Of all the tech stocks to watch, perhaps none have been more interesting to follow than those of Microsoft, Google and Apple in recent days.
With so much news emanating from the trio, their shares have been gyrating and twisting on each and every piece of information, so here are some numbers to take a gander at.
Carl Icahn, the activist billionaire investor who made such a noisy fuss in his quest to force management and other changes at Yahoo, is taking a much quieter leave from the Internet giant’s board.
He said “there was not a need at this time for an activist investor” on Yahoo’s board.
That’s true, of course, but here’s BoomTown’s quickie analysis: Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz completely ignores him.
Uh-oh, Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz was expected to appear on the Internet giant’s third-quarter earnings call, but she apparently “came down with something,” according to CFO Tim Morse.
BoomTown is sending over chicken soup right now, but let’s hope she gets her vaccinations tout de suite!
Thus, no sassy quotes or cursing, but a very earnest Morse, who sounded like he was once a Boy Scout.
It’s not likely the announcement of Yahoo’s third-quarter earnings later today will be quite as exciting as its Open Hack Day in Taiwan this past weekend, but BoomTown will try to make those numbers and the conference call afterward with CEO Carol Bartz as entertaining as possible.
Bartz is certain to be so, especially if she lobs some good quotes, as she did in a recent interview about her management style: “I have the puppy theory. When the puppy pees on the carpet, you say something right then because you don’t say six months later, ‘Remember that day, January 12th, when you peed on the carpet?’ That doesn’t make any sense.”
How much does BoomTown pray for more zingers like that? Muchly!
When Apple reports its fourth-quarter earnings today, investors are hoping–actually, expecting–that the iconic computer company will look a lot now as it always has.
In other words, don’t go changing and it will please us.
In fact, Wall Street is anticipating, as it has throughout the econalypse, another estimate-beating performance.
In one week, Yahoo will report its third-quarter earnings, after the market closes.
And so far, its stock is showing signs that investors are hoping for better days ahead for the Internet giant.
Other good news: A pair of bullish analyst reports yesterday.
But, a spate of executive departures, with chances of more to come, are worrisome.
As is the excessive yodeling Yahoo is once again encouraging.
According to the latest data from comScore, which are the most widely regarded by Wall Street, Bing has not lost market share in the U.S., as some recent reports had suggested.
The September report, which was released to clients today, shows small gains for the Microsoft search service and for Google, while Yahoo lost some share.
Considering the ongoing skirmishes going on right now between Amazon and Google over digital book publishing, it’s more than ironic that Amazon CEO and founder Jeff Bezos was one of only a few initial investors in the search giant.
But–in one of the many interesting details in New Yorker author Ken Auletta’s new book, “Googled: The End Of The World As We Know It”–it was indeed Bezos who invested $250,000 in the start-up in 1998 at four cents a share.
Not that there’s anything wrong with that!
There’s a great excerpt in the New Yorker this week.
Since the beginning of the year, Apple shares have more than doubled from $90.75 on Jan. 2 to almost $186 today.
Google has done about half that performance, while Microsoft has done one-third.
But that’s apparently not enough, according to Thomas Weisel analyst Doug Reid, who has raised his price target on Apple to $210 from $180.
BoomTown is getting dizzy.
This week, in its annual survey of consumer technology attitudes and adoption, titled “The State of Consumers and Technology,” Forrester Research found that…wait for it, wait for it…the kids love the Internet!
As for the olds–they like their traditional media stories and they’re sticking to them.
It’s only at the Weather Channel where online and offline media live together under blue skies.
Champagne wishes and caviar dreams are now but a memory for billionaire shareholder-activist Carl Icahn, who lost about $125 million today by selling off 16 percent of his ever-losing stake in Yahoo.
The sale of 12.7 million shares at just under $15 a piece is a far cry from the hopes that the famously prickly Icahn had when he started his quest to bring about change and riches for himself by investing in stock of the turmoil-plagued Internet giant in 2008.
As it turned out, he came to Silicon Valley, he saw, he did not conquer.
This week, BoomTown decided to mash up two different and interesting surveys, both from comScore, about the search market.
When you do this, you find that while the new Bing search engine from Microsoft is showing some impressive growth–up a half-point in July from June to an 8.9 percent share–the software giant still has a long way to go to get some true love from the consumers.
Obsessive love, actually.
The board of iLike planned a meeting earlier tonight to go over a buyout offer by MySpace, several sources close to the situation said. But it was suddenly canceled because of some thorny tax implications related to the talent-retention part of the deal to purchase the social music start-up.
This does not mean the pending acquisition is in jeopardy, sources said, and it could be on track to be signed as early as today, barring any more complications.
What’s also been unclear is the actual price the social networking giant is paying for iLike, which has been reported as about $20 million. In fact, only $13.5 million will be paid in cash, with $6 million slated for forward payments to retain key talent.
One of the reasons Wall Street investors have gone sour on Yahoo’s stock since its online advertising and search partnership was struck with Microsoft was a comment that CEO Carol Bartz made at the seventh D: All Things Digital conference in late May.
In an onstage interview with me, I asked Bartz about what it would take to do a deal.
She answered quite emphatically that “if there’s boatloads of money, and there’s the right technology and there’s the right information we’d have, sure.”
Here’s the video of that, as well details about how the deal talks went bad at D7 too.
With upward of two-thirds of the search market, depending on what survey you use, one would not imagine that Google would worry too much about any kind of hookup of Microsoft and Yahoo.
Think again.
Sources at Google said the company is bracing for a more robust rival, which will force the company to compete and innovate more aggressively.
They add that Google will likely try to keep a low profile at first in opposing the deal announced today, positing that regulators have the same opinion about fewer competitors in the market as they did when opposing a similar Google-Yahoo search deal last year.
Kara Swisher started covering digital issues for The Wall Street Journal's San Francisco bureau in 1997 and also wrote the BoomTown column about the sector. With Walt Mossberg, she co-produces and co-hosts D: All Things Digital, a major high-tech and media conference.
Here is a statement of my ethics and coverage policies. It is more than most of you want to know, but, in the age of suspicion of the media, I am laying it all out.
D is unlike any other executive conference. Since its debut in 2003, D has brought to life the energy and excitement of the digital revolution in an unscripted, upfront and unparalleled way. Read more »
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