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Posted
Oct 04 2007, 12:55 PM
by
Kim Peterson
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
 Research in Motion continued its blockbuster year today by beating analysts' expectations and nabbing its 10 millionth subscriber. The Blackberry maker also beat its own quarterly forecast, reporting revenue of $1.37 billion and profit of $287.7 million, or 50 cents a share. Analysts had expected $1.36 billion in revenue and EPS of 50 cents.
RIM's stock has been hopping this week as investors readied for good news. Analysts were busy too: Credit Suisse's Michael Ounjian raised his price target to $100 from $70, but kept a neutral rating on the stock. He's worried about the company maintaining its margins on the device side in the future.
Analyst Sera Kim with Raymond James downgraded the stock this week to market perform from outperform, but also raised her target price to $100 from $92. She advises investors to wait for the price to drop before buying.
The company's subscriber numbers were impressive, even as a new competitor, Apple's iPhone, debuted during the quarter. RIM reported 1.45 million new users, after saying in June it could have 1.38 million new users. One analyst, Tony Carbone at RCM Capital Management, said the company needed to show 1.4 million when it reported today.
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Posted
Oct 11 2007, 12:44 PM
by
Kim Peterson
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
Tech stocks are no longer the darling of Wall Street today, taking a tumble after going up-up-up all week.
It's about time. VMware's valuation has been ridiculously high for a while now. The stock quadrupled in two months and broke $100 this week, but today is down some 4%. Apple has been hitting a series of all-time highs, and got a nice price target increase from Goldman Sachs (to $190) before becoming the top drag today on the Nasdaq and S&P 500. Its shares closed at about $162.
Google shares have had a crazy day, hitting an all-time high today of $641.41 after getting a few price target increases from analysts like RBC Capital Markets' Jordan Rohan, who raised his target to $690 from $650. Shares had plunged to $621 by the end of the trading day.
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Posted
Nov 09 2007, 12:12 PM
by
Robert Walberg
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
I'm sure you've heard the phrase the best offense is a good defense, well given the offensive nature of the market over the past month -- the DJIA, S&P 500 and Nasdaq indices are down by 8.4%, 6.7% and 7.0%, respectively -- it might just be time to adopt a more defensive posture with your portfolio. How do we reduce risk, while maintaining exposure to the market? Simple, we lower our portfolio's beta.
As defined on the Investopedia web site, beta measures a stock's volatility in relation to the market. By definition, the market (the S&P 500) has a beta of 1.0, and individual stocks are ranked according to how much they deviate from the market. A stock that swings more than the market over time has a beta above 1.0. If a stock moves less than the market, the stock's beta is less than 1.0. When the market is racing to new highs, we want stocks with high betas that will outperform, but when the opposite is true -- as is the case now -- we want stocks that either move down slower than the overall market or, better yet, move in the opposite direction.
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Posted
Nov 20 2007, 11:32 AM
by
Robert Walberg
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
Like the song says, "some say love is a Razr that leaves your soul to bleed." Well, my soul has bled waiting for Motorola's stock to turn around. I can't wait any longer -- I'm not Job, after all.
Motorola has been screwing up for so long, it even gets it wrong when it gets it right. Last quarter the company delivered another lousy set of sales and earnings numbers, yet it guided fiscal fourth-quarter earnings to a range of 13 to 14 cents a share -- a few pennies above The Street's consensus. Normally, guiding estimates higher would be perceived as a good thing, and it was at first as the stock edged higher on the news. However, in offering up hope for the fourth quarter and the upcoming year, CEO Ed Zander might have won himself a new contract. And that's bad news.
You see one of the reasons I bought Motorola's stock down at its lows was in anticipation of a new management team. Typically when a struggling company finally ousts its old CEO in favor of someone new and full of promise, the underlying stock tends to rally. Until recently, Zander's ouster was all but certain. But in light of the company's modest progress off a terrible set of numbers, Zander might just hang around. Let's face it, he did take all the credit for the Razr so there might be a board member or two who thinks he's on the verge of another one-hit wonder.
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Posted
Dec 10 2007, 03:46 AM
by
Kim Peterson
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
 Boeing shut down its ambitious onboard WiFi project last year, saying that after six years of work it couldn't find enough airlines who would offer the service to its customers. The service, called Connexion, provided e-mail, Web and TV during flights, with costs that ranged from $15 for less than three hours to $30 for a full day. It was mainly offered on non-U.S. airlines, and people who used it raved. But analysts said the service, which cost $150 million a year to run, was only used by 1,000 people a day across 125 commercial planes.
Boeing was too hasty in killing Connexion. U.S. airlines are slowly embracing free WiFi service, hoping to lure customers who want to send e-mails and instant messages from 30,000 feet. JetBlue is launching its WiFi trial tomorrow on just one plane, becoming the first U.S. carrier to do so. American, Virgin and Alaska plan to roll out service next year.
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Posted
Dec 17 2007, 04:00 PM
by
Charley Blaine
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
With today's 61-point loss to 2,574.46, the Nasdaq Composite Index is back at a drop of 10% from a recent high.
Technically, that means the index is in a correction. What it really means is that the recovery off lows reached on Nov. 26 is basically done.
The Nasdaq has had two corrections this year alone. The first was from mid-July until the middle of the day on Aug. 16, when the market abruptly -- and violently -- turned higher.
The second started after the index hit a 6-year high of 2,859.12 on Oct. 31. It dropped to a low of 2,540.99 on Nov. 26, rebounded back to 2,652 and fell back again.
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Posted
Feb 07 2008, 12:45 PM
by
Kim Peterson
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
Handset companies who do business in North America will be hit hard in a recession, Citi analyst Jim Suva said in a note this morning. Suva takes a close look at Brightpoint, Motorola, Palm and Research in Motion, and calls out the latter as the stock that could "see the greatest damage to share price." Suva writes that Research in Motion "faces double-barreled risk," according to Barron's, because of its strong presence in North America and its high P/E multiple (currently at 45.20). The stock could drop to $63 in a worst-case, global recession. RIMM shares closed today at $84.68. Embattled Palm is very exposed in North America, and Suva thinks a recession could push shares down to $3 or $4 a share. Palm closed today at $5.99.
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Posted
Mar 06 2008, 12:11 PM
by
Kim Peterson
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
A friend of mine was thrilled to get an Apple iPhone for Christmas from his wife. But he returned it a few weeks later. Why? Because he couldn't access his work e-mail on the device. The iPhone, for all its cool features, lacked one essential tool: the ability to sync easily with corporate e-mail on the Microsoft Exchange server.
How many times has this story been repeated? That's why today's news from Apple is huge. The company said it will work with Microsoft to license the ActiveSync synchronization program, which lets iPhone users get e-mail, contacts and calendar information from Microsoft Exchange servers. It sounds like this could happen sometime in the summer.
The move means Apple is going after Research in Motion's ubiquitous BlackBerry in the corporate market. But this isn't a death knell for Research in Motion, which has a huge lock on enterprise customers. RIM had a 73% market share for smartphones in February, according to ChangeWave Research. Palm's market share has declined over the past year to 18%, and Apple's iPhone is around 5%.
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Posted
May 12 2008, 10:25 AM
by
Kim Peterson
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
 ![]() Research in Motion announced its new BlackBerry today, which the company clearly developed with Apple's iPhone in mind. The BlackBerry Bold is gorgeous, and positions RIM for a smartphone war this summer against Apple's upcoming 3G iPhone.
RIM shares are up 7% on the news as investors applaud the first major BlackBerry release in more than a year. But Apple investors aren't too worried: shares rose 3% today on word that the HBO cable network might sell shows on iTunes.
Here's where the two companies stand heading into the summer. The BlackBerry still commands the smartphone market, having made extensive inroads into the enterprise and becoming the de facto business phone. It has a 40% market share. But the iPhone is a strong contender, hitting a 28% market share in Q4 despite a huge flaw: incompatibility with the Microsoft Exchange e-mail server (Apple is working on a fix).
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Posted
Jun 09 2008, 01:02 PM
by
Kim Peterson
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
Why were Apple shares down Monday, with all the big iPhone news? Chalk it up to the typical storm of hype that surrounds Apple announcement. Expectations ratchet up so high that CEO Steve Jobs would have to juggle 10 iPhones on one foot to impress investors.
Apple stock was weak all day, but recovered in the final hour of trading. It closed down 2.2% on heavy volume to $181.61. Here's how Apple's news affected other stocks:
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