Gazprom has reported a big drop in its annual profits after being hit by the fall in the value of the Russian currency.
Russia’s largest energy company reported a net profit of 159 billion rubles ($3.1 billion) for 2014, down 86% from a 1.14-trillion-ruble profit in 2013.
Last year’s fall in oil prices also contributed to the plunge in Gazprom’s profits.
At the same time, a debt and pricing dispute meant Gazprom cut gas supplies to Ukraine, one of its key markets.
Meanwhile, gas sales to Europe and other countries declined by 8.5%.
Lenovo has reported a 23% jump in net profit for Q2 2014 as laptop sales outperformed industry average.
For the three months to June, net profit rose to $214 million. Revenue in the same quarter jumped 18% from the previous year to $10.4 billion.
Lenovo’s core business lies in personal computers and accounts for 49% of total revenue in the quarter to June.
Laptop sales rose 12% in that period, when the industry was in a downturn.
The world’s biggest maker of personal computers said the PC industry saw a 3.7% decline in laptop shipments for the three months to June, when compared to the same period last year.
The latest figures indicate Lenovo has maintained its status as market leader for PCs, with a higher global market share of nearly 20% when compared to last year.
Lenovo has reported a 23 percent jump in net profit for Q2 2014 as laptop sales outperformed industry average
In a statement which accompanied the earnings release, Lenovo Chairman Yang Yuanqing said: “This has been a quarter of milestones for Lenovo – record PC share, a number three ranking in worldwide tablets for the first time and an even stronger number four global smartphone position.”
Lenovo has been making moves to diversify away from the shrinking global PC market. Its “Mobile Device Business” includes smartphones and tablets.
For the first time ever, Lenovo said it had sold more smartphones than PCs, with a record volume of 15.8 million units. That is a 39% gain from the previous year.
Yang Yuanqing also said: “As the PC industry recovers, the smartphone market continues its shift from premium to mainstream, and our acquisitions of Motorola Mobility and IBM x86 proceed toward completion, we see even more opportunity to keep growing rapidly.
“Lenovo continues to outperform the market and meet our commitments to improve profitability in our core businesses, while building strong pillars for future growth across our entire portfolio.”
The company has been on an acquisition spree. Earlier this year it struck a deal to acquire IBM’s low-end server unit.
Lenovo is also in the process of acquiring Motorola’s handset business from Google.
Both deals are awaiting regulatory approval, which analysts say could come as early as the third quarter of this year.
Dell has reported a 79% slide in net profit, underlining a fall in personal computers sales as more consumers shift to smartphones and tablets.
The PC maker’s net profit fell to $130 million in the three months to May 3, on revenue down 2% to $14 billion.
Dell is in the middle of a dispute between founder Michael Dell and two of its biggest shareholders.
Michael Dell wants to take the company private, but some investors oppose the plan.
Dell has reported a 79 percent slide in net profit, underlining a fall in PC sales as more consumers shift to smartphones and tablets
Michael Dell and private equity group Silver Lake have offered to buy back the company for $24.4 billion, and have pledged to shift the business away from PCs to mobile devices.
But its biggest shareholders – the investor Carl Icahn and Southeastern Asset Management – have argued that the valuation of the company is too cheap, and that Michael Dell’s deal is a “giveaway”.
Instead, they have proposed to offer additional shares to shareholders and install mew management.
In its quarterly results, Dell said that revenue from new technologies, services and software, rose 12% to $5.5 billion. That was in contrast to PC sales, which fell 9%.
Dell did not issue a profit guidance for the second quarter due to the ongoing dispute. The company has created a special committee of the board to study the private equity deal and alternative bids.
Hyundai Motor has reported a 15% drop in its profits for the first quarter of 2013, after being hit by industrial action and the strength of the won.
The South Korean company’s net profit in the first three month came in at 2.1 trillion Korean won ($1.9 billion) compared with 2.5 trillion in the same period a year ago.
Since January, the Korean won has appreciated by 4.5% against the US dollar.
Industrial action has also hurt Hyundai’s ability to increase capacity.
Hyundai Motor has reported a 15 percent drop in its profits for Q1 2013, after being hit by industrial action and the strength of the won
Analysts said Hyundai had been hurt by the unfavorable exchange rate environment.
The strong won has made Hyundai’s vehicles less price competitive when compared to their Japanese rivals. The yen has depreciated by more than 10% since January giving a boost to Japanese car makers.
In addition, frequent work stoppages by Hyundai’s unionized workers also affected the carmaker’s earnings.
Hyundai’s labor union again refused to work last weekend – the seventh straight weekend of industrial action.
The latest stoppage resulted in production losses of about 50,000 vehicles which would cost the company nearly 1tn Korean won.
The quarterly earnings statement also revealed weak demand in the eurozone market, which led to an 11% drop in annual sales in Q1 2013.
Google and Microsoft have both reported rising profits for the first quarter of 2013.
Google’s net profit climbed to $3.35 billion in Q1 2013, up 16% from a year ago, boosted by online advertising revenue.
Microsoft said it made $6 billion in profit during the same period, a jump of more than 17% from a year earlier.
The tech giant’s earnings, which beat market forecasts, came despite a lukewarm reception for Windows 8 and a decline in global PC sales during the period.
Meanwhile IBM reported a fall in Q1 2013 profits and revenues after the technology services company failed to complete deals in time and was hit by the depreciation of the Japanese yen.
Analysts said that Microsoft’s profits were boosted in part by changing the way it sold its products to corporate clients, as well as cost-cutting measures.
Google and Microsoft have both reported rising profits for the first quarter of 2013
“Microsoft has successfully transitioned into an enterprise software company and these results show that,” said Kim Caughey Forrest, a senior analyst at Fort Pitt Capital.
“The strength of server and tools, and the actual way they sell licences to business, is making up for the missing PC sales.
“The margins are fantastic and the online services division seems to lose less money each quarter,” she added.
Meanwhile Google’s profits were driven up by growing income from online advertising, which helped boost overall revenues to nearly $14 billion for Q1 2013. That is up from $10.7 billion during the same period last year.
The results also suggested that Google may be beginning to build confidence with advertisers. The amount paid per advert is still declining, but at a slower rate than last year.
Despite the stronger-than-expected numbers, Microsoft announced that its CFO, Peter Klien, would be leaving the firm at the end of June.
Peter Klein, who has been with Microsoft for 11 years, is the latest in a series of executives to leave the company.
His departure comes just months after the Steven Sinofsky, the head of Windows division, quit Microsoft.
The departures of the two senior figures have come as there have been questions over the leadership of chief executive Steve Ballmer.
These doubts have been driven in part by slowing growth, and amid concerns that Microsoft had not been able to make a significant impact in the new and fast-growing sectors such as the smartphone and tablet PC markets.
The leading smartphone and tablet PC makers, such as Samsung and Apple, rely more on operating systems such as Android and iOS, rather than Microsoft’s Windows, which has enjoyed a dominance in the traditional PC market.
The fear for Microsoft is that as more people use smartphones and tablet PCs to access the internet, it may see its market share decline.
These concerns have grown after Windows 8, which is designed to make PCs work more like tablet computers, was greeted with mixed reviews at its launch last October.
More positively, analysts said that Peter Klien’s departure from the firm suggested that an imminent departure of chief executive Steve Ballmer was unlikely.
“The CFO departure is a little bit troubling. We’ve had a lot of executives leaving Microsoft recently,” said Brendan Barnicle, an analyst with Pacific Crest Securities.
“This also makes a departure by Steve Ballmer less likely. It would be very unusual to have a CEO leave soon after a CFO departure.”
Also on Thursday, IBM reported first quarter earnings of $3 billion, down 1% from a year earlier, with revenues falling 5% to $23.41 billion – lower than analysts’ expectations.
IBM said its results had been hit by delays in completing deals, with about $400 million worth of contracts that were expected to be counted in the first quarter of the year now being moved into the second.
In addition, the company said that the recent weakening of the yen had affected its earnings. The depreciation of the yen means that it earns fewer dollars from sales in Japan.
“Despite a solid start and good client demand, we did not close a number of software and mainframe transactions that have moved into the second quarter,” said IBM’s chief executive, Ginni Rometty.
“The services business performed as expected with strong profit growth and significant new business in the quarter.”
IBM’s CFO Mark Loughridge said it was “hard to measure” whether the recent series of US budget cuts – the sequester – had affected the firm.
“I can tell you that our US federal business was down 13%, which was certainly a drag on the US performance,” he said.
