Tintri — a virtualized storage company whose name means lightning in Gaelic — added 110% to its revenues in the last year — taking market share from NetApp and EMC — which grew at 1.6% and 8.5% respectively. …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Forbes Latest
TechCruch: IBM is getting into the platform-as-a-service (PaaS) market by standardizing on Cloud Foundry, originally developed by VMware and now part of Pivotal, the EMC spin-off.
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Linux Today
In an exclusive interview with Network World when he also touched on the consumer market and EMC alliance, Chambers said efforts like
Facebook’s Open Compute project, which is working on open source servers and switches, will be limited by “weaknesses” in scope that Cisco can exploit, CEO John Chambers said this week.
In an exclusive interview with Network World when he also touched on the consumer market and EMC alliance, Chambers said efforts like Facebook’s to commoditize and wring cost out of hardware purchases will open up opportunities for Cisco to provide solutions that are better tailored to specific customer needs.
“I think this will just be one more series of good challenges that Cisco will say ‘what’s the business objective on,'” Chambers said of Open Compute. “There are a lot of weaknesses to the area — we’re going to go back and solve customer problems. If you’re standalone anything, this is going to be a hard market to play in. Anything white label, where the decision is cost or opex, you’re going to lose.”
What Cisco will not do is sit around and let Open Compute proponents and supporters guide the discussion on commodity switches and servers. Cisco’s messaging will be proactive instead of reactive this time.
To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Source: FULL ARTICLE at PCWorld
By Dan Caplinger, The Motley Fool
Filed under: Investing
The S&P 500 Index includes 500 of the biggest companies in the U.S. market. But for various reasons, some large companies have gotten left out of the benchmark index. Let’s look at four of the largest ones and try to figure out whether Standard & Poor’s will remedy their omission in the near future.
Facebook
With a market capitalization of more than $65 billion, Facebook erupted onto the public markets last year to great fanfare and even greater disappointment. Yet despite the social-media giant’s woes, the company has been slowly getting itself onto some major market benchmarks, most notably the Nasdaq 100 index.
For Facebook to get into the S&P, current standards require that the company be “seasoned for six to 12 months.” With the company coming up on its one-year IPO anniversary, Facebook should expect to be in investors’ index portfolios in the very near future.
Las Vegas Sands
As a worldwide casino gaming giant, Las Vegas Sands has a $46 billion market cap, which would easily be enough to put it into the top 100 companies, let alone the top 500. But during the 2008 market meltdown, the stock traded as low as $1.38 per share, bringing its market cap down to small-cap territory.
Another key reason Las Vegas Sands hasn’t regained admittance to the S&P 500 probably has to do with CEO Sheldon Adelson’s substantial insider stake in the company. S&P prefers that companies have ample shares constituting the public float in order to meet index-fund demand, and with less than half of its outstanding shares actually available for trade, Las Vegas Sands may get left off the benchmark index for a while unless Adelson decides to divest himself of his big holdings.
General Motors
GM‘s bankruptcy in 2009 resulted in a huge reorganization that included having the U.S. Treasury hold a substantial stake in the automaker’s new stock. Although the Treasury has made some sales of stock, it still owns nearly $8 billion in GM — not quite a fifth of the automaker’s overall market cap. Other parties to the bankruptcy proceeding, including auto unions, also hold big share positions.
The result is that of GM‘s outstanding shares, barely 40% are available to investors. Until the Treasury and other parties sell off more of their positions, GM is unlikely to gain admittance to the S&P 500.
VMware
Cloud-computing giant VMware is an example of how corporate structures can give individual-stock investors opportunities that index funds lack. As a roughly 80%-owned subsidiary of EMC, VMware lacks a substantial float, which makes it unlikely that the stock will ever get into the S&P as long as EMC retains its stake.
Keep your eyes on Facebook
Of these four stocks, Facebook is the most likely to find itself part of the S&P in the near future. As lockup expirations have increased its float, its high market cap and importance in
From: http://www.dailyfinance.com/2013/04/14/why-arent-these-4-stock-giants-in-the-sp/
By Business Wirevia The Motley Fool
Filed under: Investing
New Molded M12 Right-Angle Connectors from Belden’s Lumberg Automation Brand Have 360° Shielding
Reliable data transmission even in extremely demanding environments
ST. LOUIS–(BUSINESS WIRE)– Belden Inc., a global leader in signal transmission solutions for mission-critical applications, has extended its Lumberg Automation product program in the Americas region to include new molded M12 male and female right-angle connectors with 360° shielding. These connectors permit the reliable transmission of analog and digital data, even in environments with strong electromagnetic fields. The connectors are available as either single-ended or double-ended cordsets for actuators/sensors, PROFIBUS and Ethernet cables, and connection cables. The angular design of the connectors facilitates quick installations, even where space is at a premium.
Product features include an operating temperature range of -25 °C to +85 °C, high shock and vibration resistance, and IP67, IP68 and IP69K ratings approvals. Capable of withstanding high-pressure/steam-jet cleaning, the male and female connectors can be used even in the harshest environmental conditions. Already including straight connectors with 360 degree shielding, the Lumberg Automation program can now provide an ideal M12 connection cable for actuators/sensors, passive distributors or PROFIBUS/Ethernet modules in almost any installation scenario.
For these new 360° shielded connectors, actuator/sensor connection cables can be obtained with four, five or eight poles. Depending on the version, the rated voltage is 30, 60 or 240 V AC/DC and the rated current is 4 or 8 A. Insulation resistance is >109 Ω for all versions. The connectors for PROFIBUS and Ethernet cordsets and connection cables are B or D coded, and have a rated current of 4 A and a rated voltage of 60 or 240 V AC/DC.
The molded body and housing are made of thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU). The insert is either of the same material (PROFIBUS cordsets) or polybutylene terephthalate (PBT). The contacts are gold plated. The molded cables, made of PUR or PVC, are available in lengths of 2, 5, 10 and 15 meters. Other lengths are available on request.
According to Lumberg Automation Product Manager Hiyam Wakeem, product manager for Lumberg Automation, “For restricted space applications, these new right-angle connectors provide an efficient solution. The cables also stand up to the harshest environmental conditions with their patented shielding solution especially in EMC sensitive areas.”
For more information on Lumberg Automation M12 Right-Angle Connectors with 360° Shielding, download the Product Bulletin.
Lumberg Automation products are designed for dependable signal transmission …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at DailyFinance
By GuruFocus, Contributor According to the GuruFocus list of 52-week lows, these stocks have reached their 52-week lows. …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Forbes Latest
By Brian Stoffel, The Motley Fool
Filed under: Investing
Once you get the hang of it, it’s pretty easy to dissect balance sheets, income, and cash flow statements. This is the first step in getting your feet wet in the investment world.
But it doesn’t stop there. If we were to base investing decisions solely on what we read in these statements, that would be akin to picking a significant other based solely on their Facebook profile — to many, it just doesn’t make sense to avoid real-life interaction.
Investigating these “soft” aspects of a company is important for investors. And although we can’t capture all of the intangibles of a company in one article, Glassdoor.com — a website that collects employee sentiment for companies across the world — recently came out with a list that could help: the Top CEOs of 2013.
Over the past few days, I’ve covered CEOs 25 through 5. Today, I’m going to introduce you to the company with the 4th-highest-rated CEO, give you some background on the company, and at the end, I’ll offer access to a special free report on who is going to win the war between the five biggest tech stocks.
EMC
For those who might be unfamiliar with this three-letter entity, EMC is a leader in creating data storage and security infrastructure for the growing information needs of today’s world. In other words, it is firmly entrenched in the war to win the battle for providing cloud computing with the necessary components to make the cloud work.
Though the company is valued at roughly $50 billion and has about 60,000 employees, it will have to prove nimble at fending off rivals with deeper pockets to provide the parts necessary to make tomorrow’s cloud work.
IBM and Oracle represent the bulk of that competition — as both companies are worth three to five times the value of EMC, and have between two to seven times the employees working for them. Though EMC might have been an earlier entrant into the data storage and security arena for the cloud, both of these giants have competing products on the market — Oracle with its Exadata and IBM with its SmartCloud.
It takes leadership to slay these giants
Leading the charge to win this battle is CEO Joe Tucci. Tucci has been the head of EMC since January 2001, and under his guidance, the company has expanded its reach, and with it, its revenue and earnings.
Taken from mid-2002 — which eliminates the dot-com bust he inherited and had little control over — EMC has grown revenue and earnings by 13% and 36% per year.
EMC Revenue TTM data by YCharts.
Along the way, Tucci has made some pivotal moves to keep EMC ahead of the competition. That included the 2004 decision to acquire VMware , a cloud and virtualization company, and later offer some VMware shares in a 2007 IPO. EMC still owns roughly 80%, and Tucci has made some tough calls on the …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at DailyFinance
In November 1998, I sent to my then-colleagues at EMC an email with the subject line “The Demise of Dell.” I wrote: …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Forbes Latest
By Chuck Jones, Contributor Lazard’s analyst Ed Parker initiated coverage of Apple with a Buy rating, $540 price target and a view that it is a “storage” company due to incenting customers to buy NAND flash memory at 80%-90% incremental margins. Lazard’s thesis is that Apple’s business model has more in common with EMC and NetApp than RIM/BlackBerry and Nokia since there is a better user experience by having content on a mobile device and therefore needing more memory. …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Forbes Latest
By Selena Maranjian, The Motley Fool
Filed under: Investing
Exchange-traded funds offer a convenient way to invest in sectors or niches that interest you. If you’d like to add some technology-heavy stocks to your portfolio, the iShares S&P Global Technology Sector Index Fund could save you a lot of trouble. Instead of trying to figure out which companies will perform best, you can use this ETF to invest in lots of them simultaneously.
The basics
ETFs often sport lower expense ratios than their mutual fund cousins. The iShares ETF‘s expense ratio — its annual fee — is a relatively low 0.48%.
This ETF has outperformed the world markets over the past five years, but slightly underperformed them over the past decade. As with most investments, of course, we can’t expect outstanding performances in every quarter or year. Investors with conviction need to wait for their holdings to deliver.
Why technology?
Our growing world population will demand more and better high-tech products and services over time, boosting the business of successful technology-oriented companies.
More than a handful of technology-oriented companies had strong performances over the past year. Visa and MasterCard surged 42% and 25%, respectively. Both have been threatened by the growth and potential of mobile and electronic payments, but both have been investing in these areas as well. Visa is the leader in its realm, and is considering buying Visa Europe. MasterCard, meanwhile, is a stronger cash-flow generator and is enjoying strong growth in emerging markets.
Texas Instruments up 8%, has investors bullish about its strong cash flow and its growing attention to industrial applications for its technology. The company is bullish on itself, too, recently hiking its dividend payout by a whopping 33%, so that it now yields about 3.2%. It’s also boosting its multibillion-dollar share buyback program, which isn’t necessarily good news, as its shares don’t seem that cheap right now.
Other companies didn’t do as well last year, but could see their fortunes change in the coming years. EMC , for example, shed 21%, in part due to weak near-term guidance in an environment of low IT spending. Still, many see it poised to gain from the rapidly growing cloud-computing and “Big Data” arenas. The company also holds an 80% ownership stake in virtualization specialist VMware, though VMware’s dominance in its market may mean slower growth in the future.
The big picture
Demand for technology isn’t going away anytime soon. A well-chosen ETF can grant you instant diversification across any industry or group of companies — and make investing in and profiting from it that much easier.
To learn more about a few ETFs that have great promise for delivering profits to shareholders in a recovering global economy, check out The Motley Fool’s special free report “3 ETFs Set to Soar During the Recovery.” Just click here to access it now.
The …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at DailyFinance
By Rich Smith, The Motley Fool
Filed under: Investing
On what appears to have been a slow day for defense contracting, the Department of Defense announced the award of only two contracts on Tuesday — and one of them was to a small, privately held company that won’t interest investors at all.
It wasn’t an entirely uneventful day, however.
The Pentagon gave a $22 million indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract to EMC . This contract calls upon EMC to provide “instrumentation support for instrumentation loading, integration, analysis and display (ILIAD), Enterprise Test Data Management System (ETDMS), Odyssey, and supplies to Air Force test customers.” The contract has an estimated completion date of April 2, 2017.
Meanwhile, the DOD had some disappointing news for Booz Allen Hamilton shareholders. You know how we reported last week that Booz Allen got the biggest of several contracts awarded back on March 29?About $59.4 million to provide “additional systems engineering and integration support for launch test and range system programs” for the U.S. Air Force? Well, as it turns out, most of that remains true. However, when the DOD said “$59.4 million,” what it really meant to say was “$8.9 million.” The Pentagon announced this minor correction today, and the value of Booz Allen‘s contract instantly shrank by 85%. Oops.
The article Pentagon Shrinks Value of Booz Allen Contract by 85% originally appeared on Fool.com.
Fool contributor Rich Smith has no position in any stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool owns shares of EMC. Try any of our Foolish newsletter services free for 30 days. We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that considering a diverse range of insights makes us better investors. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
Copyright © 1995 – 2013 The Motley Fool, LLC. All rights reserved. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
(function(c,a){window.mixpanel=a;var b,d,h,e;b=c.createElement(“script”);
b.type=”text/javascript”;b.async=!0;b.src=(“https:”===c.location.protocol?”https:”:”http:”)+
‘//cdn.mxpnl.com/libs/mixpanel-2.2.min.js’;d=c.getElementsByTagName(“script”)[0];
d.parentNode.insertBefore(b,d);a._i=[];a.init=function(b,c,f){function d(a,b){
var c=b.split(“.”);2==c.length&&(a=a[c[0]],b=c[1]);a[b]=function(){a.push([b].concat(
Array.prototype.slice.call(arguments,0)))}}var g=a;”undefined”!==typeof f?g=a[f]=[]:
f=”mixpanel”;g.people=g.people||[];h=[‘disable’,’track’,’track_pageview’,’track_links’,
‘track_forms’,’register’,’register_once’,’unregister’,’identify’,’alias’,’name_tag’,
‘set_config’,’people.set’,’people.increment’];for(e=0;e<h.length;e++)d(g,h[e]);
a._i.push([b,c,f])};a.__SV=1.2;})(document,window.mixpanel||[]);
mixpanel.init("9659875b92ba8fa639ba476aedbb73b9");
function addEvent(obj, evType, fn, useCapture){
if (obj.addEventListener){
obj.addEventListener(evType, fn, useCapture);
return true;
} else if (obj.attachEvent){
var r = obj.attachEvent("on"+evType, fn);
return r;
}
}
addEvent(window, "load", function(){new FoolVisualSciences();})
addEvent(window, "load", function(){new PickAd();})
var themeName = 'dailyfinance.com';
var _gaq = _gaq || [];
_gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-24928199-1']);
_gaq.push(['_trackPageview']);
(function () {
var ga = document.createElement('script');
ga.type = 'text/javascript';
…read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at DailyFinance
By Brian Stoffel, The Motley Fool
Filed under: Investing
Once you get the hang of it, it’s pretty easy to dissect balance sheets, income, and cash flow statements. This is the first step in getting your feet wet in the investment world.
But it doesn’t stop there. If we were to base investing decisions solely on what we read in these statements, that would be akin to picking a significant other based solely on their Facebook profile — to many, it just doesn’t make sense to avoid real-life interaction.
Investigating these “soft” aspects of a company are important for investors. And although we can’t capture all of the intangibles of a company in one article, Glassdoor.com — a website that collects employee sentiment for companies across the world — recently came out with a list that could help: the Top CEOs of 2013.
Over the past few days, I’ve covered CEOs 25 through 10. Today, I’m going to introduce you to the company with the 9th highest-rated CEO, give you some background on the company, and at the end, I’ll offer up access to a special free report that covers the biggest names in tech.
Citrix Systems
In an interesting twist, both the No. 10 and No. 9 CEOs are both leaders for the cloud computing revolution. Last week, I detailed how Marc Beinoff, CEO of salesforce.com and 10th rated CEO for 2013, was one of the earliest pioneers of cloud computing and Software-as-a-Service, or SaaS.
If the concept of “the cloud” is somewhat foreign to you, don’t be embarrassed; when I first heard of the the cloud years ago, I though it had to do with the things floating through the sky. Foolish colleague Alex Planes wrote a great primer on the cloud that’s worth reading here.
Whereas Salesforce focuses on providing the platform for companies to use the cloud, Citrix provides the technology that helps the cloud to function. Today, we’ll be focusing on Citrix CEO Mark Templeton.
Templeton arrived at Citrix in 1995 and has been CEO since 2001. Under his watch, Citrix has been able to grow revenue by a steady 15%, and earnings by 13%, per year.
CTXS Revenue TTM data by YCharts.
Leadership as a differentiator
Citrix certainly goes up against some big competition in an effort to make the cloud faster and more efficient. Cisco and VMware are in the same industry and have market capitalizations exponentially higher than Citrix.
Cisco itself is worth over $100 billion, and though VMware is a much more modest $34 billion, 80% of the company is owned by EMC , which sports a market cap of $50 billion. I throw these numbers at you to demonstrate that Citrix, sitting at $13 billion, is far smaller.
However, that doesn’t mean the company isn’t performing well within its virtualization niche. VMware recently had to hold a strategy day to make it clear it wasn’t being taken to school by Citrix. Citrix has been stealing market …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at DailyFinance
By Nix_Lover
I’m looking for any information from Oracle or EMC on the ratio between the flash tier and the disk tier. Note, ASM and ZFS are not being used in this case, the array will do the tiering in 1g block chunks
…read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at The UNIX and Linux Forums
By Richard Saintvilus, The Motley Fool
Filed under: Investing
Investors of storage giant EMC were not pleased after management came out with lower guidance for fiscal 2013. I felt this was more the result of potential struggles with VMware , which is 80% owned by EMC, than it was with EMC itself. But it didn’t matter. The Street reacted, and the stock got punished.
However, given the state of the hardware market, EMC‘s outlook wasn’t really that bad. And there was plenty of evidence that the company was winning the storages war despite recent pricing pressure from rivals such as IBM and Hewlett-Packard. But, following a recent “strategy day” with analysts, EMC seems poised for stronger growth down the road. And patient investors will be rewarded.
Change we can believe in
Bears remain fearful that the storage/cloud market will remain turbulent for at least 2013. In many respects, they’re right. But EMC has never gotten its due credit for its ability to quickly adapt to changing trends. A perfect example was the company’s recent announcement to spin-off areas of the business that, while strong in performance, were getting lost in the shuffle. By creating a separate entity, EMC feels that more value can be realized.
The company calls it “the pivotal initiative,” which is, essentially, a group of assets that includes data analytics, cloud computing, and Bid Data. Although management has not fully disclosed how the new company will be structured, it did say that Paul Maritz, who is VMware’s former CEO and has been running the Pivotal inside of EMC, will remain at the helm following the spin-off. The company also said that Pivotal will be jointly owned with VMware, which will take up 31% of Pivotal, while EMC will absorb the 69% majority.
EMC‘s Greenplum and Pivotal Labs assets will be the major contributors of the operation, while VMware will put in its Cloud Foundry, Cetas, Spring, and Gemfire groups. Analysts love the idea. Brian White of Topeka Capital Markets, who has a buy rating on EMC with a $30 price target, said that Pivotal is expected to have $300 million in revenue this year. He also projected that the total available market for Big Data, which is currently $6 billion this year, can grow to $17 billion by 2016. In other words, although EMC doesn’t look like a stock that can ring in sizable gains this year, there is still plenty to love with the company in the long-term.
How much better will this make EMC?
While there is no doubt that EMC is the dominant force in storage, it’s not as if the competition is just going to roll over. And I think management understands this. To that end, EMC projected just 8% revenue growth for fiscal 2013. Management also warned that revenue growth for the first half of this year will arrive slightly below 8%, while the second half will make up the difference.
However, that’s not to suggest that management was down on its capabilities. Much of the downbeat guidance …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at DailyFinance
By Selena Maranjian, The Motley Fool
Filed under: Investing
Every quarter, many money managers have to disclose what they’ve bought and sold, via “13F” filings. Their latest moves can shine a bright light on smart stock picks.
Today let’s look at Maverick Capital, founded by Lee Ainslie and Sam Wyly in 1993. Avoiding bonds, commodities, currencies, and options, it sticks with stocks, holding both long and short positions. It employs fundamental analysis, and examines management closely.
The company’s reportable stock portfolio totaled $6.8 billion in value as of December 31, 2012.
Interesting developments
So what does Maverick Capital‘s latest quarterly 13F filing tell us? Here are a few interesting details:
The biggest new holdings are EMC and Crown Castle International. Other new holdings of interest include United Parcel Service . The delivery giant has seen its performance stutter a bit due to massive pension-related write-offs, but its volume has been growing, it has been raising its rates, and it recently boosted its dividend by 9%. (It now yields 2.9%. The company has committed to hiring 25,000 veterans, and it stands to benefit if Congress continues gutting the Post Office.
Among holdings in which Maverick Capital increased its stake was Citrix Systems . The company is impressing some with its virtualization business, adding on mobile capabilities through its acquisition of Zenprise, and growing its recurring licensing revenue. The company’s last earnings report was solid, but management tempered some expectations for 2013.
Maverick Capital reduced its stake in lots of companies, including Skyworks Solutions , which is a semiconductor company supplying, among other things, radio chips for iDevices. Its focus extends beyond smartphones, though, as it also supplies the car market and medical devices. Recent weakness in Apple has hurt Skyworks, but its long-term prospects remain strong, in part due to a strong balance sheet and robust profit margins.
Finally, Maverick Capital‘s biggest closed positions included Citigroup and Endo Health Solutions. Other closed positions of interest include SuperValu and Renren . SuperValu is in the tough supermarket business, where profit margins are thin, and competition tight. The company has drawn a $3.3 billion bid from a private-equity firm, in a deal where SuperValu gives up its big-name supermarkets, and ends up focusing more on its wholesale business and remaining chains, such as Save-A-Lot. The company still has a lot of debt, but with a forward P/E ratio of three, there’s a lot of potential, too.
Chinese social networking specialist Renren is often compared to Facebook, but there are some major differences – such as the fact that Renren is not yet profitable or free-cash-flow positive. Its recent quarterly earnings report was strong, with revenue up 49%, and a smaller-than-expected net loss, but management lowered near-term expectations, too. The company’s online gaming business has been doing particularly well, and management expects it to play a role in monetizing mobile operations.
We should never blindly copy any investor’s moves, no matter how talented the investor. But it can be useful to keep …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at DailyFinance
Oracle suffered the most as growth in the storage market continued to slow during the end of 2012. Hewlett-Packard, Dell and IBM also struggled while EMC emerged as the big winner. …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Computerworld Latest
By Nazar_KA
In our environment ,we are using EMC powerpath on AIX servers.
Now we wanted to replace a SAN switch(Only for one FC) Online .
1.Please let me know what are the things needs to check before the activity.
2.Last time ,some servers didnot take the new paths online.In that case how we should proceed.
…read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at The UNIX and Linux Forums
By Selena Maranjian, The Motley Fool
Filed under: Investing
Every quarter, many money managers have to disclose what they’ve bought and sold, via “13F” filings. Their latest moves can shine a bright light on smart stock picks.
Today, let’s look at the Eminence Capital hedge fund company run by Ricky Sandler, who seeks growing companies in growing industries and out-of-favor companies and industries. He also likes to short stocks when he finds ones he expects will decline.
The company’s reportable stock portfolio totaled $3.4 billion in value as of Dec. 31, 2012.
Interesting developments
So what does Eminence Capital‘s latest quarterly 13F filing tell us? Here are a few interesting details:
The biggest new holdings are State Street and Rockwell Automation. Other new holdings of interest include Emerson Electric . Emerson Electric, which recently yielded 2.8%, has seen its performance pressured by Europe‘s troubles and a stronger dollar. In its last reported quarter, revenue was up 5% and EPS up 24%, with management noting that, “Recent order trends suggest market conditions have stabilized and may be poised for improvement, particularly in the emerging markets.” Some Wall Street analysts see it as undervalued, but our own analysts question that, expecting slower growth.
Among holdings in which Eminence Capital increased its stake were EMC and NetApp . EMC is a $52 billion storage giant, positioning itself to profit from the rapidly growing cloud-computing and “Big Data” arenas. It also holds an 80% ownership stake in virtualization specialist VMware, though VMware’s dominance in its market may mean slower growth in the future. EMC‘s recent earnings report was solid, featuring strong operating income growth, and many were excited to hear about its plans to launch a joint venture with VMware called Pivotal, combining their cloud and data analytics services. Pivotal is expected to be spun off as a separate company in the future.
With a market cap of $12 billion, NetApp is a smaller rival of EMC and one that has posted strong results recently, with the promise of more as its competition shrinks. Some wonder whether NetApp will end up being acquired by a bigger fish, such as Oracle, another key player in data.
Eminence Capital reduced its stake in lots of companies, including American International Group . AIG has become a hedge fund darling, but it’s not the best-performing insurer. My colleague Matt Koppenheffer worries about AIG‘s tendency to not plan sufficiently for the future, and fellow Fool Morgan Housel recently interviewed the company’s high-profile former CEO, Hank Greenberg.
Finally, Eminence Capital‘s biggest closed positions included Abbott Labs and Ralcorp Holdings, which was acquired by ConAgra. Abbott has just split its pharmaceutical business from its nutrition and devices businesses. The new pharmaceutical entity is AbbVie, starting out with about $18 billion in annual revenue but also a lot of debt. Some worry that AbbVie is too dependent on its $8 billion drug Humira, which faces patent expiration, though growth in emerging markets may make up …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at DailyFinance
By Richard Saintvilus, The Motley Fool
Filed under: Investing
Shares of VMware were up were up 11% this past week, and investors have begun to wonder if the stock has bottomed. Though the company reported solid fourth-quarter earnings that topped Street estimates, management spooked analysts with a soft first-quarter and fiscal 2013 outlook, which sent the stock down tumbling 30%. However, management has been saying all of the right things lately, and it seems that the Street has bought in. I wouldn’t get too excited just yet, though.
Jumping for what?
VMware, along with EMC , which owns 80% of the virtualization giant, recently held a “strategy day,” during which, both companies spoke to analysts about (among other things) the future of the cloud. While VMware is still doing well in this space today, gone is the belief that VMware’s growth will last forever.
However, management wanted to put an end to speculation that this company was being eaten alive by the likes of Citrix . To that end, VMWare gave some new growth targets that seemed more upbeat. But were they? It projected fiscal 2013 revenue growth to arrive in the range of 11.2% to 13.8% while also saying that this range can go higher to 15% to 20% by 2014 to 2016. Analysts rejoiced, but hold your horses.
First, these aren’t exactly breathtaking numbers. The stock‘s valuation and the projected growth still don’t jibe. For that matter, a case can be made that management actually lowered guidance. When VMware reported fourth-quarter earnings, management (then) called for a low end of 14% growth for fiscal 2013, which was (then) 3% less than what analysts were looking for. This was why the stock got hammered by 20% following the announcement.
It’s odd that the stock would now react favorably to guidance that is lower by more than 3%. It seems the Street’s love affair with VMware wants to continue at any cost. I suppose EMC‘s defense of VMware growth outlook helped. EMC‘s management said that VMware’s revenue growth should continue to accelerate while also suggesting that cloud and flash trends are not disruptive to EMC‘s storage business. But was this enough to deserve such an upbeat reaction? Investors need to pause and understand that VMware still has some issues to address.
Is it a value or a trap?
Management had previously warned investors not to expect much growth until the second half of the year. If you want to make the case today that the stock has bottomed, I suppose it’s worth a gamble. But you’re also waging that the worst over. Besides, investors can’t be comfortable with single-digit license growth, while Citrix, which has been stealing market share, recently posted earnings that included a 17% jump in product and license revenue.
This means that VMware’s market leverage is also diminishing. Why, then, when comparing their price-to-earnings ratios, does VMware deserve such a premium to Citrix (48 vs. 39), especially when Citrix outperforms in gross margin and earnings per share? VMware’s management believes it can remain …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at DailyFinance
By Selena Maranjian, The Motley Fool
Filed under: Investing
Every quarter, many money managers have to disclose what they’ve bought and sold, via “13F” filings. Their latest moves can shine a bright light on smart stock picks.
Today let’s look at Farallon Capital Management, founded by Thomas Steyer in 1986, and employing a bottom-up fundamental investing strategy.
The company’s reportable stock portfolio totaled $4.3 billion in value as of December 31, 2012.
Interesting developments
So what does Farallon’s latest quarterly 13F filing tell us? Here are a few interesting details:
The biggest new holdings are Dollar General and EMC. Other new holdings of interest include Dynavax Technologies and Freeport McMoRan Copper & Gold . Dynavax has likely hurt the Farallon portfolio, dropping sharply upon an FDA rejection of its hepatitis B vaccine Heplisav. The FDA left open the possibility of a more limited approval, but Dynavax now has more work to do, and it’s burning through cash, while its revenue has been shrinking. Fortunately, it does seem to have have ample cash to keep it afloat for a few years. Investors are right to worry about share dilution, too.
Freeport posted strong fourth-quarter results, and is cutting its costs, as well. It’s also expanding its scope, moving into oil and gas exploration — which has some investors not thrilled, seeing it as a loss in focus. The stock looks attractive, trading near a 52-week low, and with a forward P/E ratio of just eight. It sports a 3.8% dividend, too, and management is expecting moderate growth in the near-term. Bears worry about interest rate hikes from the Fed, though, which can make some alternatives to gold more attractive.
Among holdings in which Farallon Capital Management increased its stake was Westport Innovations . Westport designs low-emissions engines that run on natural gas, among other things. Many think its future is bright, thanks to a growing interest in alternative fuels, and currently low prices for natural gas — which may rise. The company recently inked a deal with a China-based natural-gas-fueling-station concern, and it’s also set to provide engines for two of the biggest U.S. transit fleets.
Farallon Capital Management reduced its stake in lots of companies, including Oracle . Oracle, meanwhile, has been shifting its focus from hardware to the cloud computing realm — though some are crying foul there. The company has been posting double-digit revenue and earnings growth rates over the past few years, and bulls see competitive strengths in its cash pile and strong customer roster. Oracle is buying telecom infrastructure specialist Acme Packet, which has some scratching their heads due to a lot of strong competition in its field.
Finally, Farallon’s biggest closed positions included Qualcomm and CBS. Other closed positions of interest include Molycorp , which has been struggling in a tough environment and worrying investors with a surprisingly large share offering and debt issuance, as well as negative free cash flow. Still, for those who can accept considerable risk and volatility, …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at DailyFinance
