Matthew Rafat submits:
On July 23, 2010, I wrote: "I own Brocade (BRCD) shares. As of July 23, 2010, Brocade is my largest individual stock holding." The original post is here.
On July 23, 2010, BRCD was trading around 5.03. BRCD declined further over the next few weeks, dropping to around 4.70. I continued to buy on the way down, even as I doubled my workout routine to deal with the stress.
Daniel Long submits:
Brocade Communications (BRCD) has been on the hot seat lately due to a lack of revenue growth relative to their perceived peers. Revenues grew just 2% year over year, while heavyweight Cisco (CSCO) posted 27% growth. A company nearer Brocade’s size, Qlogic (QLGC), which has almost 3/4ths the market cap but only a quarter of the revenues, saw 16% year over year quarterly revenue growth. Data Storage Devices as a whole saw 18% revenue growth. Brocade’s operating margins have been slipping as well, below CSCO, QLGC and a few others, but are still above the industry average.
It is hard to make direct comparisons in these particular industries, however, as each company offers their own line of unique solutions in an ever evolving space. This has caused results and outlooks for the data storage industry to be all over the map lately. Signs of firms increasing IT spending earlier in the year and some good projections for technology spending here and there have been met by pessimism, with Cisco recently saying that they see some uncertainly among their customers.
Trader Mark submits:
Since being reintroduced into the portfolio August 12th on a limit order when Riverbed Technology (RVBD) filled its "gap," the stock has been on fire. It is acting as if the S&P 500 is up 5-7% for the month of August, rather than down by that amount.
Within 48 hours of purchase I had a 8% gain on my purchase so I quickly took profits thinking with the market in trouble, the gains could evaporate. Instead it has lived in a vacuum.
Wall Street Cheat Sheet submits:
By Carolyn Austin
Yes, this is truly a time of “unusual uncertainty” as the usually cool-as-a-cucumber Cisco (CSCO) CEO John Chambers stated in early August and caused ripples in the world of technology.
Zacks.com submits:
On Wednesday, after market close, JDS Uniphase Corp. (JDSU) declared its fourth quarter of fiscal 2010 financial results. On a GAAP basis, quarterly net income was $1.5 million or an income of 1 cent per share compared with a net loss of $63.6 million or a loss of 29 cents per share in the year-ago quarter. However, quarterly adjusted (excluding special items) EPS was 9 cents, a penny short of the Zacks Consensus Estimate of 10 cents.
In the after market trade on NASDAQ, stock price of JDS Uniphase Corp. was down by 30 cents (2.96%) to $9.92.
StreetAuthority submits:
As tech stocks were exploding in the late 1990s, companies offering video conferencing technology were all the rage. Investors assumed that all business meetings would eventually be replaced by video and audio feeds, allowing for virtual face-to-face collaboration. A decade later, the industry has made major inroads (if not completely replacing business meetings), dominated by industry leaders like Sweden-based Tandberg and Polycom (Nasdaq: PLCM).
Investors in Polycom were handed a nice gift when Cisco Systems (Nasdaq: CSCO) announced plans to acquire Tandberg in October 2009 for $3 billion. In ensuing months, shares of Polycom rose from the low $20s to the low $30s as investors assumed that Polycom would also soon be acquired.
New Finance submits:
After all the recent negativity centered on Cisco (CSCO), I thought it would be a good idea to step back and figure out if the stock price had gotten to a point where it looked attractive. Historically, Cisco has been outside of the realm of any honest fundamental investor. However, with all the negative attention, I wondered if perhaps their shares had been battered beneath their intrinsic value.
Cisco is a company that operates primarily in the network switch, service, security, router and IP realm. They are the leader in enterprise routing and switching, with little in the way of threats to their crown. They have large cash flows and a significant pile of cash with which they can acquire new seedling technologies and incubate them in house. They maintain aggressive growth estimates, despite their increase in size. This raises the concern that future growth opportunities may cut into their currently healthy margins.
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