Tuesday's Tech Winners & Losers
Updated from 2:39 p.m. EST with new stock prices
Technology stocks failed to hold on to gains from a strong earnings report by
HP
as Wall Street pulled back on a $2 billion quarterly loss by home-loan giant
Freddie Mac
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Blue Coat Systems
(BCSI)
soared 12.7% after the company sailed past analyst expectations for the second quarter and guided higher for the current quarter. Blue Coat reported net income of $17 million, compared with $2.6 million in the same quarter a year ago.
Excluding charges, it posted EPS of 30 cents a share, compared with 21 cents a share a year ago. Analysts were expecting earnings of 24 cents a share. Revenue for the second quarter was $73.4 million, compared with $39.7 million for the same quarter last year and beat analyst expectations of $68.90 million.
For the third quarter, it guided revenue in the range of $78 million to $81 million and earnings in the range of 31 cents to 35 cents a share. Analysts are expecting revenue of $74.18 million and earnings of 27 cents a share. Blue Coat was up $4.21 to $37.34.
(GOOG) - Get Alphabet Inc. Report
gained 3.6% after a Credit Suisse analyst raised his 2008 earnings estimate for the stock and the 12-month price target to $900 from $800.
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Analyst Heath Terry said Google is likely to become a "de facto operating system" for advertisers over time as all advertising including television, radio and outdoor becomes digital. Google could also gain near-monopoly status in search as its market share expands, Terry said in his report. Google was up $22.69 to $648.54 in recent trading.
The tech sector's gains earlier in the day sent shares of
Apple
(AAPL) - Get Apple Inc. Report
up 3%. Apple's stock was up $4.90 to $168.85.
Microsoft
(MSFT) - Get Microsoft Corporation Report
was up 62 cents, or 1.8%, to $34.58. Shares of
Research In Motion
(RIMM)
were up $1.79, or 1.7%, to $110.00.
GameStop
(GME) - Get GameStop Corporation Report
declined 3.5% after the company's fourth-quarter
guidance came in lower than expected.
Including debt-retirement costs of 2 cents a share, the company posted third-quarter earnings of $51.9 million, or 31 cents a share, compared with $13.9 million and earnings of 9 cents a share the year before. Excluding charges, GameStop would have earned 33 cents, 10 cents better than the estimate of analysts polled by Thomson Financial.
Sales rose 59.3% to $1.61 billion, compared with $1.01 billion in the same quarter a year ago. Analysts were expecting revenue of $1.43 billion. In the fourth quarter, though, it forecast earnings in the range from 95 cents to 97 cents a share, compared with earnings of 81 cents the year before. Analysts are looking for $1.01 a share. GameStop was down $1.87 to $51.12.
GameStop's results put pressure on video games stocks.
Activision
(ATVI) - Get Activision Blizzard Inc Report
was down 80 cents, or 3.9%, to $19.58. Video-games publisher
THQ
(THQI)
was off $1.18, or 4.5%, to $24.81, while
Take-Two Interactive
(TTWO) - Get Take-Two Interactive Software Inc. Report
fell 34 cents, or 2.3%, to $14.51.
Vasco Data Security
(VDSI)
fell 4.5%, reversing its gains from Monday when an analyst upgrade sent the stock soaring.
Daniel Ives, an analyst from Friedman, Billing, Ramsey, upgraded the stock after he noted the recent sell-off in the company's shares was overdone and paved the way for a buying opportunity. Shares of Vasco have fallen 40.5% in one month. The stock was off $1.00 to $21.14.
Shares of
AMD
(AMD) - Get Advanced Micro Devices Inc. Report
were off 6.6%, a day after the company
released a quad-core processor for the desktop PC market.
AMD's chip, though, comes a year after rival
Intel's
(INTC) - Get Intel Corporation Report
release of a similar chip. AMD also unveiled an all-in-one bundle of silicon components for desktop PCs, dubbed Spider. AMD was down 79 cents to $11.28.
Palm
(PALM)
fell 67 cents, or 8.5%, to $7.25 on critical comments by an analyst after the release of handset sales data from The NPD Group, a research firm.
An Oppenheimer analyst said sales of Palm's Treo line of phones could be hurt by products from its rivals, Research In Motion and Apple. However, NPD noted Palm's overall sales of cell phones to U.S. consumers rose 47% to $3.2 billion in the third quarter of 2007.
