Earnings, Fourth Quarter | featured news

Costs related to Staples turnaround plan helped drive down the office supplier's fourth-quarter net income by 72 percent. Its quarterly revenue and financial outlook for the year missed Wall Street's expectations.

The Washington Post Co. reported a fourth quarter 2012 loss of $45.4 million, or $6.57 a share as it took $113 million of charges for goodwill write downs and restructuring, mostly in its Kaplan education subsidiary. A year earlier the company earned $61.7 million or $8.03 a share

The U.S. Postal Service lost $1.3 billion in the October to December quarter, an official said on Friday, days after the beleaguered mail agency announced plans to cut back on Saturday delivery to save money.

LinkedIn reported fourth quarter 2012 earnings that beat Street expectations, sending shares soaring in late trading.

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.

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.