Some WSJ articles of interest.
AOL:
AOL Shares Slide
Ahead of Results
Shares of America Online slipped Monday as investors used the dog days of summer to take profits from some highflying stocks.
interactive.wsj.com
Excerpts:
AOL, for example, is still up about 150% -- even including the losses the company posted in the past several trading sessions.
"Institutions are getting cautious," said Ulric Weil, an analyst at Friedman, Billings, Ramsey & Co. "Investors are saying, 'I've made a lot of money and I don't want to see it melt like snow in the sun.'"
He predicts the shares could fall as much as another 10% in advance of the company's scheduled release of fiscal fourth-quarter earnings next week.
But Mr. Weil, like a host of other analysts, is bullish on the company and recommends that investors pick up stock on such dips. The consensus recommendation on the stock is 1.2 with 1 being the highest rating, according to First Call.
He is predicting the company will report fourth-quarter earnings of 19 cents a share -- in line with the consensus recommendation of 26 analysts surveyed by First Call -- but said he would not be surprised if the number were a penny or so better than that number. He has the stock rated "buy."
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Keith Benjamin, an analyst at BancAmerica Robertson Stephens, believes there is plenty of opportunity left in AOL, which he has rated "strong buy." In a research report issued Friday he wrote that he wouldn't be surprised if" the company had earnings close to $3 per share for calendar 2001 and, based on a multiple of 50 times 2001, that gives the shares a fair value of almost $150.
One of the reasons for his optimism, he wrote, is that he expects AOL to do a deal with a provider of speedy access to the Internet, such as a cable-modem service provider. Such a deal could put the company in a position to take a big part of the emerging market for fast access.
"Will people change e-mail addresses and services just for speed? We doubt it," Mr. Benjamin wrote. "As more homes [are hooked up to means of high-speed access] competition between providers will force a premium on marketing. That's where AOL seems to provide the most value with its sticky consumers," he wrote.
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Link to WSJ Tech. Center.
interactive.wsj.com
THE BOARDS of Bell Atlantic and GTE approved a $55 billion stock swap, combining GTE's long-distance, wireless and Internet offerings with Bell Atlantic's local and wireless phone service. But the alliance could face regulatory hurdles and calls for the merged company to divest assets.
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IBM is set to announce that a new generation of mainframes, set to ship in August, is about 15% more powerful than it was billed to be in May, a move that is sure to pressure Big Blue's rivals.
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The alliance of big-name phone carriers AT&T and British Telecommunications seeks to offer multinational customers globe-girdling networks. However, it will face stiff competition from newcomers to the telecom business and even computer companies.
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The European Commission is likely to focus its investigation of the planned AT&T-BT venture on the strength the alliance will have in the trans-Atlantic phone market and in the U.K., said people familiar with the linkup.
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A southern Bell -- BellSouth -- is playing hard to get at the telecommunications industry's frenetic merger ball.
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If patience is a virtue, Ivan G. Seidenberg may be the most virtuous chief executives in America.
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Intel announced price cuts of up to 31% on desktop personal-computer chips, in a continued effort to adjust to competition in the semiconductor industry and the rising popularity of budget PCs.
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A federal appeals court has thrown out a $293,000 jury verdict against Digital Equipment in a repetitive stress injury case. The verdict was the last one still standing from a 1996 case.
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PSINet plans to offer telephone calls using its Internet arteries, in an effort to expand beyond its data-network services.
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Telefonos de Mexico said Monday it would spend $49 million to acquire a minority stake in Prodigy Services and get a foothold in the U.S. Internet-services market.
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Western Digital reported a wider-than-expected loss for the fiscal fourth quarter, reflecting price cutting and high inventory levels in the disk-drive industry.
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Qwest Communications posted a huge second-quarter loss that was fattened by expenses from the acquisition of LCI Communications. Excluding the charges, the company's loss widened but was smaller than analysts had expected.
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U S West reported a 21% decline in profit for the second quarter, but the Baby Bell's results generally were in line with analysts' expectations.
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Ericsson shares tumbled Monday on news that its second-quarter mobile-phone sales were only slightly higher. The decline came despite the Swedish company's report that pretax profit beat estimates.
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Microsoft raided software pirates operating in an upscale Singapore shopping district, illustrating how the island has laws protecting intellectual property but requires companies to enforce the laws on their own.
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Intel announced price cuts of up to 31% on desktop personal-computer chips, in a continued effort to adjust to competition in the semiconductor industry and the rising popularity of budget PCs.
interactive.wsj.com
Excerpts:
Experts say at least two more price cuts from the semiconductor bellwether are expected later this year
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The Santa Clara, Calif., chip maker is slashing the price of its 300-megahertz Pentium II by 31% to $209, from $305 in June. The 300-megahertz version of its Celeron processor, a lower-cost, slower chip, will drop 30% to $112, from $159, and the 266-megahertz version is set to decrease 19% to $86 from $106. The prices apply when chips are bought in batches of 1,000
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The price cuts on Intel's older lines follow its announcement last week that it would speed the introduction of the successor to its low-end Celeron chip. The company is ahead of schedule on developing two new chips that will rival Advanced Micro Devices Inc.'s K7 chip.
The new Intel chips, code-named Cascades and Coppermine, will be built with circuitry widths of 0.18 micron -- about 1/550th the size of a human hair, and will introduced some time next year. Coppermine is a Pentium II chip aimed at desktop and laptop computers, it said. Cascades will run higher-performance workstations, which are used in graphics-intensive computer animation or scientific work.
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Intel last week declined to say how fast the chips are but indicated they would be significantly above 400 megahertz. It said development of the chips is moving ahead of schedule, so they will be in production in the first half 1999 rather than the second half, as previously expected.
The competition between Intel and rival AMD has been heating up lately, particularly after AMD announced it would use Motorola Inc.'s manufacturing process to develop a copper version of its K7 semiconductor, an important advance in making significantly more powerful computer chips. The move is expected to help AMD gain ground on Intel.
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AMD needs the technology to design microprocessors to hit the next milestone in chip speed, which allows operations at one billion cycles a second, or one gigahertz. Most chips used in PCs today operate about one third as fast.
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