Earnings | featured news

Rising TV subscription fees plumped up profits at Time Warner. The media and entertainment giant said profits in the last three months of 2012 rose 51% from a year ago to $1.2bn (£750m), despite no change in revenues. TV subscription income rose 7%, as cable and satellite operators paid more to carry channels such as CNN and TNT.

Zynga reports a sharp drop in its losses in the last three months of 2012, as revenues at the designer of games including Farmville stabilised.

The China-based search engine Baidu this afternoon reported Q4 results that were a smidgen ahead of the Street consensus estimates.

Chick-fil-A president Dan Cathy’s controversial comments on “biblical” marriage last summer and the uproar that followed didn’t dampen the Atlanta company’s annual sales. The fast food giant, the nation’s second-largest chicken chain, ended 2012 with $4.6 billion in sales — up 14 percent from $4.1 billion a year earlier. The company also opened 96 news stores, four more than the year before.

Hershey's fourth-quarter profit rose 5.4% as the candy maker posted higher revenue and saw strength in all of its categories.

Facebook Inc doubled its mobile advertising from the previous quarter as the world's No. 1 social network expanded its business aggressively onto handheld devices.

Facebook has faced a few controversies in the past few months, including controversies over privacy policies on its own site and on its photo-sharing site, Instagram. Still, the company has bolstered investor confidence with a series of moves that seem to lay the groundwork for Facebook to make more advertising dollars, particularly in the all-important mobile space.

Fiat SpA, the Italian automaker that controls Chrysler LLC, saw fourth quarter earnings more than double thanks to strong North American sales that more than compensated for a weak performance in Europe.

Amazon.com Inc shares hit a record on Tuesday after it reported better-than-expected quarterly profit, fueled by the growth of higher-margin businesses during the fiercely competitive holiday quarter.

Harley-Davidson is more than just an iconic American brand. It is also a surprisingly good reflection of the forces shaping the U.S. economy as a whole. The motorcycle company reported its fourth quarter earnings Tuesday, and the details show a firm that is as typically American as the roaring sound of a hog on the highway.