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Politics : Formerly About Applied Materials -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Jacob Snyder who wrote (18606)	4/7/1998 11:24:00 AM
From: Teri Skogerboe	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 70976

All, Not that it matters, because we all know that stocks only go up. From Forbes 03.05.98 continued from "A time to be cautious" \| Earnings fears Is it just exuberance on the part of individual investors? Wall Street analysts are worried that the market will have to grapple with lower sales and earnings problems in the first quarter. This next phase will begin with a raft of "guidance-down" announcements in March as the first-quarter earnings results start to come in. Analysts warn that it is only a matter of time before the drumroll of "warnings" about the first quarter becomes louder, and much of that is because the impact of the Asian crisis is still to be felt. James C. Morgan, chief executive of semiconductor equipment maker Applied Materials (AMAT), warns, "We have become more cautious at this time and expect lower new orders and less favorable operating results than we originally anticipated as we entered fiscal 1998." Hewlett-Packard reported a net income of $929 million, or 86 cents a share on Feb. 17. Not bad, on revenues of $11.8 billion, but HP missed meeting analyst estimates of 88 cents a share, as reported by First Call, a research firm that tracks corporate earnings. In a conference call Bob Wayman, HP's Executive VP of Finance and Administration, noted: "We did see a slowdown through the first quarter, and it's quite likely that we have not yet seen the full impact of the situation in Asia." However, the market ignored the warning and pushed the stock up $5.375, or 8.7%, to $67.00 at market close on Feb. 27. (By Mar. 4, HP had dropped to $64.312, but was still up 4.4% for the year.) To quote Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, this is nothing but "irrational exuberance." --------