Corporate results

Global giant German luxury carmaker Daimler announces record profits, while chipmaker Qualcomm Inc reports loss for first quarter Unilever posts rising 2017 profits of ₧6.5b

The Hague:

Food and consumer products giant Unilever yesterday posted soaring 2017 profits of €6.5 billion (Dh29.74 billion or $8.05 billion), after a year of “major change” when it spurned a Kraft Heinz takeover bid. Net profit leapt 16.9 per cent on sales of €53.7 billion, up 1.9 per cent year-on-year, which chief executive Paul Polman said “demonstrates the progress we have made in transforming Unilever into a more resilient and more agile business”. “We have delivered a good all-round performance with competitive growth,” he said in a statement. The company said on Thursday that after agreeing “to sell our global spreads business ... we expect to exit around the middle of 2018”.

Facebook booming even as time spent on it drops

San Francisco:

Facebook on Wednesday reported a big jump in profits even though people are spending less time on the world’s biggest social network. The company said its priority is to encourage personal interaction among users, rather than simply boost the number of hours they spend on Facebook. Facebook said that profit in the final three months of last year climbed 20 per cent to $4.26 billion as both ad revenue and ranks of members grew. Revenue in the quarter leapt 47 per cent to nearly $13 billion, but expenses also rose as its ranks of employees grew to finish the year at 25,105 workers. The company said the number of monthly active users hit 2.13 billion in the past quarter, up 14 per cent from a year ago.

Microsoft reports loss on tax charge

Helsinki: Redmond:

Microsoft Corp reported a quarterly loss on Wednesday, hurt by a $13.8 billion charge related to US tax reform. The company posted a net loss of $6.30 billion, or 82 cents per share, in the second quarter ended December 31, compared to a profit of $6.27 billion, or 80 cents per share, a year earlier. Revenue climbed 12 per cent to $28.92 billion, including 98 per cent growth in Azure, Microsoft’s flagship cloud product which competes with rivals from Amazon.com Inc, IBM and Alphabet Inc’s Google.

Nokia loss widens in 2017

Nokia said yesterday that its net loss widened in 2017, but that underlying profits improved, enabling the Finnish mobile phone maker to raise its forecasts for the coming years as operators prepare to roll out new lightning-fast 5G technology. Nokia said in a statement that it booked a full-year after-tax loss of €1.49 billion ($1.8 billion) last year, nearly double the loss of €751 million in 2016. Revenues slipped by two per cent to €23.1 billion. But at an underlying level, Nokia was back in the black, turning in an operating profit of €16 million, compared with a loss of €1.1 billion a year earlier.

Alibaba net profit soars 35% to $3.7b