Stocks to Watch: Blue Coat, Lattice (Update 1)

NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- Blue Coat Systems (BCSI), the Web security company, said Friday it agreed to sell itself to an investor group led by private-equity firm Thoma Bravo for about $1.3 billion in cash.

Under the deal, Blue Coat shares are valued at $25.81 a share, a premium of about 48% to the stock's closing price Thursday.

The stock was rising 45.6% to $25.45 in premarket trading Friday.

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Lattice Semiconductor (LSCC), the chipmaker, reduced its fourth-quarter revenue outlook because of softer demand in its communications business.

Lattice said Friday it expects revenue to fall 14% to 17% on a sequential basis, worse than an earlier forecast of a 4% to 9% drop.

Lattice shares fell 4.9% to $6.27.

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Texas Instruments(TXN) cut its financial forecast for the fiscal fourth quarter, saying business is bad everywhere except for wireless processors.

The chip company said it now sees earnings of 21 cents to 25 cents a share for the quarter ending in December, with revenue expected to range from $3.19 billion and $3.33 billion.

The company's previous outlook was for fourth-quarter earnings of 28 cents to 36 cents a share on revenue of $3.26 billion to $3.54 billion in the quarter.

Analysts expect profit of 48 cents a share in the quarter on revenue of $3.41 billion.

Texas Instruments shares fell 6% to $28.12 in premarket trading Friday.

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Toyota(TM) cut its earnings forecast for the fiscal year ending in March because of a strong yen and massive flooding in Thailand that disrupted parts supplies.

Toyota, Japan's No. 1 automaker, expects fiscal-year profit of 180 billion yen ($2.3 billion), down 54% from projection of 390 billion yen it made during the summer. Toyota estimates revenue of 18.2 trillion yen ($234.36 billion), down from prior guidance of 19 trillion yen.

Toyota said Friday it expects to sell 7.38 million vehicles worldwide this year instead of a prior projection of 7.6 million cars.

Toyota was down 34 cents to $66.79.

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Altera(ALTR) lowered its revenue outlook for its fiscal fourth quarter, citing widespread weakness from both small and large customers and across all geographies except North America.

The chipmaker said it now sees a sequential revenue decline of 13% to 16% in the quarter ending in December, a deeper drop than its prior projection of 7% to 11% from the third-quarter total of $522.5 million.

Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters expect for revenue of $475 million in the December-ending period, implying a sequential decline of 9%.

Altera shares declined 4.1% to $34.01.

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Coinstar's(CSTR) Redbox is reportedly teaming with Verizon(VZ) on a "Netflix-killer."

Reports first surfaced earlier this week that Verizon was working on a service outside of its FiOS cable network area to take on Netflix(NFLX) in online streaming.

According to TechCrunch, a Verizon-RedBox service would offer streaming of movies and TV shows in both standard and high definition to a number of devices. The launch is planned for May 28, 2012, TechCrunch said.

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-- Written by Joseph Woelfel

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