Via Dow Jones:
NEW YORK (Dow Jones)--Qualcomm Inc.'s (QCOM) last-minute withdrawal from SG
Cowen's fall technology conference Monday sent its shares down 6.8%.
"We had to pull out of the Cowen conference this morning," a company
spokesman said, citing "scheduling conflicts" with its own analysts'
conference set for Wednesday.
The spokesman declined to comment on why Qualcomm pulled out of the
conference on the day they were scheduled to present, rather than a month ago,
when the Qualcomm conference was announced.
Analysts attributed the declining share price to Qualcomm's withdrawal.
"This could be very negative," said analyst Ed Snyder of Hambrecht & Quist
Inc., postulating that in one scenario, "what they have to say about the
company isn't positive and they want to wait until Wednesday's analyst meeting
and dump it all out there."
He said possible bad news could be related to the company's admission two
weeks ago that handset prices were quickly falling and margins weren't
improving as much as expected.
But he also pointed to a "bull side of the story that they will announce the
sale of their handset division, in which case the stock will definitely trade
up in the short term."
While selling the handset division would be a good short-term fix, Snyder
said, "in the long term, they have other problems with market share."
He thought the negative scenario more likely.
Analyst Gregory Geiling of J.P. Morgan, on the other hand, expects
Qualcomm's Wednesday conference to bring good news, "given the recent
fundamentals of their business."
He has a rating of buy on Qualcomm, with a 12-month price target of $205.
Qualcomm shares were recently trading at 154 1/16, down 11 5/8 or 7%, on
volume of 8.2 million shares, compared with an average daily volume of 4.6
million shares.
Looks like someone else is vying for Marc Cabi's title of least-intelligent Qualcomm analyst.
mmeggs |
