Lotsa techs down today............
techweb.com
Earnings Worries Send Techs
Down
(01/22/99, 5:25 p.m. ET)
By Sergio G. Non, TechWeb
Technology stocks almost overcome a rough start to
finish up Friday -- almost.
After a steep initial plunge fueled by disappointment
over some companies' earnings, the Nasdaq Composite
Index came back to trade at or near positive territory
for most of the afternoon, but a sell-off in the final hour
sent the tech-heavy index down to close at 2338.88, a
loss of 5.84. The Dow Jones Industrial Average,
dragged down by IBM, fell 143.41 to 9120.67.
TCI Satellite [TSATA] fell 1 15/32 to 1 3/32 as the
most active stock on U.S. markets. The company owns
37.5 percent of direct satellite broadcaster Primestar,
which said it will sell its assets to General Motors'
Hughes Electronics division, whose DirecTV subsidiary
is the largest DBS company in the United States.
Shares of Hughes Electronics [GMH] advanced 1 7/8
to 46 5/8.
IBM [IBM] plunged 17 1/4 to 179 3/4 as the most
active issue on the New York Stock Exchange.
Although Big Blue beat analysts' fourth quarter earnings
forecasts, a hardware sales drop of 1.5 percent
contributed to lighter revenue than many investors
expected.
Sun Microsystems [SUNW] slipped 1/4 to 98 after
posting second quarter earnings slightly better than First
Call's consensus forecast. The provider of servers,
workstations, and Java said it expects growth to
accelerate in the second half of fiscal 1999, and
announced a two-for-one stock split.
Direct-sales computer maker Gateway [GTW] moved
up 4 9/16 to 62 9/16 after reporting fourth quarter
earnings ahead of estimates.
BMC Software [BMCS] gained 5 3/8 to 43 15/16 on
volume of almost 18.6 million shares. Investors took
heart from the mainframe-software provider's
better-than-expected third quarter report.
Andy Chen's favorite Wind River Systems [WIND], which creates
software-development tools and operating systems for
embedded devices, tumbled 17 5/16 to 32 3/16 on
concern it will miss analysts' fourth quarter estimates.
Iomega [IOM] slipped 1 to 8 after reporting fourth
quarter earnings that were higher than expected. The
maker of the popular Zip storage drives announced a
restructuring and said two executives have left the
company.
Sybase [SYBS] 1 3/4 to 10 5/16. The database vendor
reported fourth quarter results that topped forecasts.
A trio of IPOs did well Friday. Graphics chip-set
maker Nvidia [NVDA] rose 7 11/16 to 19 11/16,
Web-software maker Allaire [ALLR] moved up 23 3/4
to 43 3/4, and DSL service provider Covad
Communications [COVD] gained 27 3/8 to 45 3/8.
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