Wall Street Beat: Earnings point to tough quarter for tech

19.10.2012
Some of the biggest names in tech reported quarterly earnings this week, and the resulting picture is not pretty. The main culprit for the weak earnings reported this week is a slump in the PC market, but uncertainty about the global economy is weighing down almost all sectors of IT.

Disappointing, or at best mixed, quarterly results were turned in this week by Microsoft, Google, Advanced Micro Devices, Intel and IBM. Share prices of every one of those vendors declined Friday. The financial results, coupled with the uncertainty about the economy, has shaken confidence in tech. Even shares of the mighty Apple declined Friday by US$22.80 to $609.84.

The Nasdaq Computer Index dropped 41.16 points to 1569.96 Friday afternoon, a day after Google, AMD and Microsoft issued their earnings. While Nasdaq tech stocks are still up about 15 percent for the year, they were up 26 percent for the year a month ago.

Toward the end of the third quarter, moves by the U.S. Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank to prop up economic growth instilled confidence in market watchers. The Fed announced it would launch the so-called "QE3," a third round of "quantitative easing," buying mortgage bonds and possibly other assets until the unemployment picture looks better. For its part, the European Central Bank revealed details of a plan to use a stability fund to buy up short-term European debt. But since then, the reality of weak earnings reports has put a damper on the enthusiasm generated by the banks' actions.

Microsoft's general manager for investor relations, Bill Keofoed, some of the main issues confronting vendors on the company's earnings conference call Thursday: "We saw the overall PC market decline this quarter in advance to the launch of Windows 8 and in part due to competitive pressures and the challenging macroeconomic climate."

In other words, facing economic uncertainty as well as an upcoming flood of new PCs and tablets based on the new Windows OS, users put off purchases. For the quarter ending Sept. 30, , to $4.47 billion, and an 8 percent drop in revenue to $16.01 billion. Part of the decline was due to Microsoft's move to defer the reporting of revenue for pre-orders of Windows 8. But there is no doubt that consumers themselves are deferring purchases. For the quarter, the Windows division reported sales of $3.24 billion, a whopping 33 percent drop from the same period in 2011.