Posts for Ticker ‘GOOG’

Unusual Friday Options Activity (AAPL, GOOG, BAC, LEAP, PCS, DRYS, YHOO)

We have seen some unusual options trading today.  As you would expect, some is around today’s 4:00 PM close  with today being options expiration date.  But some bets are way out into 2011 and we have some around merger rumors.  All have links with full details on the options trading analysis at VSInvestor:

Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) and Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) are both seeing very active trading around expiration date today, and the closest strikes are acting as magnets.

Bank of America Corp. (NYSE: BAC) has seen a very bullish bet in options out to 2011.

There is some elevated Dec-2009 Call options activity in both Leap Wireless International Inc. (NASDAQ: LEAP) and MetroPCS Communications Inc. (NYSE: PCS) on today’s re-rumor of a potential deal coming back up.

DryShips, Inc. (NASDAQ: DRYS) is very active in the stock after an increased convertible note offering, yet the options activity seen today seems muted.

Yahoo Inc. (NASDAQ: YHOO) has a big bet out in January 2011 options expiration.

You can join our open email distribution list to hear more news on key analyst calls, top day trader alerts, mergers and acquisitions, Buffett and other investment gurus, IPOs, secondary offerings, private equity, and more.

JON C. OGG
NOVEMBER 20, 2009

Posted on: November 20, 2009 – 3:24 pm in Options, Rumors, Trading Alert, , , , , , ,

Microsoft (MSFT) Claims Windows 7 Is Major Success

Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) CEO Steve Ballmer told attendees at the company’s annual shareholder meeting that Windows 7 sales were astonishingly high. According to a Wall Street Journal account of the gathering, “Microsoft Corp. has sold twice as many copies of Windows 7 in its first few weeks than any previous version of the operating system,” Ballmer said.

The news means that one of Microsoft’s five major operating units may do well and next year. That leaves four to go. Read More »

Posted on: November 20, 2009 – 5:40 am in Software, , , , , , ,

Media Digest 11/20/2009 Reuters, WSJ, NYTimes, FT, Bloomberg

Reuters:   The Senate is near its first vote on healthcare.

Reuters:   Dell (NASDAQ:DELL) is betting on corporate spending for its recovery.

Reuters:   Time Warner’s (NYSE:TWX) AOL showed that the worst is not over for media job cuts.

Reuters:   China cyber-spying against the US will probably grow. Read More »

Posted on: November 20, 2009 – 3:56 am in Press Digest, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Today’s Best Market Rumors (11/19/2009) (BA)(AMTD)(MWW)(NWSA)(AAPL)

Updated throughout the day.

Update 12.50 PM EST:  Boeing (NYSE:BA) could lose a $7.5 billion order for fighter planes to Brazil if the US Senate does not confirm Obama’s nominee to be ambassador to the South American country  (Bloomberg)

Update 11.08 AM EST:  TDAmeritrade (NASDAQ:AMTD) may be buying E*Trade  (NASDAQ:ETFC)  (Omaha World Herald)

Goldman Sachs (NYSE:GS) has lost a large number of its most talented people to hedge funds. (Bloomberg)

The Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) tablet PC launch date has been delayed until late 2010.  (Digitimes)

Monster.com (NASDAQ:MWW) may be taken over by News Corp (NASDAQ:NWSA) or Google (NASDAQ:GOOG)  (WSJ)

Blackstone’s (NYSE:BX) Pinnacle Brands may buy Birds Eye  (CNBC)

Sony (NYSE:SNE), Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT), and Nintendo are working on ways to keep market share as smart phones come after their market share.  (BusinessWeek)

Time Warner’s (NYSE:TWX) AOL is seeking to buy-out 2,500 employees as it is spun off by its parent. (various)

Citigroup (NYSE:C) may sell its auto lending group.  (NYPost)

You can join our open email distribution list to hear more news on key analyst calls, top day trader alerts, mergers and acquisitions, Buffett and other investment gurus, IPOs, secondary offerings, private equity, and more.

For more information on Citi, Microsoft, Sony, and Google check the 24/7 Wall St 500.

Douglas A. McIntyre

Posted on: November 19, 2009 – 8:45 am in Rumors, , , , , , , , , , ,

Today’s Best Market Rumors (11/18/2009) (MCD)(BAC)(GOOG)

Updated throughout the day.

Updated 1.48 PM EST:  News Corp’s (NYSE:NWS) MySpace is in talks to buy free music streaming site imeem. (AP)

Update 1.42 PM EST:  Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) will launch its own Android phone  (TechCrunch)

Carl Icahn is aggressively buying shares in MGM  (HollyWood Daily)

Apollo Management may try to list on the NYSE. (FT)

Paulson & Co. believe that Bank of America (NYSE:BAC) will double by the end of 2011.

Oil prices at $80 could damage the economy.  (Fortune)

The low volume of the rally is raising concern about why investors are not convinced the market is going higher  (CNBC)

Subway may open 1,000 stores in Russia by 2015, a challenge to McDonald’s (NYSE:MCD)  (Reuters)

Douglas A. McIntyre

Posted on: November 18, 2009 – 8:17 am in Rumors, , , ,

52-Week High Club (FDX, LNY, MRK, GOOG)

FedEx Corp. (NYSE: FDX) over 3% to a yearly high of $84.92.  Barron’s reported that the package delivery company may rise as high as $100 dollars according to a survey of investors and analysts.

Landry’s Restaurants Inc. (NYSE: LNY) rose over 20% to a yearly high of $20.23.  After last week’s buyout proposal from the company’s chief executive Bill Ackman’s Pershing Square Capital has reported a stake in the company and has divulged its opposition to the buyout offer.

Merck & Co. Inc. (NYSE: MRK) rose over 2.5% to a yearly high of $34.35.  The company’s Human Health President Keneth Frazier told CNBC that it would not pull Vytorin and Zetia, the company’s cholesterol medications, off of the market.

Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) rose close to 1% to a yearly high of $576.99.  The TechCruch blog put out a piece on Sunday reporting that Google had hired Microsoft’s (NASDAQ: MSFT) former director of new business development.

Garrett W. McIntyre

Posted on: November 16, 2009 – 4:02 pm in Food, Pharmaceuticals, Technology Companies, Transports, , , , ,

Cisco’s (CSCO) Tandberg Gamble That Video Quality Pays

TVCisco (NASDAQ:CSCO) has decided to gamble that it can get reluctant Tandberg shareholders to support a buyout of their company by raising its offer to $3.4 billion. That is a 10% improvement over Cisco’s previous offer. A number of Tandberg investors lined up against the first deal, saying it valued the company at too low a price.

Cisco says it will walk away from its attempt to buy the company if Tandberg shareholders do not approve a purchase at the new figure. The offer by Cisco is a huge gamble on video conferencing, an over-crowded field. Read More »

Posted on: November 16, 2009 – 5:35 am in Mergers and Buy Outs, Technology Companies, , ,

Media Digest 11/16/2009 Reuters, WSJ, NYTimes, FT, Bloomberg

newspaperReuters:   The Ohio Attorney General is suing a number of Wall St. firms.

Reuters:   GM will start to repay part of its debt to the US.

Reuters:   Citigroup (NYSE:C) will sell Bellsystem to Bain.

Reuters:   Japan’s GDP numbers were leaked. Read More »

Posted on: November 16, 2009 – 4:00 am in Press Digest, , , , , , , , , ,

Google (GOOG) Settles With Authors, Publishers

hersheyGoogle (NASDAQ:GOOG), book authors and publishers had until midnight to provide a federal court with a plan to settle their differences on how the search engine digitizes and charges for books. The group waited until the last minute to get its proposed settlement to the courthouse. The new agreement may address government concerns about Google’s earlier settlement that gave it a virtual monopoly in the online digital book market.

Read more…

Posted on: November 16, 2009 – 3:19 am in Law,

Media Digest 11/13/2009 Reuters, WSJ, NYTimes, FT, Bloomberg

newspaperReuters:   China’s economy may be hurt as its stimulus ends.

Reuters:   Warren Buffett says the financial panic is over.

Reuters:   Former bankers are considering buying failed banks.

Reuters:   The SEC is expected to go ahead with the Bear Stearns case. Read More »

Posted on: November 13, 2009 – 4:03 am in Press Digest, , , , , , , , , ,

Tech Giants Now Hold ~$265 Billion Cash To Spend (HPQ, COMS, INTC, AMD, MSFT, CSCO, AAPL, GOOG, ORCL, JAVA, QCOM, EMC, YHOO, DELL, AMZN, EBAY, ONT, BRCD, JDSU, STAR, VMW)

You have already seen the Hewlett-Packard (NYSE: HPQ) buyout of 3Com Corporation (NASDAQ: COMS).  But this week before that deal was announced we covered how mergers in the technology sector have been very slow to develop over the scale in which we and others think is possible for the sector.  After the Intel Corporation (NASDAQ: INTC) settlement with Advanced Micro Devices (NYSE: AMD), the tally of cash that is now estimated would be an implied $265 billion that is available for the tech giants in our 24/7 Wall St. Real-Time 500 to make acquisitions.

The giant cash balances are held by Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ: MSFT), Cisco Systems Inc. (NASDAQ: CSCO), Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL), Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG), and Oracle Corp. (NASDAQ: ORCL), assuming nothing happens with Sun Microsystems Inc. (NASDAQ: JAVA).  But players like QUALCOMM Inc. (NASDAQ: QCOM), EMC Corporation (NYSE: EMC), International Business Machines (NYSE: IBM), Dell Inc. (NASDAQ: DELL), Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ: YHOO), Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN), and eBay Inc. (NASDAQ: EBAY) are either all sitting with large amounts of cash or will be very soon.

We have broken out these technology, IT, software, and Internet companies by the cash amount they hold or what they have in a soon-to-be cash balance.  Of course only a fraction of this cash will be used for mergers.  But there is also a ton of room here for dividends and of course the share buybacks.

Read More »

Posted on: November 12, 2009 – 11:31 am in Consumer Electronics, Cramer, Dividend, Editor's Picks, Internet, Large Cap Stocks, Mergers and Buy Outs, PC Companies, Private Equity, Rumors, Semiconductor, Software, Stock Buybacks, Technology Companies, Telecom, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Maybe The Search Engine Business Isn’t So Great (YHOO)(GOOG)(MSFT)

TVSeveral studies show that Microsoft’s (NASDAQ:MSFT) Bing search engine picked up market share in October. Combined with Yahoo! the two companies could end up with clost to 30% of the industry in the United States. The firms believe that the deal will be final in the first quarter of next year. Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) will still have two-thirds of the market, but perhaps second place is not so bad.

The value of first place is hard to argue. Google has a market capitalization of $180 billion and had operating income of $2 billion on revenue of slightly less than $6 billion last quarter. Yahoo! serves about 20% of the searchs made in the US but has a market cap of only $23 billion and made a very modest $70 million on $1.78 billion in revenue in the period ending September 30. Microsoft does not break out its search revenue or expense, but its online operations are small and lose money. Read More »

Posted on: November 11, 2009 – 7:58 pm in Internet, , ,

Bing Captures More Search Share (MSFT, GOOG, YHOO, IACI)

It is usually questionable if Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ: MSFT) and its new Bing.com search engine is stealing from Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) or from Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ: YHOO) when it comes to gains in the share of internet search.  Or maybe it was IAC/InteractiveCorp. (NASDAQ: IACI) and its Ask.com distant #4 search product.  Hitwise is only one source which measures U.S. searches, but a reading of searches conducted in the four weeks ending Oct. 31, 2009 showed a gain for Bing. Hitwise showed that Bing is clearly taking more from Google and some from Yahoo!.  Even Ask.com got a little lift this time.  Hitwise gave the following data:
Read More »

Posted on: November 11, 2009 – 1:23 pm in Internet, Research, , , ,

Today’s Best Market Rumors (11/11/2009) (AMR)(INTC)(GE)

magazinUpdated throughout the day.

11:45 AM EST: Motorola Inc. (NYSE: MOT) may seek to sell its Home & Networking division for about $4.5 billion according to WSJ. -Jon Ogg

American Air (NYSE:AMR) may team with private equity firm TPG to make an investment in Japan Air.  (Bloomberg)

AIG (NYSE:AIG) CEO Robert E. Benmosche may resign. (WSJ)

Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) plans to release a new programming language called Go that can help computer coders improve efficiency  (CNET)

China may benchmark the yuan against currencies other than the dollar. (CNBC)

Intel (NASDAQ:INTC) may hold a critical edge against the EU in the antitrust battle.

General Electric (NYSE:GE) is in talks to sell its security systems unit to United Technologies (NYSE:UTX) for over $1.5 billion. (FT)

Douglas A. McIntyre

Posted on: November 11, 2009 – 8:41 am in Rumors, , , , , ,

Wal-Mart (WMT) Give RIM (RIMM) A Hand

WMTRIM (NASDAQ:RIMM) has been under seige these last few weeks. Investors are concerned that the Blackberry maker is losing market share to the Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) iPhone and a new group of handsets using the Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) Android mobile operating system. Motorola (NYSE:MOT) launched its Droid just last week.

RIM shareholders are also nervous the Palm (NASDAQ:PALM) Pre sales could take a very modest but still damaging piece of the Blackberry market.

Wal-Mart (NYSE:WMT) means to help save RIM. Read More »

Posted on: November 11, 2009 – 8:15 am in Wireless, , , , , , ,

Media Digest 11/11/2009 Reuters, WSJ, NY Times, FT, Bloomberg

newspaperReuters:   Two Bear Stearns hedge fund managers were acquited.

Reuters:   Zucker, NBCU’s current CEO, will head the company when Comcast (NASDAQ:CMCSA) buys a majority of the company from GE (NYSE:GE).

Reuters:  Dodd’s super-bank regulator fights a uphil battle in Congress.

Reuters:   Fed officials see an uneven recovery. Read More »

Posted on: November 11, 2009 – 4:09 am in Press Digest, , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Tech Titans Still Have $269 Billion Cash For Deals (MSFT, CSCO, AAPL, GOOG, INTC, HPQ, QCOM, EMC, VMW, YHOO, DELL, ORCL, JAVA, AMZN, EBAY)

The recovery is on and mergers are happening, yet the technology sector has been slow to make deals.  Despite some deals already having taken place from the technology giants and that $260 billion cash balance which was there in the middle of last quarter is even larger now.  The tally for cash by our count is now right around $269 billion.  We looked through the top market caps of technology companies in our 24/7 Wall St. Real-Time 500 and this list is expanded now that some issues have been resolved in all the companies.  The stocks in this group are Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ: MSFT), Cisco Systems Inc. (NASDAQ: CSCO), Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL), Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG), Intel Corp. (NASDAQ: INTC), Oracle Corp. (NASDAQ: ORCL), Sun Microsystems Inc. (NASDAQ: JAVA), Hewlett-Packard Company (NYSE: HPQ), QUALCOMM Inc. (NASDAQ: QCOM), EMC Corporation (NYSE: EMC), International Business Machines (NYSE: IBM), Dell Inc. (NASDAQ: DELL), Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ: YHOO), Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN), and eBay Inc. (NASDAQ: EBAY).

These few tech companies with the $269 billion cash that could be deployed for mergers, acquisitions, or the good old dividends are also listed before tallying up credit lines, factoring, debt sales, and other creative financing methods.  We have listed the suppositions and counting methods for each one to illustrate how much is available at each company.
Read More »

Posted on: November 10, 2009 – 1:07 pm in Consumer Electronics, Dividend, Editor's Picks, Internet, Large Cap Stocks, Mergers and Buy Outs, PC Companies, Private Equity, Rumors, Semiconductor, Technology Companies, Value Investing, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

A Split With Google (GOOG) Would Hurt News Corp (NWS) And WSJ Badly

bearRupert Murdoch, head of News Corp (NYSE:NWS), has made it clear that he is done with the BBC and Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) stealing his content and using it to make money. He may sue both companies under the “fair use” laws to keep them from using material from his huge media empire.

Murdoch should be careful what he wishes for. According to a study from Experian Hitwise, “on a weekly basis Google and Google news are the top traffic providers for WSJ.com account for over 25% of WSJ.com’s traffic.” And, “over 44% of WSJ.com visitors coming from Google are “new” users who haven’t visited the domain in the last 30 days.”

Murdoch may have his way and badly damage his WSJ.com business in the process.

Douglas A. McIntyre

Posted on: November 10, 2009 – 4:54 am in Internet, Law, ,

Media Digest 11/10/2009 Reuters, WSJ, NYTimes, FT, Bloomberg

newspaperReuters:   Markets hit their 2009 highs.

Reuters:   Dodd is set to unveil his financial reform bill which calls for merging many bank regulators.

Reuters:   Kraft’s (NYSE:KFT) bid for Cadbury turned hostile.

Reuters:   A survey of economists predicted strong GDP growth in 2010. Read More »

Posted on: November 10, 2009 – 3:57 am in Press Digest, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

AdMob Acquisition: Deeper into Mobile Ads for Google (GOOG)

GOOG ImageGoogle Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) is up with the broad market today by almost 2%, and shares are completely unphased at all on news that the company is spending $750 million in shares to acquire AdMob.  While Google has made many deals, this is aimed to go deeper into the technology for mobile display advertising and will give advertisers more choice in mobile advertising.
Read More »

Posted on: November 9, 2009 – 12:59 pm in Internet, Media,