Hacker News Reader

Comment by baq | Hacker News Reader

qualcomm financials for reference:

		+----------------------------+-------------+-------------+----------------------+
		|                            | Fiscal 2015 | Fiscal 2014 | Year-OverYear Change |
		+----------------------------+-------------+-------------+----------------------+
		| Revenues                   | $25.3B      | $26.5B      | (5%)                 |
		+----------------------------+-------------+-------------+----------------------+
		| Operating income           | $5.8B       | $7.6B       | (23%)                |
		+----------------------------+-------------+-------------+----------------------+
		| Net income                 | $5.3B       | $8.0B       | (34%)                |
		+----------------------------+-------------+-------------+----------------------+
		| Diluted earnings per share | $3.22       | $4.65       | (31%)                |
		+----------------------------+-------------+-------------+----------------------+
		| Operating cash flow        | $5.5B       | $8.9B       | (38%)                |
		+----------------------------+-------------+-------------+----------------------+

wow.

View on HN

So Qualcomm is finally getting pressured by the other vendors in mobile space. Finally.

I'm glad Intel, HiSilion, Rockchip, Allwinner, Spreadtrum, and MediaTek are being competitive.

Wow is right. I had no idea they were doing so poorly!

Did some of their key patents expire or something? Or maybe we've hit "peak phone/tablet"? Haha

I am so shocked you call this poorly. Well I am sure americans are used seeing incredibly big numbers but for me this is hardly something I would call a poorly results.

Gosh...the entire company has more money than some countries.

Year over year they lost practically a third of everything across the bank.

For a technology company big negative changes like this can be very bad, they can in fact signal that the company will go bankrupt or essentially so, e.g. forced to sell itself at fire-sale prices, in at little as a year or two.

Their revenue went down 5% which is never a good thing but not a "stop the world" moment either. We don't know why their income crashed, but that might as well be R&D. It's still in a healthy place relative to revenue..

If their margin went down because of massive advertising/discounts yet they still lost 5% of revenue, that would be worrying. But we can't tell from the table alone.

there was this $Billion penalty in China

http://www.wsj.com/articles/qualcomm-settles-china-probe-142...

followed by 'voluntary' investments and 'partnerships'. Intel faced similar fate and was forced to open fab and inject almost two billion into chinese consortium Spreadtrum.

Year-OverYear Change Minus signs are missing

A number in parentheses is negative according to accounting standards. (34%) = -34%

TIL a number in parentheses is negative :)

Pretty standard practice in accounting + book keeping. You'll see pretty much all balance sheets represented in this way.

Do you know what's the reasoning behind this convention? I had no idea too that percentages in parenthesis mean negative. It's a whole new world.

Parentheses are easier to see than negative signs when scanning through large tables of numbers. Also, in the days when financial documents were transcribed or faxed, it was harder to lose a set of parentheses than a negative sign when sharing documents.

You have taken the first step towards mastering your 10K analysis abilities. Report back once you've mastered the concept of how assets, liabilities, and equity balance out [1]. Then we can move on to the principles of revenue and expense recognition so we can begin to read income statements :)

[1] http://www.principlesofaccounting.com/chapter-1/accounting-e...

It has a hard year but I think Fiscal 2016 has to be better -- nearly every major phone has a new Snapdragon in it except for Apple's.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com