Micron falls short; Nike gets dunked
3Com and Palm also post quarterly results
By Shawn Langlois, CBS.MarketWatch.com
Last Update: 5:14 PM ET March 21, 2002
SAN FRANCISCO (CBS.MW) -- Late regular session momentum failed to carry over into soft evening trading as investors digested financial results from Micron.
Also delivering their quarterly reports, hand-held device maker Palm gathered momentum, shoe king Nike was hammered and 3Com surged northward.
Earlier, the Nasdaq clawed its way to a strong close, up 36 at 1,868 while the Dow couldn't quite trip into positive territory, ending the day down 22 at 10,479. The tech-laden Nasdaq-100 After Hours Indicator fell less than 1 percent. See Market Snapshot.
Micron and hardware rumblings
Micron Technology shares (MU: news, chart, profile) were little changed in the third market. The memory chipmaker reported a second-quarter net loss of $30 million, or 5 cents a share, on revenue of $646 million. Analysts surveyed by Thomson Financial/First Call expected a loss of 4 cents a share on revenue of $665.8 million, on average. During the same quarter last year, net loss for the memory chipmaker was $88.3 million, or 15 cents a share, on revenue of $1 billion. Ahead of the announcement, shares ended up $2.01, or 6.2 percent, to $34.51.
Elsewhere, Applied Materials, the world's largest chip equipment maker, hosted an analyst meeting that followed its annual shareholder gathering.
Shares stalled late after Applied (AMAT: news, chart, profile) unveiled a technology and development center that had been two years in the making. It's designed to help customers integrate leading-edge and next-generation equipment into production lines faster while helping speed the development of sub-100 nanometer chips. See full story.
More earnings
3Com shares (COMS: news, chart, profile) moved 7 percent higher after the networker posted a third-quarter pro forma loss of $42.3 million, or 12 cents per share, on revenue of $356 million. That compared with a pro forma loss of $122.8 million, or 36 cents per share, on revenue of $629.6 million in the same period a year ago. Analysts, on average, had been expecting a loss of 16 cents per share.
3Com's spinoff Palm (PALM: news, chart, profile) saw its shares add more than 5 percent on relatively heavy Island ECN volume. Excluding certain items, the company reported a loss of $14 million, or 2 cents a share, compared with a profit of $9.3 million, or 2 cents per share, for the third quarter of fiscal year 2001. Analysts had been looking for a loss of 4 cents a share on revenue of $252 million.
Separately, Nike shares (NKE: news, chart, profile) fell more than 4 percent after the swooshed retailer said late Thursday that it earned $126 million, or 46 cents a share in the fiscal third quarter, vs. $97 million, or 35 cents a share, a year ago. Analysts had expected the Beaverton, Ore.-based company to earn, on average, 45 cents a share in the most recent quarter. See full story.
Shawn Langlois is community editor for CBS.MarketWatch.com in San Francisco.
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