The rush by Asian liquid-crystal-display makers to ramp up production at home and to invest in new plants threatens to curtail the nascent recovery in the flat-panel market.
LCD makers in Asia have just started to see their earnings recover in the second quarter after prices began to rise thanks to production cuts made last year, component shortages and strong demand from China.
In a lengthy filing with the SEC, Omniture provides a detailed time-line of the events that culminated in its agreement to be acquired by Adobe Systems for $21.50 a share. There are several fascinating aspects to the company’s account.
Tuesday was not a good day for professional analysts as a class–and Merrill Lynch’s in particular. Not only were most caught off guard by the strength of Apple’s record third-quarter results but the men and women who track the company for banks and brokerage houses were bested once again by a bunch of bloggers, day traders and amateurs analysts.
As expected, the huge Q2 earnings and revenue surprise by Intel last night has triggered a huge tech rally.
The question, though, is whether this is whether the trend will continue – and in particular, whether the U.S. consumer will be buying PCs in the upcoming back-to-school period.
Sun Microsystems will issue its quarterly financial results on Tuesday afternoon, right on schedule, despite the looming takeover by Oracle. But Sun won’t hold a conference call; the company says it plans to simply post a press release and associated financial slides on its Web site.
IBM posted first-quarter earnings of $2.3 billion, down 1 percent from its profit a year earlier, while revenue fell 11 percent to $21.71 billion.
Highlights from the company’s conference call with analysts:
4:33: CFO Mark Loughridge will be flying solo on the call today.
With Apple due to report earnings after the close Wednesday for its fiscal second quarter ended March 30, the Street is in full-scale jockeying-for-position mode. The general sense is that the company will beat its guidance easily, while likely issuing a conservative forecast for the June quarter.
Come Wednesday, it will be Apple’s turn to discuss its results for the first three months of 2009.
Analysts covering the Internet sector continue to jockey for position ahead of Google’s Q1 earnings report, which is due after the close on Thursday.
As I noted in a post yesterday, there is no clear agreement on what the numbers will look like; after a recent round of estimate cuts, the Street now seems to be wondering if maybe it went too far.
Intel reported stronger-than-expected earnings and said that it believed the slumping computer sales market had “bottomed out.” Wall Street’s response: Sell ‘em.
The chip giant’s shares are off four percent, dragging on the Nasdaq Composite and raising some questions about the tech sector generally. This bout of pessimism is probably a bit overdone and reflects more what’s happened in the past few months than what happened yesterday.
There’s kind of a pattern to today’s very large batch of earnings from the semiconductor and semi equipment companies. The Q4 numbers in most cases were well telegraphed; many companies in the sector had already pre-announced rotten results. Many have cut heads, are cutting heads, or will cut heads. And the guidance for the March quarter is generally for double-digit sequential revenue declines.
Now that we’re experiencing Q4 earnings reports in all their glory, the time has come to shift focus to Q1. That’s what Needham chip analyst N. Quinn Bolton did this morning. And the picture is not pretty.
He estimates that Q1 revenue will be down 15-20 percent compared to his previous estimate of 10 percent.
Google today reported a year-over-year decline in fourth-quarter profit, hurt by $1.09 billion in write-downs related to AOL and Clearwire. Operating earnings rose, however, and revenue climbed 18 percent to $5.70 billion from the year-earlier period. Google’s revenue, excluding traffic-acquisition costs, was $4.22 billion, above the Thomson Reuters estimate of $4.12 billion. Earnings per share, excluding certain items, was $5.10, beating estimates. The company also announced plans for an options exchange program for workers whose stock options are underwater.
Late Monday, Logitech said it is withdrawing its sales and operating income growth targets for the March 2009 fiscal year. The maker of computer peripherals and other consumer electronics accessories also said it will reduce its global workforce by about 15 percent. The company has about 9,400 employees, suggesting the loss of about 1,400 jobs.
Gene Munster of Piper Jaffray cut estimates on 33 Internet companies today. He claims that it’s due to the “significant deterioration in the economic and consumer spending outlook.” Well, at least people are saving a little money. Munster sees e-commerce spending down 10 percent in the coming year, and online advertising up just two percent.
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