Wall Street Beat: Google drops, but confidence high
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(InfoWorld) - Despite a drop in Google Inc. share price after its Wednesday earnings announcement, investor confidence in the IT sector appears to be high as earnings season winds down. Google's announcement came in the wake of strong results by its online rivals but as usual it outshone them -- at least, in the eyes of analysts. The company reported net income of US$997 million, or $3.18 per share, for the quarter ending in December. Analysts polled by Thomson Financial had forecast $2.92 per share. Several major brokerages including Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Merrill Lynch & Co. Inc. and RBC Capital Markets Inc. raised their already-high share-price forecasts on the company. Company shares plunged however, dropping $19.75 to close at $481.75 Thursday. Analysts shrugged this off, ascribing the decline to unusually high expectations for the company. While the company dominates online ad sales, the tremendous amounts of cash it is burning in R&D and acquisitions -- mainly its $1.65 billion acquisition of YouTube Inc., announced in October, may have investors nervous, analysts pointed out. "Google continues to invest for the long term, and while that may temper results in the near term, we believe it is the right thing to do for the business" wrote UBS analyst Benjamin Schachter in a research note. Dell Inc. shares dropped Thursday after its late-Wednesday announcement that Michael Dell would be taking back the CEO reins from Kevin Rollins, who had been in that role for two and a half years. The company also announced that it now expects its fourth quarter fiscal year 2007 results to be below the average of Thomson Financial estimates for both revenue and earnings per share. Dell has been hit with a hardware price squeeze and has lost its edge as rivals such as Hewlett-Packard Co. have matched or bettered the company's logistics and supply-chain management techniques. Earlier this month, IDC reported that Dell's shipments in the U.S., more than 50 percent of Dell's sales, were down 17 percent for the year as HP overtook the company as the world's leading PC supplier. Dell shares dropped by $0.42 to close at $23.80 Thursday. Despite the concerns about Dell and Google, investor confidence in IT remains high. Though a few major IT vendors, such as Cisco Systems Inc., have yet to announce quarterly earnings, strong results from eBay Inc., Sun Microsystems Inc., Yahoo Inc., and EMC Corp. over the past few weeks suggest that several sectors within the wider IT market will enjoy at least moderate growth this year. The tech-heavy Nasdaq, which slumped earlier this month on warnings from chip makers and a few software vendors, has been rising lately, and Thursday gained 4.45 points to close at 2468.38. Â
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U.S. stocks fell on Friday, with the Dow knocked off its 14,000-point perch and the Nasdaq composite index down more than 1 percent after bellwether stocks Caterpillar Inc.  and Google Inc  posted disappointing earnings.
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NEW YORK Despite voluble skepticism among investors, Google&#39;s stock jumped about 18 percent to $100.01 a share when it debuted Thursday on the Nasdaq stock market.
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Earnings season is in full swing, and results this week from bellwethers like Google, Intel, and Nokia are fueling hopes for a strong fourth quarter while confirming the investor confidence that has led to a rebound in share prices of technology vendors.All eyes were on&#160;Google, which Thursday reported another stellar quarter. For the third quarter, net income was $1.07 billion compared with $733.4 million a year ago. Revenue leaped 57 percent to $4.23 billion. The company has made some investors nervous by expanding rapidly and spending a lot of money on acquisitions to fuel growth in new areas. However, its core search business manages to ward off the competition. Google shares jumped $6.14 to $639.62 right after its announcement.Google archrival&#160;Yahoo reported a 4.6 percent decline in third-quarter profit&#160;compared to a year ago Tuesday, but revenue climbed 12 percent to $1.76 billion. Company executives said they were weeding out poorly performing services and enhancing efforts in promising areas&#160;like ad-supported music services and e-mail offerings to small businesses. The company is also expanding efforts to support third-party developers with open APIs.Even though Yahoo has been blasted for its failure to steal search ad revenue from Google, investors and analysts appear to like its strategy. Citigroup maintained a &quot;buy&quot; rating on the company while RBC maintained an &quot;outperform&quot; rating. Yahoo shares jumped $2.13 to close at $28.82 the day after the report.The market might be tougher on Internet retailers. eBay reported Wednesday that revenue climbed 30 percent but that it suffered a loss because of a $1.39 billion charge for&#160;its acquisition of Internet phone pioneer Skype. Although the company raised its 2007 revenue target, investors apparently did not like the charge for Skype, which failed to make revenue goals. Shares of eBay lost $2.50 to close at $38.10 Thursday.In one of the most-anticipated results of the week,&#160;Intel got the earnings season off to a good start Tuesday, reporting revenue of $10.1 billion, a 15 percent increase year-over-year, while achieving net income of $1.9 billion, a whopping 43 percent increase. The price competition in the market is tough, but a jump in sales and a restructuring effort appears to be paying off. Intel jumped $1.24 to close at $26.72 the day after the report.AMD did not handle the price competition so well, however. Though it registered a 23 percent rise in sales, it posted another loss. Thursday,&#160;AMD reported that its net loss was $396 million, compared with a profit of $136 million in 2006.Reaction to IBM results were mixed Tuesday, when&#160;it reported profit of $2.36 billion, compared to $2.22 billion a year ago. Revenue was $24.1 billion, a 7 percent increase from last year. Though the numbers were better than expected, a disappointing 10 percent slip in hardware sales worried investors, who pushed down IBM shares Tuesday by $3.82 to close at $115.78.Nokia managed to offset declining prices of handsets with a jump in sales. Thursday it said that for the three months ending Sept. 30, net profit increased 85 percent over the third quarter of 2006, while sales rose 28 percent. Nokia shares closed Thursday at $37.64, up by $1.11.Concerns about the U.S. economy -- because of a declining housing market and an increase in mortgage defaults -- caused shares to tumble in July and August. But judging from results this week, IT vendors were not hard hit during the quarter and investors are likely to have high expectations for the rest of the year.
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U.S. stocks were little changed on  Wednesday, despite strong earnings from companies including Web  search leader Google Inc. GOOG.O, but investors were cautious  ahead of remarks from the Federal Reserve that would signal the  pace of future interest rate hikes.
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U.S. stocks fell sharply on Monday, with the Nasdaq off more than 1 percent, after a disappointing sales forecast from Wal-Mart Stores Inc.  and worries that shares of Web search company Google Inc.  may be overvalued.
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U.S. stocks closed higher on Wednesday, with technology stocks Google Inc.  and Apple Computer Inc.  leading the way in quiet trading as Wall Street wound down for Thanksgiving.
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Google Inc. stock dropped more than 6 percent yesterday as tens of millions of new shares held by early investors and employees of the search engine giant became available for sale for the first time.
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After a series of missteps, Google finally pulled off its much-hyped initial public offering last week. The good news about this unusual IPO, which sought to deprive Wall Street banks of full control over
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NEW YORK - Stocks edged higher Wednesday as bargain hunters shrugged off rising oil prices, but Google Inc.'s decision to slash its estimated initial public offering price sapped some enthusiasm from the market.    In morning trading, the Dow Jones industrial average gained 9.73, or 0.1 percent, to 9,982.56, reversing an earlier slide...
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Google Inc.'s  strong revenue growth prompted analysts to raise targets for the share on Thursday, but a drop in the stock showed that some investors question its potential for further rises in the near term.
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Stocks resumed the weekâs rally as Wall Street drew confidence from strong earnings from Oracle.
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Google Inc. GOOG.O stock jumped more  than 12 percent on Wednesday to new highs, pushing the Web  search leader past eBay Inc. EBAY.O as the biggest Internet  company in terms of stock market value, after trouncing  quarterly earnings forecasts.
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The S&P 500 and the Nasdaq dipped on Monday and the Dow edged higher as investors worried about the prospects for profit growth at Web search leader Google Inc. and a drop in oil prices hurt energy shares, including Exxon Mobil Corp.
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If only the rest of my investments worked out this way. One week ago, I submitted a bid for Google Inc. stock that overestimated the eventual auction price of the computer search company's initial public offering by nearly 30 percent. But I sold my shares shortly after Google stock began trading yesterday and still walked away with a nice profit, ...
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The tech-heavy Nasdaq has been climbing recently, spurred by some of the usual suspects, such as Google. But Oracle results and prospects for chip makers also inspired confidence among IT investors this week.
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Stocks rose modestly yesterday as investors looked past a mix of economic data and falling profit forecasts from Google and Applied Materials.