BII Express: A Tale Of Two Earnings A Tale Of Two Earnings The two events were similar, happened simultaneously, and yet couldn't have gone on more differently: Apple positively smashed expectations on its fourth quarter, while Yahoo reported boring, mostly-in-line earnings, with EPS of $0.25 versus expectations of $0.24 and missed on revenues (ex-TAF) of $1.17 billion versus $1.19 billion. We wrote about Apple's monster earnings here. The biggest takeaway is that Apple is now an iOS company, we really are in a post-PC era, and the company has been executing phenomenally on these two big trends. The impact of Android and Kindle are overstated (although they are certainly big businesses too). On Yahoo's earnings, the big takeaway is this: Yahoo remains a company with tons of locked value. Much has been written about the Asian assets, yes, but the core business also remains a cash machine with an amazing brand, massive data which isn't properly leveraged, beloved products and so forth. Despite all the drama at the top, the business has been humming along. So, what's next for Yahoo? As we wrote, probably some kind of solution, probably a "cash-rich split" for the Asian assets, a much-needed board refresh, and more focused leadership from a well-regarded CEO and a more purposeful board. Click here to read what's next for Yahoo → Click here for more on Apple's monster earnings → In other news... Apple's price target was raised by "at least" 25 banks after last night's monster earnings report, says Bloomberg. Facebook stops trading in its shares on the secondary markets, Bloomberg also reports. This could be a prelude to an IPO, or some other kind of big announcement. Facebook's advertising revenue seems to be doing better than ever: One ad firm, Nanigans, says ad revenue was up over the holidays compared to 2010, and eMarketer estimates $3.8 billion in ad revenue last year. More exact numbers will be out in the next few months in the run-up to the company's expected IPO in May — and ad revenue may go up significantly once more ads are integrated into the site's News Feed. Two different surveys confirm what we pretty much already knew: Pinterest is growing like crazy. Experian Hitwise says Pinterest is now number 60 among the most popular websites in the U.S., while comScore's numbers say visits to Pinterest increased 55% from November to December. See our earlier explainer on how Pinterest works → Two of Denmark's largest carriers report that Nokia's Lumia 800 Windows phone is seeing strong early sales that rival the iPhone 4s, according to WMPowerUser. While it's just one data point from a relatively small market, it suggests sales might be strong across Europe. We believe the Nokia-Microsoft partnership stands a chance, as we predicted back in December→ Please follow BI Intelligence on Twitter. | 
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