NetApp Takes A Tumble

Network Appliance is the latest company to report perfectly acceptable results – and get beaten over the head for it.

Shares of NetApp fell 5% after hours on Tuesday after meeting earnings estimates and beating revenue estimates – and that was on top of a 4% decline during the day.

Just another stock come too far too fast.

With earnings up 80% year-over-year and revenues up 28%, the network attached storage champ’s business is in fine shape. But at $23 a share, investors wanted more than 9-cent earnings from NetApp, which is up about 150% off its lows this year.

The market showed the same hesitance to bid stocks higher during the day, as an early rally collapsed in broad-based selling amid valuation and terrorism fears.

The Nasdaq fell 27 to 1881, the S&P 500 lost 9 to 1034, and the Dow dropped 86 to 9624. Volume declined to 1.31 billion shares on the NYSE, but rose to 1.9 billion on the Nasdaq. Decliners led 19-13 on the NYSE, and 19-12 on the Nasdaq. Downside volume was 70% on the NYSE, and 72% on the Nasdaq. New highs-new lows were 141-12 on the NYSE, and 149-18 on the Nasdaq.

Agilent and ATI rose on better than expected results.

Sun Microsystems rose 2% on news that the company will help build a national standard desktop system in China, but that was well off the stock’s highs.

Yahoo tumbled 6% on potential search engine competition from Microsoft .

Symanetc plunged 7% on fears of competition from Microsoft and CA .

Looksmart jumped 10% on a deal with BellSouth .

Advanced Fibre fell 7.5% on a valuation downgrade.

Wind River dropped 8% after missing estimates.

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