Also: Illegal movies pop again on YouTube; AOL beats the Street.
LinkedIn eyes future as professional publishing hub [CNET]
The professional network today reported earnings that blew the Street’s socks off, so to speak. LinkedIn’s stock is trading up close to 10 percent on the after-hours market because the company floored everyone with fourth-quarter adjusted earnings per share of 35 cents, revenue of $303.6 million, and net income of $11.5 million.
Then in a call with investors and analysts, CEO Jeff Weiner upped the company’s long-term sex appeal with this statement: “One of the things that we’re increasingly focused on in 2013 is going to be the opportunity to support content marketing.”
How Einhorn turned from Apple advocate to agitator [REUTERS]
So it was a shock on Thursday when Einhorn announced that he was suing Apple to get it to deploy its $137.1 billion cash pile more effectively and arrest a 35 percent drop in its share price from a record high logged last September.
Unknown to Wall Street, Einhorn had for months been imploring Apple’s chief financial officer, Peter Oppenheimer, to have the company issue dividend-paying preferred shares to reward investors and juice the stock price.
Reappearing on YouTube: Illegal movie uploads [THE WALL STREET JOURNAL]
Hundreds of full-length feature films including blockbusters from Walt Disney Co. and Sony Corp.’s Columbia and Tristar studios have been illegally uploaded to the world’s most popular video site, generating hundreds of millions of views over the past year.
Why the movie studios didn’t block the films by using a special YouTube program—called Content ID—for identifying their copyrighted content is a mystery.
On Thursday, after inquiries by The Wall Street Journal, Disney used Content ID to successfully block some of the classic animated films that have been on YouTube for as long as a year, including “Peter Pan,” “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,” and “Fantasia.”
AOL Q4 2012 beats the Street on sales of $600 million, showing its first revenue growth in 8 years [TECHCRUNCH]
AOL (owner of TechCrunch) has just reported earnings for Q4 2012: revenues came in at $599.5 million on earnings of 41 cents per share. That matches analysts expectations on EPS but beats on revenues of $573.1 million. The figures show that after years of decline, the company continues to get back on track with revenue growth.
Within that, advertising — the largest portion of AOL’s revenue — grew by 13% to $410.6 million. Within that, display, at $169.8 million, was essentially flat on a year ago, while search ads — which it offers in partnership with Google — were up by 17% to $103.6 million. Ad revenues from third-party networks — AOL works with sites like parenting.com to provide advertising alongside their content — brought in revenues of $137.2 million — a rise of 31%.
Why did Dell force employees to sell shares? [FORTUNE]
Here’s what happened: More than three years ago, Dell decided to limit the amount of company stock that could be held by employees in their 401(k)s. Basically an employee protection initiative in a post-Enron world, and in line with Department of Labor recommendations.
So in January 2010, employees received two pieces of information: (1) Beginning March 31, 2010, the max percentage they could contribute to the “Dell fund” within their 401(k) program would be 20%, and (2) At some point in 2012, a change would be made so that the total maximum Dell exposure they could have in their 401(k)s was 20%. investment.
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