Uber 'lost more than $2.2bn in 9 months in 2016'

"Even as Uber Technologies Inc. exited China, the company's financial loss has remained eye-popping. In the first nine months of this year, the ride-hailing company lost significantly more than $2.2 billion, according to a person familiar with the matter. In the third quarter, Uber lost more than $800 million, not including its Chinese operation.
At the same time, the company's revenue has continued to grow even after leaving the world's most populous country. Uber generated about $3.76 billion in net revenue in the first nine months of 2016 and is on track to exceed $5.5 billion this year, said the person, who asked not to be identified because the information is private."

Source:  Bloomberg, 20th December 2016

Tesla loses over $4,000 on every Model S it sells

"All-electric carmaker Tesla is losing over $4,000 on every Model S it sells and reported an operational loss of $359 million during the Apr-Jun quarter.
The company also lowered its production targets to 50,000 units from 55,000 units for the next year as company expects hurdles in moving from producing just one model to two.
Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla, said that he is considering the option of raising capital and selling more stock, promising investors that by the first quarter of 2016 the company will be making enough money to make the jump from producing one low volume car to multiple mass production models.
Tesla’s shares fell by almost 9% on Thursday and a further 2% on Friday as investors and analysts tallied the risk of Musk’s grand plans."

Source:  Next Big What, 10th August 2015

Amazon made a $170m write-down in Q3 2014 mainly relating to poor Fire phone sales

"Amazon said in a conference call following the release of a disappointing third-quarter financial report that it would take a $170 million charge “primarily related to Fire phone inventory valuation and supplier commitment costs.” Translation: The Fire phone has been a disappointment."

Source:  ReCode, 23rd October 2014

The Guardian Media Group made a loss of £75.6m in 2011-12

"GMG yesterday unveiled a £75.6m loss for the year to 31 March as its Guardian and Observer newspapers continued to lose money and it took a £54.2m write-off on the value of its GMG Radio business, which it has since sold to Global Radio.
The loss compared with a £9m profit the year before when newspaper losses were offset by income from the group's investment funds, its stake in Trader Media Group and the conferences and trade magazines business.
Overall revenue from continuing businesses was £254.4m, virtually level with the £255.1m of sales recorded in the previous year.
[...]
GMG's result incorporates the £44.2m loss posted by its Guardian News & Media subsidiary last month. Mr Rusbridger was paid a total of £457,000 in the year to the end of March."

Source:  The Independent, 11th August 2012

Spotify made a loss of £35.9m in 2011

"Music streaming service Spotify is to continue to expand globally, despite recording a €45.4m (£35.9m) loss in 2011.
The deficit came despite the company increasing its revenue for the year to €187.8m, compared with €73.9m in 2010.
The loss has been attributed to the heavy costs involved in licensing from record labels the music Spotify offers.
The service confirmed plans to expand to Canada, as well as some countries in Asia and South America.
It is already available in 15 countries, including the UK and US.
The London-based firm has also set up subsidiaries in Singapore and Hong Kong, but is yet to launch the product in either country.
The Wall Street Journal reported growth in the company's premium-member subscriptions, citing its latest financial report. Income from paying customers last year made the firm €156.9m, up from €52.6m in 2010.
However Spotify's other revenue model - playing ads inbetween music for non-paying subscribers - has slowed.
The company recorded only a minor increase - €6.5m - in advertising revenue, making €27.6m in 2011."

Source:  BBC News, 23rd August 2012

Earlier - A loss of £26.5m in 2010

The New York Times group makes more revenue from subscriptions than from advertising

"Advertising revenue continues to sink at the New York Times Company, which reported a second-quarter net loss of $88.1 million today. But a glimmer of hope can be seen in circulation revenue, which has actually gone up through print subscription price increases and the online paywall. At the company's big three papers — the Times, International Herald Tribune, and Boston Globe — print and digital ad dollars dipped 6.6 percent to $220 million, while circulation revenue was up 8.3 percent to $233 million. The historical rebalancing, which occurred at the News Media Group for the first time in Q1, may indicate a sea change in an industry that has long relied on advertising to stay afloat. "They're probably the first major paper that has crossed that line," media analyst Ken Doctor of Newsonomics told Daily Intel. "It is an interesting moment.""
Source:  NYMag, 26th July 2012

Yelp users have posted over 30m reviews

"Yelp Inc. shares rose as much as 12% after the online review website reported second-quarter sales that topped analysts' estimates, as an expansion into new regions helped widen its user base.
Revenue rose 67% to $32.7 million, the San Francisco-based company said yesterday in a statement, beating the average analyst prediction of $30.5 million compiled by Bloomberg. The net loss was $1.98 million, or 3 cents a share. Analysts on average were projecting a loss of 5 cents.
[...]
Money spent on sales and marketing, the company's largest expense, increased 65% to $20.3 million in the second quarter after surging 67% in the previous period. Yelp expanded into eight new markets in the quarter, including Finland and Norway, bumping total active markets worldwide to 90.
At the same time, more users are coming to the site and reviewing businesses more often. Reviews increased 54% to more than 30 million, while average monthly unique visitors grew 52% to more than 78 million, Yelp said. The company's mobile applications were used on 7.2 million unique devices a month on average.
In last year's second quarter, the company posted a net loss of $1.17 million, or 8 cents a share, on sales of $19.6 million. Third-quarter revenue will be $34.5 million to $35.5 million, Yelp said, compared with the average analyst estimate of $34.3 million."

Source:  AdAge, 2nd August 2012

Facebook has 955m users, including 543m on mobile

"In its first results presentation as a public company, Facebook announced revenues of $1.18bn (£750m) for the three months ending 30 June. The results were just ahead of analysts' expectations and came after US stock markets had closed.
Facebook's shares had been falling all day on Thursday, ending down 8.5% at $26.84, as investors feared the company would miss analysts' projections. They continued to fall in after hours trading, dipping below $25 for the first time since May's initial public offering.
The company reported it had 955 million monthly active users as of June 30, 2012, an increase of 29% year-over-year. The number of mobile users reached 543 million as of June 30, 2012, an increase of 67% year-over-year. For the second quarter, Facebook posted a loss of $157m."
Source:  The Guardian, 27th July 2012

The Guardian and the Observer lost £44.2m in the last financial year

"The Guardian and the Observer lost £44.2m last year as investment in digital publishing – including iPad, Facebook and Android apps – contributed to a deepening of losses at the national newspapers that could not be offset by double-digit growth in digital revenues.
[...]
Andrew Miller, the chief executive of Guardian Media Group, added that there was "much work to be done" but that the newspapers had seen a 16.3% improvement in digital revenues to £45.7m. Of that total, digital advertising was up by 26% to £14.7m, with other digital revenues stemming from services such as Soulmates dating.
The publisher said that with the help of its free newspaper websites, the number two on Fleet Street after Mail Online, Guardian News & Media reaches 5.8 million people a week via print and digital, 300,000 more than the Times titles. A further 17,000 people pay for the Guardian's £9.99 a month iPad app, while an unspecified number pay for the Kindle equivalent.
[...]
The Guardian sold 211,511 copies a day in June, the last month for which figures are available, down 10.7% on the year on a like-for-like basis, while the Observer sold 243,946, a reduction of 10%. Print advertising shrunk 4%, reflecting what Miller described as a "tough market", at £43.7m.
However, the historic high cost base relative to sales, coupled with the need for digital investments meant GNM operating losses before exceptional items and amortisation hit £44.2m compared with £31.1m a year ago. Executives said 2011/12 is intended to represent a high water mark for losses at the beginning of a five-year transformation plan that aims to bring the newspapers' losses down to a sustainable level. The cost of the exceptionals and amortisation were not spelled out but the figure contains a contribution to corporate overheads and software write-offs."

Source:  The Guardian, 17th July 2012

Digg was sold for $500,000

"Digg confirmed Thursday it sold its brand, website and technology to Betaworks. The price is a pittance for a company that raised $45 million from prominent investors including Facebook investor Greylock Partners, LinkedIn Inc. founder Reid Hoffman, and venture capitalist Marc Andreessen.
Digg received higher offers from bidders that included technology and publishing companies and start-ups but ultimately decided Betaworks had the best plan for reviving its brand, these people said. In May, Washington Post Co. hired 15 members of Digg's engineering team—more than half of the company's overall staff—for its SocialCode digital media subsidiary.
Betaworks is acquiring a website that still has a well known brand and sizable audience of more than 7 million visitors per month as of May, according to comScore.
Digg was once one of the most promising start-ups in Silicon Valley. The website was founded in 2004 as a way for consumers to put together their own collections of news and other Internet content, rather than relying on the choices made by newspaper editors.
Digg users would post links on the site's home page, then others would vote on their choices, determining the prominence of the stories they posted.
"They were one of the first social media sites," says Kristina Lerman, an assistant research professor at the University of Southern California who has studied Digg and other social-news sharing sites. "They introduced social components like having friends and followers."
The site quickly rose to prominence, in part due to telegenic founder Kevin Rose, a former cable television talk show host. In 2006, Mr. Rose landed on the cover of BusinessWeek with the now infamous cover line, "How This Kid Made $60 Million in 18 Months," referring to the company's valuation at the time.
In the fall of 2008, Digg raised nearly $29 million in venture capital from Greylock Partners, Highland Capital Partners and other financiers in an investment valuing the company at around $164 million, according to Dow Jones VentureSource.
Over the years, the company was rumored to be in negotiations to sell itself several times, including to Google Inc. in 2008 for a reported $200 million. The deal was never completed.
For early employees with equity stakes in the company like Owen Byrne, the site's first lead engineer, the failure to sell the company was a huge disappointment. Mr. Byrne, who left the company in 2007, said in an interview he never got to "cash out and go live on the Riviera.""
Source:  Wall Street Journal, 12th July 2012

Microsoft has written off $6.2bn of the value of aQuantive, bought in 2007

"Microsoft has written off nearly the entire value of aQuantive, the ad tech company it bought for $6.3 billion in 2007.
The aQuantive deal was Microsoft's biggest acquisition until the company bought Skype for $8.5 billion last year. It came, too, at a heady time for tech acquisitions. Google had just bought DoubleClick for $3.1 billion, part of a years-long effort to build out the pipes of online advertising.
Microsoft reacted by buying aQuantive, and briefly held a formidable position in ad tech, with a leading ad network (Drive PM), an ad server (Atlas) and its own digital agency (Razorfish).
But while Google focused on display, and particularly the technology that enables it, Microsoft turned its attention to search. Today the company revealed what it really thinks the unit is worth by writing down $6.2 billion related to the deal.
"While the aQuantive acquisition continues to provide tools for Microsoft's online advertising efforts, the acquisition did not accelerate growth to the degree anticipated, contributing to the write down," Microsoft said in a statement.
[...]
It sold Razorfish to Publicis for $530 million in 2009."
Source:  AdAge, 2nd July 2012

Blackberry maker RIM lost $125m in Q4 2011

"Blackberry manufacturer Research in Motion (RIM) has reported a quarterly loss, due in part to falling revenues on the back of weak smartphone shipments.
The Canadian company made a net loss for the three months to 3 March of $125m (£78m), compared with a profit of $934m a year earlier.
Revenues fell to $4.2bn from $5.2bn.
The firm also suggested it would refocus on the corporate market rather than on individual consumers.
[...]
Shipments of BlackBerry smartphones in the quarter fell to 11.1 million, down 21% from the previous three-month period.
Shipments of the company's PlayBook tablets hit 500,000, largely due to substantial discounting.
For the full financial year, the company made a net profit of $1.2bn, down from $3.4bn in the previous year."

Source:  BBC News, 30th March 2012

Zynga has 240m monthly active users

"Daily active users (DAUs) increased from 48 million in the fourth quarter of 2010 to 54 million in the fourth quarter of 2011, up 13%.
Monthly active users (MAUs) increased from 195 million in the fourth quarter of 2010 to 240 million in the fourth quarter of 2011, up 23%.
Monthly unique users (MUUs) increased from 111 million in the fourth quarter of 2010 to 153 million in the fourth quarter of 2011, up 38%.
Average daily bookings per average DAU (ABPU) increased from $0.055 in the fourth quarter of 2010 to $0.061 in the fourth quarter of 2011, up 11%.
Monthly Unique Payers (MUPs) increased from 2.6 million in the third quarter of 2011 to 2.9 million in the fourth quarter of 2011, up 13%.
Zynga launched 12 games during 2011, including 4 titles on web-based platforms and 8 titles on mobile platforms.
As of December 31, 2011, Zynga had the top 5 most played games on Facebook, based on DAUs, including CastleVille, which launched in the fourth quarter of 2011 and reached 7 million DAUs in two weeks.
Zynga saw strong growth from mobile games in Q4 primarily from titles Dream Zoo, Words with Friends and Zynga Poker. These three games were among the top 10 grossing games on the iOS platform during the quarter.
2011 Annual Financial Summary
Bookings: Bookings were at a record level of $1.16 billion in 2011, an increase of 38% on a year-over-year basis.
Revenue: Revenue was $1.14 billion in 2011, an increase of 91% on a year-over-year basis. Online game revenue was $1.07 billion, an increase of 85% on a year-over-year basis. Advertising revenue was $74.5 million, an increase of 226% on a year-over-year basis.
Adjusted EBITDA: Adjusted EBITDA was $303.3 million in 2011, a decrease of 23% year-over-year, largely due to our increased investment in developing new games.
Net income (loss): GAAP net loss was $404.3 million in 2011, which included $510 million of stock-based compensation expense for restricted stock units issued to employees that, in accordance with GAAP, was previously unrecognized until the occurrence of a liquidity event, triggered by the Company's initial public offering."
Source:  Zynga's 4th Quarter Results, released 14th February 2012

LivingSocial made a net loss of $588m in 2011

"LivingSocial’s financial results for the past year were reported by Amazon today, revealing that the company continues to trail behind Groupon by a wide margin.
Amazon, which has a 31 percent stake in the second-largest daily deals company, released the figures as part of its quarterly filing today with the Securities & Exchange Commission.
It said LivingSocial’s 2011 net loss totaled $558 million on revenues of $245 million."

Source:  AllThingsD, 1st February 2012

Spotify made a loss of £26.5m in 2010

"Accounts filed with Companies House show the likely reason Spotify wanted to break America so badly.
Last year, the music service’s revenue exploded by 458 percent, but its income was more than swallowed up by growing outgoings. So Spotify finished 2010 with a deeper annual loss of £26.5 ($41.46) million.
“It is crucial that Spotify continues to penetrate existing and new markets as quickly as possible,” according to Spotify’s accounts filed at Companies House.
2010 was, however, the year when subscriptions (£45 ($70.4) million) began leaping ahead of advertising income (£18 ($28.16) million) for Spotify…
These accounts, of course, are almost a year old. In 2011, Spotify tightened available free music and got the U.S. launch it wanted. Now its path to success looks far more likely. It now has over two million paying subscribers - more than any rival service."

Source:  PaidContent, 10th October 2011

Pandora posted a loss of $1.8m in Q2 2011

"The Oakland firm reported a 117% increase in revenue from a year earlier to $67 million as advertising and subscription sales grew.
The company, however, continued to lose money, posting a $1.8-million loss, or a loss of 4 cents a share, for the quarter that ended July 31 compared with a $1.6-million profit, or 4 cents, a year earlier.
Adjusting for stock compensation costs for its executives and other special expenses, Pandora posted $3.3 million in net income, compared with $2.6 million a year earlier. Analysts had expected Pandora to break even for the quarter on $61 million in revenue."
Source:  LA Times, 25th August 2011

News Corp sold MySpace for over $500m less than the purchase price

"MySpace, the long-suffering Web site that the News Corporation bought six years ago for $580 million, was sold Wednesday to the advertising network Specific Media for roughly $35 million.
The News Corporation, which is controlled by Rupert Murdoch, had been trying since last winter to rid itself of the unprofitable unit, which was a casualty of changing tastes and may be a cautionary tale for social companies like Zynga and LinkedIn that are currently enjoying sky-high valuations.
Relief over the sale was palpable on Wednesday, and not just at the News Corporation. Wall Street “just wanted it done, because it’s been a real drag on growth,” said Michael Nathanson, a media sector analyst for Nomura Securities.
Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but the News Corporation said that it would retain a minority stake. Specific Media said it had brought on board the artist Justin Timberlake as a part owner and an active player in MySpace’s future, but said little else about how the site would change.
The sale closes a complex chapter in the history of the Internet and of the News Corporation, which was widely envied by other media companies when it acquired MySpace in 2005. At that time, MySpace was the world’s fastest-growing social network, with 20 million unique visitors each month in the United States. That figure soon soared to 70 million, but the network could not keep pace with Facebook, which overtook MySpace two years ago.
As users fled MySpace, so, too, did advertisers. The market research firm eMarketer estimates that the site will earn about $183 million in worldwide ad revenue this year, down from $605 million at its peak, when the site introduced many Web users and many advertisers to the concept of social networking."

Source:  New York Times, 29th June 2011

Amazon lost more than $3m (estimate) selling Lady Gaga's album for $0.99

"After all that talk about underperforming singles and creative bankruptcy and overexposure, Lady Gaga did exactly what she was supposed to do with Born This Way, her first album since officially branding herself a superstar: sell a ridiculous number of units. The exact number, 1.1 million in the first week, is startling — but it comes with a caveat. That final tally was greatly boosted by the fact that Amazon, looking to drive people toward their new Cloud Drive music locker service, dropped the price on Born This Way’s digital release to an all-new loss-leader low of 99 cents. Over the two days of the offer, the album was downloaded 440,000 times, roughly two thirds of its overall digital sales count. So how much did Amazon cough up in the process?
According to the New York Times, Amazon paid Gaga’s distributor, Universal, full price (between $8 or $9 per album), meaning they lost more than $3 million. That is certainly a ton of money to have kicked into your campaign by an entity that has no actual interest in how well your album sells, and it provides much fodder for anyone wishing to quibble with the validity of the 1.1 million number."

Source:  NYMag, 2nd June 2011

Shazam lost over £600,000 on revenues of nearly £11m in the year to June 2010

"Mobile discovery service Shazam has published its financial results for the year ended 30 June 2010.
The company reported revenues of £10.6 million, and a loss after tax of £635,366 in the documents, filed with Companies House in the UK.
That compares to revenues of £7.3 million in the previous financial year (ended 30 June 2009), when Shazam reported a loss after tax of £89,943.
In its latest financial year, Shazam’s administration expenses were £10.5 million, having grown from £6.6 million in the previous year. Of the £10.5 million, £4 million went on wages and salaries."

Source:  Music Ally, 7th April 2011

Last.fm made a loss of £2.84m in 2009

"Last.fm has just published its financial report for 2009 on Companies House in the UK, revealing a loss for the financial year of just under £2.84 million.
The company ended 2009 with net liabilities of £22.24 million, but says parent company CBS continues to “make available such funds as are needed” by the music service.
Last.fm’s turnover for 2009 was £7.28 million, up from £4.19 million in 2008. However, its cost of sales was £7.2 million in 2009, down from £8 million in 2008. That meant Last.fm reported a gross profit of £86,322 in 2009, compared to a gross loss of £3.81 million in 2008.
[...]
Of that £7.28 million, £5.37 million came from advertising sales – 73.7%. A further £1.3 million came from subscriptions (17.9%), with just over £0.6 million coming from affiliate sales (8.4%).
Geographically, 54.8% of Last.fm’s revenues in 2009 came from the UK, with 33.5% coming from the US, 9.4% from EU countries, and 2.3% from the rest of the world (right – click for larger). Last.fm’s headcount fell from an average of 79 in 2008 to 55 in 2009, according to the report."
Source:  Music Ally, 3rd December 2010