Earnings alert: Seagate turns in mixed earnings report
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Plus: IBM targets well above expectations...AMD has wider loss due to charge on ATI purchase...Sony Ericsson exceeds expectations...Intel remains optimistic.
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A statement to BetaNews today by one of Seagate Technology's top managers indicates that some of the content of yesterday's Wall Street Journal story -- whose original online headline was "Seagate to Enter Flash Memory Market," prior to having been edited -- may have been inaccurate.
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Seagate Technology has started shipping a 400GB hard disk drive for PCs that offers performance closer to that of a 10,000-rpm drive than that of a 7,200 rpm.
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There was a trifecta in tech earnings yesterday, with search engine king Google Inc., software giant Microsoft Corp. and online shopping leader Amazon.
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A new reporting period for company  earnings kicks into gear this week, giving investors a bit of  hard data to chew on, and markets could be volatile if the  price of crude oil stays north of $50 a barrel.
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Plus: Adobe earnings, outlook top Street...TiVo swings to a loss...HP profit gains on cost cuts, cheaper components.
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There may be other things afoot in investors' minds than less-than-stellar quarterly results
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Wall Street stocks were expected to open  mixed on Friday, with technology stocks gaining ground led by  PeopleSoft Inc PSFT.O but blue chips held back by a profit  warning from Alcoa Inc. AA.N.
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Investors are looking for an onslaught  of company earnings and economic data next week to give  direction for U.S. stocks after some early signs of slower  profit growth got the year off to an uncertain start.
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Microsoft Corp.&#39;s quarterly earnings rose 11 percent over the comparable quarter last year, but projections for the current quarter were mixed.
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As earnings reports rolled in from technology bellwethers, including Microsoft, Apple, Nokia, and Motorola, worries about the economy continued to overshadow good news this week.The fourth quarter of 2007 was strong for IT sales, but a downturn in the U.S. economy, which many analysts fear is slipping into recession, is undermining investor confidence in the sector. Share prices of technology companies have dropped since the start of the year, with the Nasdaq Composite Index sinking to pre-2007 levels.Microsoft provided some cheer Thursday, reporting a strong quarter for core products such as Windows Vista and Office 2007. Revenue for the quarter increased 30 percent year over year to $16.37 billion.Just as important as many market observers fear the U.S. is entering a recession that will affect technology, Microsoft also raised its forecast for its fiscal year, which ends June 30. Noting that Office and video game sales are doing better than expected, the company said it expects revenue for its fiscal year in the range of $59.9 billion to $60.5 billion. Three months ago, the forecast was $58.8 billion to $59.7 billion.The report, however, provided only a momentary uptick in Microsoft shares and the Nasdaq, even though other news on the software front was good.Enterprise database vendor Sybase, for example, said Thursday that it had its first billion-dollar sales year in seven years, helped by a 15 percent jump in revenue for the fourth quarter to $295.2 million. What&#39;s more, its forecast for this quarter remains strong.&quot;We have a balance in our product portfolio and a balance geographically as well,&quot; said company Chief Marketing Officer Raj Nathan.Though Sybase has a stronghold in the financial vertical market -- a sector that is in trouble -- Nathan pointed out that the company is strong in the telecom arena as well, does about 50 percent of its business outside the U.S., and is developing new analytics products that will help financial companies manage risk and do program trading.The company was one of the few that ended the week on a happy note with its share price increasing by $0.56 to close Friday at $27.44.Other companies did not fare so well, as investors jumped on any scrap of bad news.&#160;Apple got hit hard even though it reported quarterly revenue of $9.6 billion, a whopping 35 percent year-over-year increase. Investors were spooked about slowing iPod sales and a weak forecast for this quarter. iPod shipments of 22.1 million were about 10 percent below what had been expected.Apple shares plunged, dropping from $161.36 last Friday to $130.01 this Friday.Motorola had a rough week, reporting Tuesday an 84 percent plunge in income for the fourth quarter&#160;to $100 million and warning that its market-share losses would continue as the U.S. market -- the company&#39;s cell-phone stronghold -- continues to slump until next year. Company shares dropped $2.27 to hit $10.05 Wednesday on the news, and stayed below $11 through the week.&quot;Management&#39;s view of [a] recovery being a 2009 event pushes the recovery further past the horizon most investors are willing to hear at this point,&quot; said Citigroup Global Markets in a research report.Nokia, with hit products and a strong presence in Asia, on Thursday reported a 44 percent rise in profit for the fourth quarter, to &#8364;1.84 billion ($2.7 billion), on a 34 percent sales increase. A slump in U.S. sales was more than offset elsewhere. Nokia shares jumped Thursday on the news, rising $4.05 to close at $36.48 -- and then fell right back down Friday after IDC issued a report that suggested Nokia&#39;s confidence in 2008 was misplaced.In an economy that has investors focusing on the bad news, it&#39;s going to take some evidence of strong sales in the current quarter to bring confidence -- and tech share prices -- back up to where they were. The Nasdaq finished 2007 up by 9.8 percent, but in the first four weeks of this year, last year&#39;s gain has been wiped out with the index closing Friday almost 300 points down from the end of December.
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Seagate Technology offers a better than expected revenue and earnings forecast; the stock should still be avoided.
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Netsuite, Comcast, and Qwest issued strong earnings reports this week as economic worries continued to depress shares of Intel and many other IT companies.Software-as-a-service ERP company&#160;NetSuite, which had a hot IPO in December, reported a strong fourth quarter after the market closed Thursday. Revenue jumped 57 percent compared to one year earlier, to $31.7 million, beating analyst predictions of $30.5 million. Excluding one-time charges, the company reported a net loss of $0.01 per share, better than the $0.03 forecast by analysts.Before the report, company shares jumped by $0.79 to close at $23.49. In the half-hour after the report was issued, shares continued to rise in after-hours trading, by $0.51 to $24.00.Telecom sector news was largely positive this week as well. Comcast reported on Thursday a 54 percent increase in fourth-quarter profit, to $602 million, riding sales fueled by cable TV and acquisitions. Revenue rose 14 percent from one year earlier to hit $8 billion, beating the consensus forecast of $7.9 billion, as reported by Thomson Financial. Excluding one-time charges, earnings per share were $0.20, beating the analyst forecast of $0.17.CEO Brian Roberts fretted on a conference call that the economy weakened in the second half of 2007 and said he expected that trend to continue.However, investors seemed to latch on to the good news: Not only were sales strong, but company officials promised no more big acquisitions, said they would cut back exceptionally rich benefits to company founder Ralph Roberts, and reported that Comcast would pay out $6.9 billion by the end of 2009 to buy back shares and shore up its share price. The company&#39;s lagging share price has been a concern.&quot;Telephone companies are starting to sell their bundle of telephone and television and Internet and wireless[,] and that competitive threat may have investors wondering about the upcoming battle between cable television and local telephone companies,&quot; noted telecom analyst Jeff Kagan.Nevertheless, traders apparently liked the steps the company announced, apparently relieved that no big acquisition plans are in the offing. Shares rose by $1.43 to close at 19.24.Earlier in the week, shares of Qwest also rose on upbeat earnings news. On Tuesday, Qwest shares gained $0.15 to close at $5.28 after lower operating expenses helped bring fourth-quarter net income to $366 million, up from $194 million a year earlier. Despite the soft economy, average revenue per consumer rose as the company succeeded in expanding the number of subscribers it has for bundles of services.Though there was good cheer on the earnings front, probably more emblematic of the mindset of IT investors this week was the hit that Intel took Thursday after Goldman Sachs removed the company from its &quot;conviction buy&quot; list. The brokerage kept its &quot;buy&quot; rating on the company but said the chip maker faces slow PC sales growth and consequent difficulties in maintaining or expanding margins.The Goldman report came a few days after&#160;Forrester Research dropped its U.S. IT growth forecast to 2.8 percent from 4.6 percent and its global forecast to 6 percent from 9 percent. Forrester forecasts spending on PCs, servers, storage devices and peripheral markets will drop to 4 percent from 12 percent last year.Intel shares declined Thursday by $0.75 to close at $20.46.Earnings-report season is winding down with most big IT vendors having reported strong sales for the fourth quarter of 2007. Tech-company shares, however, are for the most part trading lower than they have since 2006, as investors remain wary of a recession and a subsequent slump in IT spending.In this climate, investors remain sensitive to macroeconomic data. A report about strong January retail sales caused the Nasdaq Composite Index, weighted heavily with tech stocks, to jump 2 percent Wednesday, its biggest one-day jump since November. But Thursday, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke addressed the Senate Banking Committee, mentioning weakness in the housing, employment and credit markets. Markets plummeted again, with the Nasdaq closing at 2332.54, down by 41.39, or 1.74 percent.IT investors will be watching when Hewlett-Packard reports quarterly earnings Tuesday. HP, the world&#39;s largest IT company as well as the biggest PC supplier, has broad consumer and business market reach. Remarks by company executives on how the next few quarters are shaping up are sure to be closely scrutinized.
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The DVR pioneer posts mixed results in its latest quarter.
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A slew of third-quarter earnings reports dominated technology and telecommunications stocks last week. Much of the news was positive, with key players posting impressive earnings growth, but the December quarter outlook remained unclear for some.
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Could Lenovo be muscling in on US-dominated HDD industry? Rumours are circulating in the heady world of hard disk drives (HDDs) that a Chinese tech firm wants to buy Seagate Technology.â¦
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Though the macroeconomic picture remains cloudy, major IT vendors, such as Apple, Microsoft, and EMC, for the most part reported solid third-quarter earnings this week, giving technology investors hope for the rest of the year.Thursday was a busy day on Wall Street with Microsoft, EMC, and Motorola reporting.After the market closed,&#160;Microsoft reported a 23 percent quarterly jump in net income, which hit $4.29 billion as demand for Windows and Office software remained strong. Revenue was $13.76 billion, a 27 increase from one year earlier. The company said it was the fastest revenue growth spurt for their first fiscal quarter since 1999, around the height of the dot-com boom. That should help reassure some investors that despite concerns about the U.S. economy, at least certain areas of the IT sector are still managing to show strong growth.In after-hours trading right after the announcement, Microsoft shares rose by $1.98 to $33.98.EMC&#39;s profit jumped&#160;as the data-storage company made gains on the sale of part of its stake in virtualization software maker VMware. EMC reported that net income was $492.9 million, compared with a profit of $283.7 million last year. Revenue jumped to $3.3 billion from $2.8 billion a year earlier. Though much of the gains were from&#160;a one-time sale of part of VMware to Cisco, other parts of the business did well: Software rose 25 percent, storage business sales rose 9 percent, and service grew 25 percent. EMC shares rose $1.92 on the news, to close at $24.45.Motorola, meanwhile, reported an abrupt drop, of 94 percent, in quarterly profit, as it searched to find a follow-up to its Razr mobile phone. Net income was $60 million, while revenue fell 17 percent to $8.81 billion. Nevertheless investors apparently were heartened that the company saw small boosts in the average selling price for mobile devices -- something that even mighty Nokia did not experience last quarter.Motorola forecast earnings from continuing operations for the fourth quarter of $0.12 to $0.14 a share, while analysts had expected earnings of $0.10. So even though profit was way down, company shares managed to jump $0.75 to $19.30 Thursday.Apple kicked off the week on a high note, on Monday reporting solid earnings that were fueled by record Mac sales and shipments of 1.12 million iPhones. The company handily beat analyst estimates with income of $904 million, 67 percent higher than a year earlier. Earnings per share were $1.01. Analysts polled by Thomson Financial had forecast $760.45 million in net income and earnings of $0.84 per share. Apple jumped $11.80 to close at $186.16 the day after its earnings report. Even though Apple shares have been trading at all-time highs, the common wisdom on Wall Street is that things will get even better.Brokerages like Goldman Sachs and UBS reiterated &quot;buy&quot; ratings and Citi Investment Research headlined its report: &quot;The Best Is Yet To Come.&quot; With the new Mac OS, Leopard, going to market on Friday, sales are expected to do well through the holiday season.Still, concerns about the U.S. economy linger. With the price of oil skyrocketing and the housing-market crisis making headlines, investors remain worried that economic concerns will weigh on IT sales. But earnings from the major IT bellwethers over the last few weeks are showing that technology is proving to be resilient, so far.