Herb's got a report on the drop Friday...........
sfgate.com
<< -- When is disclosure too selective?: This column
recently chided Fremont- based HMT
Technology's execs for reportedly offering analysts,
in private conversations, a more dour tone than
they gave to all investors on a post-earnings
conference call.
The same thing apparently happened last Thursday
with Milpitas-based C-Cube Microsystems
(another one of this column's regulars.) C-Cube
reported earn ings that beat Wall Street estimates
by two cents. According to several money
managers who listened to the subsequent
conference call, the mood was generally upbeat --
upbeat enough to fire up individual investors who
communicate via online message boards.
A post-conference call scan of boards on The
Silicon Investor
(www.techstocks.com) reveals such comments as,
''Super news from CUBE, huh? I cannot think of a
single negative item in the earnings report or
conference call.''
What the message board investors didn't know was
that after the conference call C-Cube's
management, as managements often do, called
analysts for private interviews.
The tone was decidedly more somber, and
afterward most analysts sliced estimates for this
year by around 15 percent to near $1.05 per share.
(That compares with original estimates, going back
a year or go, of higher than $2.50 per share.)
Were some of those investors so impressed that
they put in overnight orders to buy C-Cube on the
market's open Friday? If so, did they know that the
lead C-Cube analysts had taken down their
numbers?
If not, they probably never knew what hit them.
Instead of rising, as some had hoped it would, the
stock opened Friday at $20 and closed at $19.
C-Cube officials, in keeping with their
long-standing ban on talking with yours truly, didn't
return my call.>> |
