by Eric Savitz, Columnist, Barron's, Tech Trader Daily
Bank of America/Merrill Lynch chip analyst Sumit Dhanda this morning turned cautious on semiconductor stocks, downgrading a slew of stocks; his colleague Daniel Heyler made a comparable on the foundries, lower ratings on a number of stocks.
“We are downgrading our view on the sector given unfavorable indications from our cyclical framework,” he writes.
by Eric Savitz, Blogger and Columnist, Barron's, Tech Trader Daily
Several Internet stocks are taking some heat this morning following the release yesterday of a Senate report on aggressive sales tactics on the Web–and in particular singling out for scorn a practice known as “post-transaction marketing.”
by Eric Savitz, Blogger and Columnist, Barron's, Tech Trader Daily
Salesforce.com posted revenue for its fiscal third quarter ended October 31 of $330.5 million, up 20 percent year over year, and ahead of the Street at $324.4 million. EPS was in line with estimates at 16 cents.
by Eric Savitz, Blogger and Columnist, Barron's, Tech Trader Daily
Seriously, Overstock.com has to provide more entertainment value per dollar of market cap than any company in America.
Consider yesterday’s developments at the online retailer. The company disclosed in both a press release and an 8-K filing with the SEC that it has fired Grant Thornton as its auditor. Grant Thornton had become the company’s auditor in March, replacing Price Waterhouse.
by Eric Savitz, Blogger and Columnist, Barron's, Tech Trader Daily
SunPower this afternoon said a review of its Philippine manufacturing operations found the company may have made “unsubstantiated accounting entries” in the first three quarters of 2009, some of them relating to 2008. The company said its Audit Committee is investigating the matter.
by Eric Savitz, Blogger and Columnist, Barron's, Tech Trader Daily
Matching a recent move by Wal-Mart, Amazon.com has unveiled a new promotion on Research in Motion BlackBerry phones, giving buyers of certain models who sign up for new 2-year plans free $100 “e-gift cards.”
by Eric Savitz, Blogger and Columnist, Barron's, Tech Trader Daily
Applied Materials yesterday afternoon posted stellar results for the fiscal fourth quarter ended October 25; revenue of $1.53 billion was well ahead of the Street at $1.32 billion, and non-GAAP EPS of 13 cents a share crushed the consensus number at three cents.
by Eric Savitz, Blogger and Columnist, Barron's, Tech Trader Daily
Google plans to buy back $750 million of its common stock to offset dilution from shares to be issued in the pending all-stock acquisition of AdMob, CEO Eric Schmidt told Bloomberg yesterday.
by Eric Savitz, Blogger and Columnist, Barron's, Tech Trader Daily
Live Nation today said it expects the acquisition of the company by Ticketmaster to close in the first quarter of next year. Meanwhile, both companies today posted solid results for the third quarter.
by Eric Savitz, Blogger and Columnist, Barron's, Tech Trader Daily
You should not be surprised to learn that a federal judge yesterday ordered BlueBeat.com to immediately stop selling Beatles songs and other music from its site, rejecting a goofy assertion that the company had copyrights on the songs via the use of something called “psycho-acoustic simulation.”
by Eric Savitz, Blogger and Columnist, Barron's, Tech Trader Daily
Garmin this morning reported much better-than-expected Q3 results, giving an early lift to shares of the GPS device maker.
For the quarter, Garmin posted revenue of $781 million and non-GAAP EPS of $1.02 a share; the Street had expected $704 million and 69 cents. Revenue was down 10 percent year over year, but up 17 percent sequentially.
by Eric Savitz, Blogger and Columnist, Barron's, Tech Trader Daily
So, the race to $0 book prices continues.
As the AP notes this morning, the fierce price cutting in the book business, which until now had focused largely on pre-orders, has now spread to current works: Amazon.com is offering both John Grisham’s short-story collection Ford County and Barbara Kingsolver’s new novel The Lacuna for $9 apiece.
by Eric Savitz, Blogger and Columnist, Barron's, Tech Trader Daily
Roth Capital Partners analyst Arnab Chanda this morning lowered his rating on several chip stocks to “Hold” from “Buy,” citing the risk of a modest inventory build given high projected margins and growth at Intel, Marvell, Nvidia and others.
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