Investors looked past blemishes in Microsoft’s earnings report to send the company’s stock higher on Friday.
Microsoft gained 2% on stronger than expected results and guidance, as the company benefited from strong PC sales and rebounding enterprise IT spending.
The stock initially fell after hours Thursday on the report, as investors were concerned about a decline in deferred revenues and a huge expansion in stock-based compensation. But buyers returned by Friday morning, and the stock never spent a minute in the red once the market opened.
The broader market fell during the day on concern about earnings and valuations, but tech stocks managed a small gain by the close.
The Nasdaq rose 4 to 2123, the S&P 500 slipped 2 to 1141, and the Dow fell 54 to 10,568. Volume declined to 1.54 billion shares on the NYSE, and 2.27 billion on the Nasdaq. Advancers led 17-15 on the NYSE, and 18-13 on the Nasdaq. Upside volume was 47% on the NYSE, and 50% on the Nasdaq. New highs-new lows were 431-4 on the NYSE, and 250-7 on the Nasdaq.
KLA-Tencor and J2 Global
fell on their results, but investors were otherwise in a rewarding mood.
Scientific Atlanta , StorageTek
, Vitesse
, Genesis Microchip
, UTStarcom
and Corning
all rose after beating estimates.
FreeMarkets surged and Ariba
fell on merger plans.
Nortel rose 2% on plans to sell its manufacturing operations to Flextronics
.
And AT&T Wireless rose after hours on takeover speculation.
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