QLogic surged 5.7% Wednesday on better than expected results, just a week after host bus adapter competitor Emulex plunged 20% on a warning.
Even though QLogic remains one of the few tech companies still going strong – with 30% year-over-year revenue growth – CS FirstBoston demonstrated Wall Street’s newfound integrity by rating the stock Underperform based on valuation.
Also coming three years too late was Bank of America’s downgrade of Dell , Network Appliance
and EMC
based on valuation. NTAP suffered the most, falling 8.2%.
The broader market slipped on weaker than expected Chicago manufacturing data ahead of Thursday’s national ISM report, and comments by Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan that the timing of a recovery and a rebound in business confidence remain uncertain.
The Nasdaq lost 6 to 1464, the S&P 500 slipped 1 to 916, and the Dow declined 22 to 8480. Volume rose to 1.64 billion shares on the NYSE, but declined to 1.61 billion on the Nasdaq. Advancers led 19-13 on the NYSE, and 17-13 on the Nasdaq. Upside volume was 52% on the NYSE, and 38% on the Nasdaq. New highs-new lows were 132-15 on the NYSE, and 147-27 on the Nasdaq.
After the close, Adobe and FindWhat.com
raised guidance. Macromedia
and Akamai
beat estimates, Newport
matched estimates, and Cray
missed estimates. Applied Materials
named a new CEO, former Intel EVP and director of Sales and Marketing Michael Splinter.
During the day, United Online surged 8% on better than expected results.
RealNetworks and webMethods
rose on their earnings reports, but JDS Uniphase
, Maxim
, Microstrategy
and Neoware
fell on their results.
Research In Motion gained 3.4% on a distribution deal in the Philippines.
IBM , off 0.9%, unveiled an Itanium 2 xSeries server.
Motorola lost 1.5% despite a network deal in Jordan.
AOL was unchanged on the departure of the company’s interactive marketing chief.
Microsoft lost 1% after joining the business portal fray.
Sun slipped 0.2% despite boosting the Solaris operating system past the terabyte barrier and unveiling security appliances.
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