Daily Archives: June 21, 2008

Saudis To Increase Flow Of Oil

CNBC is reporting that The Saudis will increase oil production capacity gradually over the next year according to a senior advisor to the Minister of Petroleum at the Jeddah Energy Meeting in Saudi Arabia, Ibrahim Al-Muhanna.

The network also notes that The nation’s current total capacity of 11.3 million barrels per day is expected to increase to 12.5 million barrels per day, Al-Muhanna said. That is much more than the Saudi’s previously believed capacity of 10.8 million barrels per day.

Douglas A. McIntrye

Posted on: June 21, 2008 – 8:40 am in Oil & Gas

Oracle Braces For Earnings (ORCL)

Oracle Corp. (NASDAQ: ORCL) is set to report earnings this coming Wednesday.  This will be the stock used by analysts to judge the strength of enterprise business spending for technology. 

The First Call estimates for the enterprise software giant are $0.44 EPS on $6.86 Billion in revenues in its year-end quarterly report for Fiscal May 2008.  Estimates for next quarter (the company’s throw away quarter) are $0.27 EPS on $5.43 Billion in revenues.  For the year ahead, its May-2009 estimates are expected to be $1.50 EPS on $25.67 Billion in estimates. 

Average analyst targets are roughly $25.00, which puts this stock close to being fully valued by many analysts.  That gives an implied 17.3 P/E ratio for its trailing 12 months, and it gives an implied forward P/E ratio of 14.6 for the year ahead.  As long as it can grow its earnings, neither number seems overly expensive for an industry leader in a rough economy.

We’ll follow up with more detailed options analysis, technical analysis, and individual metrics ahead of the report as the details are more defined.  As a reminder, these estimates from First Call may slightly change before the actual report.

Here is a full tech earnings calendar for next week.

 

Jon C. Ogg
June 21, 2008

Posted on: June 21, 2008 – 7:08 am in Earnings, Software,

R-I-M Set For Earnings (RIMM, AAPL, PALM)

The entire cell phone and electronic gadget market is going to brace for Research In Motion Ltd. (NASDAQ: RIMM) earnings on Wednesday afternoon.  While the companies are grossly different, you can expect that traders and analysts will be trying to interpolate all of the projection to see how this affects Steve Jobs and iPhone sales over at Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL).

The Canadian-based company estimates from First Call are $0.85 EPS on $2.27 Billion in revenues.  Next quarter’s estimates are $0.90 EPS on $2.43 Billion in revenues, and the estimates for its Fiscal Feb-2009 are $3.88 EPS on $10.35 Billion in revenues. 

Analysts have an average of target range of $160.00 to $165.00, although recent analyst targets hikes now have some targets north of $220.00.  One wild card that hasn’t been noted by many is the completely sold out status of Apple’s iPhone driving buyers to get Blackberry smartphones.  Apple will have lost an average of 45 to 60 days worth of iPhone sales as the old units were sold out and while it waits for the 3G iPhone to come to market.

We’ll follow up with more detailed options analysis, technical analysis, and individual metrics ahead of the report as the details are more defined.  As a reminder, these estimates from First Call may slightly change before the actual report.

We will also see earnings out of Palm Inc. (NASDAQ: PALM) on Thursday, although if you go ask any iPhone developers or Blackberry addicts about the impact there they are likely to ask you, "WHO ARE THEY?".

Here is a full earnings calendar for next week in key technology stocks.

Jon C. Ogg
June 21, 2008

Posted on: June 21, 2008 – 6:31 am in Earnings, Wireless, , ,

Sprint (S): From Dire To Desparate

Turning around Sprint (S), which has been getting harder, may be moving into the "impossible" column. The company recently showed up in the MSN Money customer satisfaction survey as one of the ten worst in the US. Thirty-nine of the respondents rated Sprint customer service as "poor".

Now it looks like fewer and fewer people want to do business with the cellular provider. New research from Changewave shows that of 3,597 consumers the firm polled in March, "only 11% said they currently use Sprint as their provider – a number which pales in comparison to Verizon (VZ; 31%) and AT&T (T; 28%)."

The research went further to show that "when we asked Sprint customers how likely they were to change service providers in the next 6 months, a relatively high percentage (21%) said they’re Likely to switch – compared to just 10% of Verizon customers and 11% for AT&T’s."

Things won’t get better at Sprint and its new WiMax network will not be finished until near the end of the decade. It is hard to imagine how the company will hang on for that long.

Douglas A. McIntyre

Posted on: June 21, 2008 – 5:26 am in Telecom, , , ,