Napster’s loss for the quarter ending Sept. 30 was down considerably over the previous year to $9 million, or $0.21 per share, compared to a net loss of $13.6 million, or $0.32 per share, in the same quarter last year. Net revenue was $25.5 million, up 9 percent from $23.4 million in its fiscal 2Q last year. 
—Unique monthly visitors to the ad-supported portal rose 42 percent.
AP: Chairman and CEO Chris Gorog wouldn’t answer questions during the analysts’ call about Napster’s recent hiring UBS Investment Bank to explore a partnership or sale. He did talk about mobile music—Napster Mobile launched on NTT DoCoMo and Cingular. Gorog: “We believe the dramatic growth projected for music-enabled cell phones will provide a very significant growth driver for Napster going forward ... It would be difficult to overestimate how important we believe the Windows Media Audio music phone ecosystems will be to catalyzing the growth of our business.” The deals make Napster available to more than 100 million mobile customers. (As far as I can tell, no stat on how many actually have music-capable handsets.) He expects to announce more carriers before the end of 2006.
Earnings release | Webcast (replay)