Voice of the Customer

TMCnet - The World's Largest Communications and Technology Community
 
| More
Voice of the Customer Featured Article Archive

TMCNet:  Napster narrows loss in 4Q; revenue up 6 percent

[May 21, 2008]

Napster narrows loss in 4Q; revenue up 6 percent

(AP Online Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) LOS ANGELES_More music fans signed up for Napster Inc.'s digital music offerings in the first three months of this year, boosting revenue and helping the online music retailer cut its fiscal fourth quarter loss by nearly half.

The Los Angeles-based company said Wednesday it posted a loss of $4.3 million, or 10 cents per share, in the three months ended March 31. That compares with a loss of $8.5 million, or 20 cents per share, in the year-ago quarter.

Revenue rose 6 percent to $30.8 million from $29.1 million.

Analysts polled by Thomson Financial expected a loss of 13 cents per share on $30.7 million in revenue.

Napster said it closed the quarter with about 760,000 paid subscribers worldwide, up from 743,000 at the end of December.

The company forecast its first-quarter revenue will range between $30 million and $31 million, with earnings per share to be relatively flat.

"Napster concluded our fiscal 2008 with significantly improved financial results and innovative new product releases that will substantially expand Napster's available market in the coming year," Napster Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Chris Gorog told analysts.

Napster's core business is a monthly music subscription service that lets users download copy-protected tracks and transfer them to certain portable devices, including mobile phones. The company also lets users stream tracks on a limited basis and also purchase music downloads on an a la carte basis.

Beginning last year, the company has taken steps to expand its mobile music offerings and make its service Web-based.

This week, the company began selling music downloads as unprotected MP3 files _ making Napster's a la carte downloads compatible with iPods and virtually all digital music players.

"These important enhancements to our product lineup all work together to provide a strong and flexible foundation for further growth," Gorog said.

Napster is hoping its new all-MP3 download store will entice some buyers to sign up for its subscription service and also drive purchases by music fans with MP3-capable mobile phones _ a key market because mobile phone sales have easily outpaced digital music player sales.

"For the first time, this opens up critical mobile platforms to us, like all the hot Blackberry products," Gorog said.

For fiscal year 2008, the company reported a net loss of $16.5 million, or 38 cents per share, compared with a loss of $36.8 million, or 85 cents per share, during the previous period.

Total net revenue rose 15 percent to $127.5 million from $111.1 million in fiscal 2007.

Wall Street analysts had expected a loss of 40 cents per share on sales of $127.3 million.

Napster's results were released after markets closed. Its shares fell 4 cents, or about 2.4 percent, in after-hours trading after they rose 6 cents, or about 3.7 percent, to $1.69 in regular trading Wednesday.

___

Napster Inc.: http://www.napster.com

Copyright ? 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

[ Back To Voice of the Customer Community's Homepage ]


FOLLOW US

FREE Voice of the Customer eNewsletter

Subscribe Now

Featured White Papers

  • Seven Best Practices for Speech Analytics: Speech analytics is valuable for identifying issues in the contact center. However, limiting its use to the contact center only considers a portion of all customer interactions and subsequently only reveals a small part of the voice of the customer. This paper discusses how organizations can optimize their Speech Analytics implementation strategy to realize the promise of this exciting technology.
  • Understanding the Voice of the Customer: Today's contact centers involve a sea of information that must be captured, processed, and distributed on a daily basis. Effective use of this information enables companies to remain competitive in an increasingly aggressive and customer centric marketplace. An overwhelming percentage of the information that circulates in a contact center's audio recordings, documents, web pages, and emails is unstructured in that it resides outside of a normal structured database and cannot be managed efficiently. These unstructured items contain valuable information, yet this information historically has been difficult to organize, categorize, and access.

Case Studies

  • Aflac: Aflac, the leading provider of guaranteed-renewable insurance turned to Autonomy to help them automate the process of monitoring their contact center agent for quality and compliance. The company now has a system that can offer continued improvement in agent quality and productivity while enhancing the customer experience. ...
  • Avaya: Avaya, a global leader in business communications, inherited 880 websites as well as numerous intranets and extranets when it was spun off from Lucent Technologies. The sheer volume and diversity of the sites and the over 500 content creators resulted in inefficient content distribution rife with divergent branding, messaging, and product information. ...

Video Showcase

    Interview with Autonomy: Rich Tehrani interviews Simon Hayhurst, SVP of Autonomy

Featured Events

  • Multichannel Analytics with Autonomy Explore: In today's world of constant connectivity there are a variety of direct and indirect channels of communication between an enterprise (or a brand) and its customers. 80% of these valuable interactions are generated in a human-friendly, unstructured format across multiple touchpoints and channels. With this ever growing mountain of information how do you extract the emerging trends and topics of interest to the enterprise? ...
  • SES Chicago 2011: Marketers and SEO professionals attend SES Chicago each year to network and learn about topics such as PPC management, keyword research, SEO, social media, local, mobile, link building, duplicate content, multiple site issues, video optimization, site optimization, usability and more. The conference offers 70+ sessions, intensive training workshops, and an expo floor packed with companies that can help you grow your business. While you're at it, network with peers and leading industry vendors. Programmed by the SES advisory board, you can be assured - SES content really is king! ...
 
 
| More