Palm Reports Profit of $20.1 Million for Q4 2009, Just After 1 Million App Hits

Palm reported total revenues of $86.8 million for the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2009, which ended May 29. A June 25 statement additionally shared that gross profit was $20.1 million and gross margin was 23.1 percent.
“The launch of Palm webOS and Palm Pre was a major milestone in Palm’s transformation; we have now officially re-entered the race,” Jon Rubinstein, Palm’s new chairman and CEO, said in the statement.
“We have more to accomplish, but the groundwork is laid for a very promising future here at Palm. Our senior management team is capable, motivated and focused on execution; there is a large group of developers waiting to build great applications for Palm webOS; and we have a new product pipeline that we think will set a standard for the industry.
Palm had a strong initial showing with its Pre, which received strong early reviews and nearly sold out during its first weekend. And while the major criticism has been the lack of applications in its app store, on June 24 the App Catalogue zoomed past its 1 millionth download, which is likely to attract the attention of developers and result in more apps.
Analytics company Medialets reported on June 25 that while the Apple App store hit 1 million downloads 17 days sooner than the Palm App Catalogue did, there were 26 times the number of Apple iPhone in ciruclation and 16 times the number of apps for users to choose from.
Medialets found, then, that in reaching 1 million downloads, Pre users had downloaded 26 times the number of apps as iPhone users, and the average app in the App Catalog experienced 16 times the number of downloads that the App Store experienced.
Regarding what’s in the “pipeline,” developer access to the webOS SDK will be available in late summer – a delay that’s unfortunate for the company. And though The Washington Post reported in early May that the Palm Pixie, a $99 junior version of the Pre, could arrive later in the year, no new details have emerged.
Regarding Palm’s financial results, the company additionally reported that it shipped a total of 351,000 smartphone units during the fourth quarter of 2009, representing a 6 percent increase from the previous quarter and a year-over-year decline of 62 percent.
Smartphone sell-through for the quarter was down 5 percent from the previous quarter, to 460,000 units, and down 52 percent year-over-year.
To make comparisons to Palm’s historical results, the release stated, Palm also included non-GAAP (generally accepted accounted principles) adjusted measures, which exclude the impact of subscription accounting, stock-based compensation and other details.
On a non-GAAP basis, adjusted revenues in the fourth quarter totaled $113.2 million, adjusted gross profit was $30.4 million and adjusted gross margin was 26.8 percent.
The company’s cash, cash equivalents and short-term invests balance was $255.1 million a the end of the fourth quarter of 2009.
On June 16, Research In Motion announced $3.42 billion in revenue for the first quarter of fiscal year 2010. Apple won’t report its third-quarter 2009 results until July; for the second quarter of 2009, however, it announced earnings of $8.16 billion on April 22, its best results ever for a non-holiday fiscal quarter.