Friday’s biggest gaining and declining stocks

Atlanta, GA 5/18/12 (StreetBeat) -- Here are some of the stocks making notable moves in Friday trading:

Gainers

AngloGold Ashanti Ltd. (NYSE: AU +6.26%) added about 5%. The stock also rose on Thursday, when hedge-fund manager John Paulson made positive comments about the stock at a conference in New York. Paulson rarely speaks publicly about his positions and strategies.

Salesforce.com Inc. (NYSE: CRM +9.78%) shares added 10% after the business software company reported stronger-than-expected results and its sales outlook beat Wall Street’s estimates.

Foot Locker (NYSE: FL +9.71%) rose 9% after posting a 30% jump in first-quarter profit while handily surpassing Wall Street’s top and bottom line estimates.

And Brown Shoe (NYSE: BWS +17.81%), the parent of the Famous Footwear chain, rose 12% after its adjusted first-quarter profit topped analyst estimates. The company also raised its full-year outlook.

Decliners

Autodesk Inc. (Nasdaq: ADSK -15.97%) shares fell 15%. On Thursday, the company issued a cautious forecast for earnings and revenue in the second quarter of fiscal 2013.

Kirkland’s (Nasdaq: KIRK -14.01%) fell 14% after reporting a drop in quarterly profit on the back of slumping sam-store sales.

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Salesforce.com (NYSE: CRM): CLSA Boosts Rating To Buy; Target To $180

Shawshank, VA 5/18/12 (StreetBeat) -- CLSA Asia-Pacific Markets analyst Ed Maguire this morning upped his rating on Salesforce.com (NYSE: CRM) to Buy from Outperform, with a new target of $180, up from $160. The upgrade follows the cloud-based software company’s better-than-expected earnings report for the fiscal second quarter ended April.

Maguire writes that the upgrade reflects “improved confidence that growing revenue visibility, healthy business momentum and operational discipline can deliver sustained upside.”

The analyst adds that an increase in total backlog and growing contribution from long-term deals “speak volumes about customer commitment (rather than sales tactics) and this builds a baseline for upward revision as management demonstrates margin leverage.”

Salesforce shares are off to a big start Friday; the stock is up $13.95, or 10.4%, to $147.75.

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Oracle bounces back in 3Q on new software sales

Orlando, FL 3/22/12 (StreetBeat) – Sales of new software licenses at Oracle (Nasdaq: ORCL) accelerated in the latest quarter, easing concerns about customers defecting to less expensive alternatives on the Internet.

The improvement announced Tuesday follows through on the business software maker's promise to rebound from a disappointing performance at the end of last year. Oracle said it expanded its sales staff and did a better job of closing deals.

"All we really needed to do was focus on execution, and that we did," Safra Catz, Oracle's president and chief financial officer, told analysts in a conference call.

The growth is also a reflection of an improving economy. Oracle's fiscal third quarter covers December through February, which coincided with the biggest three-month hiring spurt in the U.S. during the past two years. The trend could signal that companies aren't as worried about the threat of another recession, encouraging them to increase spending in other areas such as new software.

The positive vibes from the latest quarter subsided slightly after Oracle provided a forecast that raised the possibility of a revenue decline in the current quarter, which ends in May, compared with a year ago. The current three-month stretch is typically Oracle's busiest period.

Oracle Corp. earned $2.5 billion, or 49 cents per share, during the most recent quarter, an 18 percent increase from net income of $2.1 billion, or 41 cents per share, at the same time last year.

If not for acquisition expenses and other costs, Oracle said it would have earned 62 cents per share. That figure soundly exceeded the average estimate of 56 cents per share among analysts surveyed by FactSet.

Oracle thrived, despite meager growth in its total revenue, which grew just 3 percent from last year to $9 billion. The total mirrored analyst forecasts.

The key to the quarter was a 7 percent increase in revenue from new software licenses. Investors focus on this category because the new licenses unleash a steady stream of future revenue from maintenance and software upgrades. The new business also helps offset defections to Oracle rivals that specialize in Internet-based software known as cloud computing.

Although they still much smaller, cloud-computing specialists such as Salesforce.com Inc. (NYSE: CRM) and Workday Inc. have been luring away Oracle customers by selling applications over the Internet as a subscription service. That approach is a departure from the industry's long-established practice of licensing and installing applications on employees' individual machines.

After once dismissing cloud computing as a kooky concept, Oracle is expanding into the field as part of its effort to create a one-stop technology shop for big companies and government agencies. Oracle CEO Larry Ellison boasted to analysts Tuesday that his company is in a far better position to succeed in cloud computing than its longtime foil, SAP. Both Oracle and SAP have been spending billions to buy smaller companies that specialize in cloud-computing services.

The recent quarter's increase in new software licenses indicated that Oracle bounced back from the problems that turned its previous quarter into a huge letdown. Oracle's year-over-year sales of new software increased by just 2 percent in its fiscal second quarter, well below management and investor expectations. After those numbers were released, Oracle's plummeted nearly 12 percent, its biggest one-day drop in nine years.

Oracle also has been trying to expand into computer hardware with its $7.3 billion purchase of Sun Microsystems Inc. in 2010. That hasn't worked out so well.

In the latest quarter, Oracle's revenue from hardware fell 11 percent from the same time last year. The company predicted another decline in the current quarter, but Ellison assured analysts Tuesday that hardware revenue will begin to climb in the company's next fiscal year, which begins in June.

Software still accounts for about 70 percent of Oracle's revenue.

Oracle's stock increased 39 cents, or 1.3 percent, to $30.49 in extended trading. The stock had risen to as much as $31.54, or nearly 5 percent, until Oracle released its projections for the current quarter during its conference call.

The forecast calls for revenue from new software licenses to decline up to 2 percent or grow up to 8 percent, weighed down partly by changes in currency-exchange rates. Oracle said total revenue for the quarter could decline as much as 2 percent or grow as much as 2 percent — well below the 4 percent increase expected by analysts surveyed by FactSet.

The company expects its adjusted earnings for the quarter to range from 76 cents to 81 cents per share. Analysts had expected 76 cents.

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CRM Up 9%: ThinkEquity Ups to Buy, Bernstein Still Skeptical

Tallahassee, FL 2/24/12 (StreetBeat) -- Shares of Salesforce.com (NYSE: CRM) are up $11.20, or almost 9%, at $142.97 after the company last night beat fiscal Q4 estimates, forecast this quarter’s revenue ahead of consensus, and raised its outlook for the year.

Price targets are going up pretty much all around, even though the average EPS estimate for this year is in many cases declining to meet the company’s below-consensus earnings forecast.

The average estimate for this year’s revenue has risen from $2.91 billion yesterday to $2.95 billion today, while the consensus EPS estimate slipped to $1.62 from $1.63 yesterday.

There was one upgrade, that I can see, from ThinkEquity’s Brian Schwartz, who raised his rating from Hold to Buy.

Schwartz lists four factors that are encouraging, namely that “competitor distractions (via recent-acquisitions) are accentuating CRM’s disruptive market-positioning, leading to larger, multi-element deals,” that the company is “moderating the expense structure,” the company’s addressable market is expanding, and the company has “an attractive 6 to 12-month window to accelerate share-gains as the larger ERPs play catch-up with their Cloud strategies.”

The real discussion this morning, however, has been not about revenue and EPS but, as is often the case with Salesforce, about the other metrics on which it is judged — bookings, deferred revenue, etc.

On that score, the bulls are exultant.

Citigroup’s Walter Pritchard reiterated a Buy rating and raised his price target to $163 from $152, while cutting his EPS estimate for this year to $1.73 per share in profit from a prior $1.92, even though he thinks the outlook the company offered is likely “conservative.”

Billings, while helped by a favorable shift away from quarterly to annual billing and several big pre-payments, grew 35%, above our 34% estimate and above consensus of 32%. 2) Off-balance-sheet backlog grew by 47% to $2.2B, a figure that points to very healthy growth despite invoicing shifts that hurt this metric (more upfront invoicing reduces backlog). Contract lengths were steady, implying that invoicing pull-forwards is not mortgaging top line in future periods. 3) Deferred commissions – we estimate the cash commissions paid out for new bookings grew 43% Y/Y, the fourth consecutive quarter of acceleration.

Robert Breza of RBC Capital reiterated an Outperform rating and raised his price target to $175 from $160. Breza’s EPS estimate for this year goes to $1.59 from a $1.60 previously.

The company is benefiting in a big way from social enterprise and broader solution sales that are leading to larger deal sizes as evidenced by 100 seven-figure deals (4x last year) and nine eight-figure deals in the quarter. The momentum should continue into Q1 as the company has already signed its first ever nine-figure deal and the pipeline remains at record levels […] Management also noted that it will be disclosing the off balance sheet figure [of total booked business] quarterly going forward, which should bring more transparency to this metric.

It’s hard to find too many cautious statements this morning, but Mark Moerdler of Bernstein Research, who appeared on CNBC a short while ago, gives it the old college try. He maintains an Underperform rating on the shares, though he raised his price target to $91 from $89, and raised his 2012 EPS estimate to $1.36 from $1.28.

Despite the headline beat, “after further analysis, we believe the story may not be as rosy as it seems,” he writes.

Deferred revenue was $1,380 Million compared to StreetAccount consensus of $1,210 Million and our estimate of $1,229 Million, and benefited from a tailwind of $155 Million due to longer invoice duration (move to annual) and a single multi-year deal which was billed in advance […] We stress that deferred revenue, bookings and backlog are not good indicators for future revenue growth, as these metrics are affected by numerous factors such as invoice duration and billing cycles. This is especially true this quarter as much of the increase stemmed from the move to annual invoicing and the billing of a large, multi-year deal. In fact, we believe the uptick in the backlog figure is just a result of the normal course of business. In Exhibit 7, we show that much of the uptick could be explained by the revenue increase in the past few quarters.

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LargeCap Stocks to Keep an Eye on Today

Tomahawk, WI 8/19/2011 (PennyPayDay) – Sprint Nextel in discussions with cable companies about a possible investment that could result in the buyout of partner Clearwire, according to a Bloomberg report.

Clearwire shares were surging 25.5% to $2.90 in premarket trading Friday. Sprint shares were rising 0.3% to $3.50.

HP, desperate to boost its margins, unveiled a major corporate and strategic overhaul Thursday, which will involve ditching its WebOS devices and potentially spinning off its PC business.

The computer hardware company also gave weak guidance after reporting adjusted earnings per share of $1.10 on sales of $31.20 billion for its fiscal third quarter, compared to $1.08 a share on revenue of $30.70 billion reported in the year-ago period.

Analysts expected adjusted earnings per share of $1.09 on sales of $31.17 billion.

Shares were plunging 16.1% to $24.77.

Chipmaker Marvell Technology reported second-quarter earnings of 38 cents a share vs. the Wall Street consensus target of 37 cents a share.

Shares were advancing 9% to $13.05.

Shares of salesforce.com were spiking 5.2% to $120 after the cloud computing applications company increased its full-year revenue guidance to $2.22 billion to $2.23 billion, up from $2.15 billion to $2.17 billion.

The software company posted second-quarter adjusted earnings of 30 cents a share, in line with analysts' estimates. Revenue was $546 million, above analysts' projections of $528.8 million.

Software company Autodesk reported second-quarter profit of 44 cents a share vs. the average analyst estimate of 41 cents a share.

Shares were rising in premarket trading by 3.7% to $27.50.

Barnes & Noble said Liberty Media would invest $204 million in the bookseller, but discussions to buy it for $1 billion have ended.

Barnes & Noble shares were rising 2.6% to $12.40.

Bank of America plans to cut 3,500 jobs in the current quarter and thousands of additional cuts are expected as part of an aggressive overhaul, The Wall Street Journal reported, citing people familiar with the situation.

Shares were sliding 1.9% to $6.88.

Apparel company Gap has reaffirmed its full-year earnings guidance of $1.40 to $1.50 a share after reporting that its second-quarter profit fell to 35 cents a share from 36 cents a share a year ago. The Wall Street consensus estimate for the quarter was earnings of 33 cents a share.

Shares were up 0.2% to $15.55.

Intuit Inc., the financial management software provider, reported fourth-quarter loss of 19 cents a share vs. loss of 15 cents a share last year.

Revenue was $593 million, beating the average analyst estimate of $583 million.

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Some LargeCap Stocks to Keep an Eye on Today

Department store J.C. Penney reported that fourth-quarter net income grew 35.5% to $271 million, or $1.13 a share, from $200 million, or 84 cents a share, a year earlier. Adjusted earnings per share from continuing operations were $1.23. Net sales increased about 3% to $5.7 billion from $5.55 billion. On average, analysts were calling for earnings of $1.08 a share on revenue of $5.7 billion. Shares of J.C. Penney were rising 1.6% to $37.15 in premarket trading Friday.

Aerospace giant Boeing was awarded a $35 billion contract by the Pentagon for an aerial refueling tanker jet. Shares of Boeing were rising 4.9% to $74.25 in premarket trading Friday.

American International Group reported net income of $11.2 billion and earnings per share of $16.60 for the fourth quarter of 2010. Shares of AIG were up 0.7% to $41.72 in premarket trading.

TV network CBS and Warner Bros. Television have decided to end production for the rest of the season on TV comedy Two and a Half Men because of comments star Charlie Sheen made about the show's producer. CBS was up 0.3% to $22.10.

Footwear company Deckers Outdoor reported heavy demand for its UGG brand boots. The stock was jumping 7.7% to $96.75 in premarket trading.

San Francisco-based cloud computing company Salesforce.com crushed the consensus view for its fourth-quarter results. Shares of the company were higher in premarket trading, surging 9.4% to $147.

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