Monday, October 26, 2009
Swap Yahoo! for Google
YAHOO! is using every power at its disposal to improve its fortunes.
YAHOO! is using every power at its disposal to improve its fortunes.
Beleaguered software vendor Novell, which has been fighting a lawsuit by bankrupt SCO Group for the last several years, could see a silver lining, writes Ladenburg Thalmann analyst Aaron Schwartz in a note this morning.
Netgear ratcheted higher after hours on a strong Q3 financial report.
The maker of consumer networking products posted revenue of $171.1 million and non-GAAP profits of 31 cents a share, trouncing the Street consensus of $156 million and 8 cents.
Broadcom shares are down sharply in late trading after the chip maker posted Q3 earnings. For the quarter, the company reported revenue of $1.254 billion, up 20.6 percent from the second quarter, down 3.4 percent from a year ago, and ahead of the Street at $1.16 billion.
There was a telling bit of news on the continued travails of the U.S. consumer today from a small Texas retail chain called Conn’s. (In general, I would say calling a retailer “Conn’s” is not something I would recommend. But I digress.)
Wow, this is pretty strange behavior for a company that is hemorrhaging access lines.
AT&T has unveiled plans to raise landline phone rates by more than 20 percent in California, according to both the San Jose Mercury News and the San Francisco Chronicle.
Corning this morning said it suffered a power disruption over the weekend at its LCD glass manufacturing facility in Taichung, Taiwan which affected some glass-making operations.
Comments by Advanced Micro Devices yesterday apparently have triggered worries on the Street that the PC manufacturers, in their zealous optimism about the prospects for Microsoft Windows 7, may have built too many PCs.
As I noted last night, AMD said on its post-earnings conference call with the Street that it expects a less-than-seasonal sequential increase in Q4 revenues, due in part to the “the big build we’ve seen of PCs in anticipation of the Win 7 launch.”
The already intensively competitive wireless sector today finds itself with a tough new player: Wal-Mart. The retailing giant has teamed up with American Movil to sell low-cost service under the Straight Talk brand. The company is offering unlimited voice and text minutes for $45 a month, or 1,000 minutes and 1,000 text messages for $30 a month.
Is corporate IT spending showing signs of life?
Jefferies enterprise software analyst Katherine Egbert thinks so. She issued about a flurry of research notes today, saying various nice things about the improving climate, lifting targets and estimates for an assortment of stocks.
Piper Jaffray analyst Michael Olson today launched coverage of Coinstar with an Overweight rating and $38 price target. The parent of the Redbox video kiosk chain closed yesterday at $31.96.
Olson sees several trends working in the company’s favor.
Collins Stewart analyst Thomas Eagan thinks you may be swapping your Comcast shares for Time Warner Cable sometime soon.
In a note to clients this morning, Eagan writes that investors may rotate out of Comcast if the company decides to invest $12 billion to $14 billion for a stake in GE’s NBC-Universal, as rumored.
The solar technology industry may report a stronger-than-expected third quarter but could face disappointment in subsequent quarters, warns Hapoalim Securities analyst Gordon Johnson in a note to clients today. Johnson says that his checks suggest demand for photovoltaic modules in Germany has been better than expected, raising the prospect that solar tech makers could demonstrate better sales growth and margins than expiated when they report the September quarter.
So, the latest theory seems to be that Comcast is in talks to buy 20-50 percent of NBC Universal, the TV/movie studio/cable/theme park company owned 80 percent by General Electric and 20 percent by Vivendi.
Akamai is losing deals in an attempt to hold the line on content deliver network pricing, according to Merriman Curhan Ford analyst Richard Fetyko, who late yesterday cut his rating on the stock to Sell from Hold.
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