Wall Street Beat: Tech shines as earnings come in strong

IDG News Service - This week's tsunami of tech earnings, led by Apple's jaw-dropping quarterly report, has given market watchers something to cheer about and also points to industry shifts around tablets and cloud computing.

The fourth quarter of 2011 was not kind to all vendors, as economic concerns affected spending on tech and floods in Thailand continued to have ripple effects on the global component supply chain. These were some of the main reasons analysts were expecting a soft fourth quarter for 2011 and slower growth for 2012.

For example, a few weeks ago, Gartner announced that it had lowered its 2012 forecast, with IT spending expected to rise only 3.7 percent, compared to the prior forecast of 4.6 percent growth. Highlighting faltering global economic growth and the eurozone crisis, brought on by enormous debt in countries including Greece and Italy, Gartner said global IT spending in 2012 will total US$3.8 trillion.

But the actual results from the fourth quarter have sparked some confidence in tech. At the close of Thursday's trading, tech stocks on the Nasdaq were up a healthy 7.77 percent since Jan. 1. By Friday afternoon, Nasdaq computer stocks had inched up another 0.5 percent. Bellwether vendors, including those with strong results this week, have been rewarded with a jump in share prices. For example, EMC shares were up by $0.14 to $25.79 and American Depository Shares of SAP were up by $1.01 to $60.29 Friday afternoon. Apple, recently regaining its position as the most highly valued company on the planet in terms of market capitalization (share price multiplied by number of shares), was up by $1.21 to $445.79.

Apple, reporting Tuesday, is the superstar of earnings season so far, beating expectations for sales and profit and surging past forecasts for iPad, Mac and iPhone, all of which set sales records for the company.

The company posted record quarterly revenue of $46.33 billion and record net profit of $13.06 billion, compared to revenue of $26.74 billion and net quarterly profit of $6 billion in the year-ago quarter.

"Apple posted remarkable December quarter results," according to T. Michael Walkley and Matthew D. Ramsay in a research note for Canaccord Genuity. Looking ahead to the rest of the calendar year and also at 2013, the analysts wrote: "We believe Apple is well positioned for very strong C2012/13 sales and earnings growth driven by new product introductions, including the pending refresh of MacBook Air, the iPad 3 launching this spring, an LTE iPhone likely in CQ3/12 and potentially Apple TV exiting C2012."

The earnings report signaled two trends in IT: the rise of tablets and the imminent end of Microsoft's dominance in the enterprise. The report made it clear that Apple sold more iPads in the fourth quarter -- 15.4 million -- than any PC manufacturer sold personal computers.