STOCK WATCH
US shares prices
Shares had a topsy turvy time this week, when they were hit by the profit warning issued by Oracle (see above story). Because Oracle blamed Asia for poor sales, this affected other IT companies. IBM fell $2 to $110, Hewlett Packard was down $1 to 64, Compaq $2 to $63, Digital $3 to $42 and Cisco $2 to $87. On the chip side, Intel was down $3 to $76, Texas Instruments $2 to $45 and Motorola dropped $62.
UK stock
The London stock market took a further beating after continued problems in the Far East. On 12 December the FTSE 100 recovered slightly by 11 points to 5,046. Azlan was down 0.5p at 49p on 12 December. Compel Group was also down 0.5p at 301p. Datrontech bucked the trend by gaining 5p at 103p. Eidos was unchanged at 750p, as well as Ilion at 131.5p.
Quantum
Disk drive manufacturer Quantum warned on 11 December that its earnings for the period ending 31 December would be short of Wall Street expectations. It was expected to report earnings of between 25 cents and 35 cents per share, instead of the previous prediction of 60 cents per share. The company blamed the pricing pressure on the PC business as a reason for its below expectation figures.
Third quarter earnings are expected to be on the same level as the second quarter figures of $1.55 billion.
Siemens
Siemens Nixdorf has predicted that its net profits will rise by 15 per cent in the year to September 1998 to reach more than DM3 billion. The company claimed the value of orders taken would rise by up to six per cent, and are expected to amount to DM110 billion and DM115 billion.
Sage
Accountancy software developer Sage has achieved a 12 per cent increase in sales to #152.1 million and pre-tax profit of #37.6 million, a jump of 25 per cent. The figures included the first contribution from its German subsidiary. Paul Walker, CEO of Sage, admitted the company would make further acquisitions.
Kingfisher
Kingfisher Plc, the owner of Comet, Woolworths and B&Q, warned Christmas trading was proving more competitive than ever. The comments forced the company's shares down 22p to 828p on 11 December, to 813p a day later. The group reported sales growth of 7.8 per cent in the 13 weeks trading to 1 November, with Comet showing a 3.4 per cent increase. Forecasts for the full-year profits increased from #470 million to #475 million.