Quarterly Earnings | featured news

Microsoft said Thursday that an accounting adjustment to reflect a weak online ad business led to its first quarterly loss in its 26 years as a public company. The software company had warned that it was taking a $6.2 billion charge because its 2007 purchase of online ad service aQuantive hasn't yielded the returns envisioned by management. The non-cash adjustment is something companies do when the value of their assets decline. Microsoft Corp. paid $6.3 billion for aQuantive, only to see rival Google Inc. expand its share of the online ad market.

Yahoo reported its earnings Tuesday, posting a slight revenue decline to $1.22 billion and setting the stage for a new chapter in the company’s history. The company has been busy in the past quarter, settling a patent spat with Facebook, making a deal with Alibaba, launching a new Axis browser in a mobile push, and completely changing the makeup of its board.

Goldman Sachs says its net income fell 11 percent in the April-to-June period after the investment bank's clients made fewer deals and avoided volatility in global financial markets. The New York bank said its net income fell to $962 million, or $1.78 per share, for the quarter. That compares with $1.09 billion, or $1.85 per share, a year ago. It's also far more than the $1.17 per share that analysts were expecting.

Citigroup Inc reported lower second-quarter profit on Monday as the big banking group lost money on the sale of a stake in a Turkish bank and suffered from the drag of its troubled assets left over from the 2008 credit crisis.

Research in Motion unexpectedly announced on Thursday that a new line of phones that it still hopes will revive its BlackBerry brand will be delayed until next year... Research in Motion, the company behind BlackBerry phones, also reported at $518 million loss for the first quarter.

An advertising industry group says revenue from Internet advertising in the U.S. hit $8.4 billion in the first three months of the year. That's the highest for the first quarter, up 15 percent from $7.3 billion in the same period last year.

Struggling BlackBerry-maker Research in Motion warned Tuesday that it will have an operating loss in its current March-June quarter and said there will be significant layoffs this year....

The U.S. banking industry posted a $35.3-billion profit in the first quarter of the year, its best performance since 2007, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. said Thursday.

posted first quarter sales and earnings that fell short of expectations Tuesday, as stronger sales to small and medium businesses during fiscal first quarter weren't enough to offset slumping sales to consumers, big businesses, and government agencies. shares fell 10.34% in after-hours trading.

The U.S. Postal Service on Thursday reported a $3.2 billion loss for the first quarter of 2012, $1 billion more than during the same period last year.