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To: LBstocks who wrote (15026)	4/19/2000 1:03:00 AM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 35685

Wednesday April 19, 12:39 am Eastern Time Profit Reports Are Generally Strong By BRUCE MEYERSON AP Business Writer NEW YORK (AP) -- One after another, leading names from the battered technology sector are offering some reassurance that the Internet boom is not a mirage -- and that some companies are in fact profiting from it. Intel (NasdaqNM:INTC - news), IBM, America Online and Qualcomm all topped Wall Street forecasts on Tuesday with their reports on profits and revenues from the first three months of the year. Last week, in the midst of the stock market's seemingly endless slide, Sun Microsystems, Advanced Micro Devices and Yahoo! did the same. At this point, however, strong profits are no guarantee against further market convulsions. Then again, it can't hurt. About a third of the 500 companies that make up the Standard & Poor's 500 index have now posted their first-quarter results, and more than 70 percent of them surpassed expectations, according to First Call/Thomson Financial. Based on readings such as those, estimates of the overall profit growth among the S&P 500 companies have been nudged higher. The latest surveys of industry analysts by First Call and IBES now call for them to post a healthy 12 or 13 percent gain in their combined profits compared with the first quarter of 1999. But with so many companies, including heavy hitters like Microsoft Corp. (NasdaqNM:MSFT - news) on Thursday, still yet to report, the profit backdrop is filled with potential land mines. Since market sentiment is so fragile after all the theatrics of recent days, investors may conveniently ignore a series of strong reports if a few of the big names come up short. It helps of course, that popular market measures like the Nasdaq composite index now sit well below the eye-popping record highs reached back in March. ``Having seen so many speculative excesses wrung out over the past few weeks, the market is not in as precarious position as it had been,' said A.C. Moore, chief investment strategist for Dunvegan Associates in Santa Barbara, Calif. But, he cautioned, even at post-plunge levels, stocks remain very pricey compared with traditional valuations. ``The overvaluation is not going to be cured by a good earnings season,' said Moore, asserting that stocks are still priced 32 percent above fair value and 10 percent above excessive valuations that preceded the crash of 1987. biz.yahoo.com