Seagate posts good-ish quarter, fuels Wall Street jitters
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Ain't no pleasing some folk Seagate's fiscal '08 second quarter net income nearly tripled from a year ago and revenue jumped 14 per cent.â¦
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Restoration Hardware's shares have soared today, but the quarter wasn't that good.
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WALL Street is said to be a bit rattled at the Federal Reserveâs latest quarter-point rise in American interest rates. Yesterdayâs one-third drop in quarterly profit announced by investment bank Morgan Stanleyâs will not help the jitters.
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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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Earnings reports from IBM, Intel, and AMD and acquisition news from Oracle and Sun did nothing to calm IT investor fears about an uncertain U.S. economy this week.
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Hard drive maker Seagate Technology said Thursday its fiscal second-quarter earnings jumped by 188 percent as shipments rose 20 percent year over year.
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SHARES are set for a bumpy ride after Wall Street lost ground on the weekend, derailed by weak US jobs data and a poor prognosis from Intel which sparked worries for the health of the tech sector.
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Wall Street rallied on Thursday, led by technology stocks, as IBM, a bellwether for the sector set a bullish earnings tone.
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As earnings season arrives, negativity reaches a fever pitch. But the bull market still breathes.
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Wall Street&#39;s earnings growth, fuelled by two years of robust trading gains, is showing signs that it might taper off in coming quarters as a sluggish stockmarket and a less favourable trading environment take a toll on profits.
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Fueled by insatiable consumer and business demand for storage, hard-drive maker Seagate Technology's fiscal second-quarter earnings nearly tripled as shipments rose 20 percent year over year, the company said Thursday.
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The DVR pioneer posts mixed results in its latest quarter.
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Investors sifted through new economic data and found little reason to resume last weekâs heavy selling.
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Lukewarm third-quarter earnings reports to date imply that corporate America has some thorny problems. For the stock market to get back on track, this week's releases will have to offer Wall Street some more upbeat news.
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NEW YORK - Third-quarter earnings are meeting Wall Street&#39;s expectations, but the lack of company forecasts on future earnings - or disappointing outlooks in many cases - is starting to have investors worried.
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NEW YORK  - Seagate Technology , the topU.S. maker of hard drives used to store data in computers, onTuesday forecast quarterly revenue above Wall Street estimateson strong demand for storage for larger business computers.
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Mixed economic news and forecasts of weak IT spending for at least the beginning of next year caused IT investor confidence to waver this week, though upbeat analyst presentations from Cisco and AT&amp;T and online e-commerce figures brought some cheer to the holiday season.