Tag: newstrack. techeye

Apple shares tank

Posted on December 2, 2014 by - News

You-Gun-It-When-We-PushWall Street watched in horror yesterday as the value of shares in the industry darling, Apple shares plummeted faster than a free fall parachuting team of elephants which had forgotten to pack the key ingredient of their act.

Apple shares tumbled shortly after the start of trading on Monday, briefly suffering their largest price drop in at least three months on an unusual spike in volume.

More than 6.7 million shares trading in a one-minute stretch, the heaviest minute of trading in Apple since October 29.

The stock lost over three percent in that minute, falling as much as 6.4 percent to $111.27. At midafternoon, it was down three percent to $115.45. The Tame Apple press did its best to insist that the share drop was nothing to do with Apple. They claimed it was all down to algorithmic trading which put Apple on sell.

Reuters was a bit huffy that computers had dared to say its favourite computer company was worth less than it was in the morning. The HFT has been criticised for affecting the trading of stocks by sending in numerous trade quotes that slow quote activity – without filling the trades when shares fall, it wrote.

However, other analysts disagreed. Bill Harts, chief executive officer of Modern Markets Initiative, an advocate of high-speed electronic markets said that determining the cause of the decline was not so simple. “The fact is we don’t yet know what caused the drop, and blaming it on HFT is misleading.”

Morgan Stanley strategists dropped Apple’s weighting in their strategic portfolio to three percent from four percent in an equity outlook note released Monday, but traders said the swiftness of the decline was too dramatic to be attributed solely to the note, which was released before trading opened.

It might have been the Morgan Stanley news that rather stimulated the event, but not enough to cause such a decline, analysts claim.

 

Intel shares could rise by 30 percent

Posted on November 25, 2014 by - News

hopeWhile some have decided that Intel will go the way of the Dodo, it appears that the analysts Barrons disagree.

The outfit’s augury division has walked a compliant white bull into the temple of Juno, read its steaming entrails, and concluded that Intel will do rather well.

It thinks that shares in Chipzilla will rise more than 30 percent to $48 over the next two years.

The logic is that with shares its recently at over $35, Intel stock is halfway to the five-year doubling Barron’s said it predicted in June of 2013.

Barron’s said that in two years’ time, the 30 percent rise would put shares trading at around 16 times future earnings estimates, the same price to 2014 earnings ratio that it now trades at.

Intel has few fans among the cocaine nose jobs of Wall Street, suggesting plenty of popularity to be gained. Intel is strategically running a deep loss in its mobile-chip division in order to make up for its late start.

However, Barron insists that might be a good thing. Shrinking those losses to break-even in future years will uncover earnings power in the rest of the company that is currently hidden.

However there is a lot of scepticism about Intel—just 40 percent of analysts who cover the shares say to buy them.

Earnings per share are expected to climb 19 percent this year to $2.25, which looks like excellent growth, except that earnings first topped $2 a share back in 2010, said a Barron.

However Barrons did not see everything as lilly white in the ox’s liver.  It thinks that while Intel is on track to ship a promised 40 million tablet chips this year, versus just a million or so two years ago, its mobile division will likely lose about $4 billion in the process. That is partly due to “contra revenues,” which are effectively rebates to spur demand while Intel closes the cost gap to rivals on low-end multifunction chips.

Next year Intel expects the division’s loss to shrink by only $800 million. However, by then, it expects to sell a full range of tablet chips, ranging from cheap models called SoFIA, which have integrated wireless function, to pricier Cherry Trail chips for zippy performance at low power. Analysts see the mobile unit achieving positive gross profit margins by 2016.

So if you are thinking about making a quick buck from Intel you might want to wait until this period is over before investing your nest-egg.

 

 

Samsung turns to metal in China crisis

Posted on November 3, 2014 by - News

Iron_Maiden_2010Samsung has released two premium designed, mid-tier handsets designed to give its low-priced Chinese rivals a good kicking.

The company has been suffering lately and its global market share down on year for the third straight quarter and its profit scraping at a three-year low.

Samsung suffered the most in China which is the world’s biggest smartphone market and it was knocked off its number one slot by Xiaomi.

The Chinese seemed to have a problem that Samsung’s lower-end products were pricey and not different enough compared to Xiaomi and Lenovo.

The Galaxy A3 and A5 are seen by analysts as Samsung’s first counter-attack. Initially launching in China in November, they will be Samsung’s first devices to feature fully metallic bodies and its thinnest smartphones so far.  The A3 and A5 are comparable to those of the top-of-the-line Galaxy S5, but have a lower screen resolution quality.

Samsung classified the new phones as mid-tier, and said they will be launched in other “select markets”, without disclosing the pricing.

However, it still might have problems and much depends on price. In comparison to the A5, Xiaomi’s Mi4 device is thicker but has a  faster processor and better display.

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Big Blue slows down

Posted on October 21, 2014 by - News

sn_blu_mysIBM shocked the cocaine nose jobs of Wall Street by giving up its 2015 operating earnings target and moaning that it was suffering from a bad dose of weak client spending and a slumping software sector.

IBM shares fell nearly seven percent to a three year low, which must really hack off Warren Buffett whose Berkshire Hathaway owns seven percent of IBM shares. The decline shaved more than $13 billion off Big Blue’s market cap, which stood at $182 billion at the stock market close on Friday.

Ginni Rometty, IBM chairman, president and chief executive officer said that the result was disappointing and that the company saw a marked slowdown in September in client buying behavior, and our results also point to the unprecedented pace of change in our industry.

In a move to rid itself of one underperforming business, IBM also said on Monday it will hive off its loss-making semiconductor unit to contract chipmaker Globalfoundries.

“Some of these fundamental shifts in the industry are happening faster than we planned,” Rometty said on a call with analysts. “We are continuing to remix to higher value.”

To be fair, IBM is hardly the only technology company having a hard time keeping up. German software maker SAP cut its 2014 operating profit forecast on Monday, citing a faster-than-expected move to cloud-based software. Oracle has similar problems.

Revenue from the company’s cloud service unit, which allows businesses to access software and data remotely, grew more than 50 percent in the quarter, while mobile revenue doubled.

Still, they were not enough to offset weakness in servers and other hardware, as well as some software business lines.

IBM is spending $600 million for “workforce restructuring,” but did not specify how many employees would be cleaning out their desks.

IBM, which said it would announce a new operating earning per share target for 2015 in January, reported a 4 percent drop in third-quarter revenues as clients held back on spending in September.

Revenue fell to $22.4 billion in the quarter from $23.34 billion a year earlier. Wall Street expected $23.37 billion.

Net profit from continuing operations dropped to $3.46 billion, or $3.46 per share, from $4.14 billion, or $3.77 per share in the same quarter last year.