. ILMN trading volume was almost three times the trailing-3-month average.

Stewart Enterprises Announces a Restructure

Stewart Enterprises (STEI) issued the following press release today (02012.04.11): Stewart Enterprises Announces Organizational Restructure, Workforce Reduction.

I consider this good news because I believe Stewart has the management team to execute a successful restructuring.

Stewart is planning on eliminating approximately 60 positions.

STEI closed yesterday (02012.04.10) at $5.97. 52-week range: $4.92 - $8.35. Although it has fallen, STEI still has a high SIR (Short Interest Ratio) of ~28.