Palm's Quarterly Revenue, in millions of dollars
As we reported at PreCentral.net, Palm has gone ahead and released what they're expecting will be their quarterly results for the 3rd quarter of fiscal year 2009, specifically that they expect to make somewhere between $85 and $90 million in revenue and will have spend approximately the same amount from their cash reserves. The cash reserves they currently have left amount to around $220 million. Those who have followed Palm closely may realize that nearly half of Palm's cash reserves came from a $100 million re-investment by private equity firm Elevation Partners just over two months ago.
In other words, cash is short and Palm intends on raising more cash in the very near future. If they do not, it seem to the casual observer as though at their current spending rate they could well run out of cash within 6 months -- although it's likely not going to be as dire as that. The release of the upcoming Palm Pre will go a long way towards turning Palm's financial picture around, but it will take time as Palm intends to report the revenue from Pre sales over two years (as Apple does), although the good news is that they'll get the cash on hand more quickly than that.
The likely cause of Palm's poor showing -- and this is speculation on my part but I feel it to be fairly on point -- was their inability to officially launch the Treo Pro on Sprint's network on time or to convince AT&T to officially pick up the device on a subsidized model.
The chart above shows Palm's quarterly revenue for the past seven quarters. If nothing else, it should drive the point home that Palm is lucky that a large portion of the company does not belong to (potentially) antsy investors, but rather a private equity firm that was and is very much aware of Palm's situation and believes they have what it takes to get out of it.
(Disclosure: I do not own Palm stock. More important disclosure: I wouldn't act on any financial information you see here without consulting an actual expert -- I'm better with the gadget news than I am with the money stuff!)
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Palm Q3 FY09 Total Revenue - $85 million to $90 million
Palm Q2 Fy09 Total Revenue - $191.6 million
Palm Q1 FY09 Total Revenue - $336.9 million
Palm Q4 FY08 Total Revenue - $296.2 million
Palm Q3 FY08 Total Revenue - $312.1 million
Palm Q2 FY08 Total Revenue - $349.6 million
Palm Q1 FY08 Total Revenue - $361 million
