Tech Trader Daily Headline News Reader

If you had a hard time doing anything with Facebook (FB) shares this morning — and apparently some did have a problem during the stock’s first hour of trading, because of Nasdaq glitches — the exchange wants you to know that you have until noon on Monday to get your order filled. Nasdaq this evening sent [...]

Despite persistent worries on Wall Street that carriers will cut subsidies on Apple‘s (AAPL) iPhone, it seems there’s still plenty of life in that game: Sprint-Nextel (S) has announced its offering $100 off the purchase of an iPhone 4S if you turn in any iPhone from your existing carrier. Obviously, that means new customers coming to Sprint from somewhere [...]

And that’s a wrap: Facebook shares have closed up just 23 cents from the offer price, at $38.23, and way down from the $45 high of the day. In the after-market, the shares are down another 10 cents at $38.10 the shares are now up 7 cents at $38.30. Shares of Facebook (FB) are being quoted at $45 [...]

Shares of WiFi equipment vendor Aruba Networks (ARUN) are down $1.12, or 7%, at $14.18 after the company last night reported fiscal Q3 revenue and earnings per share in line with expectations, forecast this quarter’s revenue in line with estimates, but projected EPS a bit weak relative to consensus. Revenue of $132 million was up [...]

Shares of Yahoo! (YHOO) are up 79 cents, over 5%, at $15.65 as Bloomberg’s Serena Saitto and Brian Womack report the company is in talks to sell 20% of Chinese e-commerce firm Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. for $7 billion, citing an unnamed source. Yahoo! has a 42% interest in Alibaba Group, which owns the Hong [...]

BMO Capital’s Keith Bachman this morning reiterates an Outperform rating on shares of Apple (AAPL) and a $695 price target, writing that his conversations with “a large European wireless carrier and a smaller North American carrier” recently suggest to him that lowering subsidies for the iPhone is something the telcos would like to do, but [...]

Here are some things going on in your world of tech this morning: Today is the day Facebook (FB) collects its due at the Nasdaq, starting at 11 am, and Bloomberg’s Serena Saitto, Cristina Alesci and Lee Spears write that the bankers, including lead underwriter Morgan Stanley, got stiffed, walking away with only $176 million in [...]

In case you missed it, I and my colleague Shara Tibken sat down this morning with ARM Holdings (ARMH) CEO Warren East, and Shara has put together an excellent write-up of East's remarks about the mobile chip business and how the competition with Intel (INTC) is shaping up. Essentially, East thinks his chip designs have a better chance of capturing some share of the PC market, via licenses with ARM's partners such as Nvidia (NVDA), Qualcomm (QCOM), and Texas Instruments (TXN), than does Intel at capturing some share of the mobile phone and tablet market. That market is currently dominated by ARM and its partners. Regarding Intel's undeniable lead in process technology -- the first company to ship in high volume chips with features at 22 billions of a meter, or 22 nanometer, and the first with 3D transistors in commercial production -- East was fairly dismissive. He notes that the new line of PC microprocessors using these tricks, "Ivy Bridge," have been said to gain a mere 20% improvement in power efficiency. When Intel's phone and tablet line of chips, "Atom," comes to this process, East thinks the result will be no big deal. Meantime, chips using ARM's designs will probably hit a threshold in terms of how powerful they can be before it just doesn't matter anymore to consumers. Basically, today's quad-core wonders may become passe a couple years down the road. The equivalent of Intel's desktop "Core i5" chips could probably be shipping in a smartphone or tablet a couple of years from now, according to some observers. That's just fine, according to East: Mobile chips only need to be good enough, he's convinced, in order to handle the tasks most users want on a tablet or phone -- Web surfing, email, video playback, some lightweight content creation, etc. One interesting thing to note about ARM is that its operating profit margin, on a non-IFRS basis (that's non-GAAP to us here in the States), is trending in the mid-40s as a percent of revenue. That's way, way up from the low-30s a few years ago. That's probably a result of the fact that licenses the company sells turn into a steady royalty stream. As East said to Shara, the company's R&D expense, for one, is only headed down, over time, as a percentage of revenue as the royalties stream in without requiring further engineering effort.  We unfortunately didn't have time to press East on the matter of whether margins have topped, or if they can go higher.

Yahoo! (YHOO) this afternoon has apparently named Mollie Spilman, its head of global B2B Marketing, to serve as chief marketing officer, according to wire service reports. Yahoo! shares closed down 41 cents, or 2.7%, at $14.87 and were down another 2 cents in late trading.

Shares of Salesforce.com (CRM) are up $10.09,  or 7.5%, at $143.89, in late trading after the company reported fiscal Q1 revenue and profit that topped analysts’ expectations, and also offered a better-than-expected Q2 and year view. Revenue in the three months ended in April rose 38%, year over year, to $695 million, yielding EPS of [...]

Shares of design software maker Autodesk (ADSK) traded lower in the after-market by 6% or so, before recouping losses following the company’s fiscal Q1 report, which was slightly ahead of analysts’ estimates on revenue, and a Q2 view that was below consensus. The company also said it sees fiscal 2013 revenue up 10%, which is [...]

Shares of chip equipment maker Applied Materials (AMAT) are up 15 cents, or 1.4%, at $10.63 in late trading after the company this afternoon reported fiscal Q2 revenue and earnings per share that topped analysts’ estimates, forecast the current quarter’s revenue below expectations, and offered a full-year outlook in line with consensus. Revenue in the [...]

Shares of financial software maker Intuit (INTU) are down a penny at $54.40 11 cents at $54.30 in late trading, though they briefly fell deeper than that, after the company reported fiscal Q3 revenue slightly below analysts’ expectations, but beat on the bottom line, and forecast this quarter’s results roughly in line with consensus. Revenue in [...]

Shares of chip maker Marvell Technology Group (MRVL) were briefly higher in late trading, but are now down 10 cents at $13.20 after the company said it will initiate a quarterly dividend of 6 cents per share, starting with a payment on July 11th to all shareholders of record as of June 21st. Marvell also [...]

Sterne Agee‘s Shaw Wu today raised his rating on shares of Dell (DELL) to Neutral from Underperform, writing that the 17% drop in the stock since mid-February, versus a 2% decline in the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index, have brought the stock in line with his price target of $15. Wu suspended that price target [...]

Wunderlich Securities’s Matthew Robison today reiterates a Buy rating on chip technology designer Ceva (CEVA), writing that the Mountain View, California designer of “digital signal processors” could benefit as Nokia (NOK) switches processor makers for its “Asha” line of low-cost smartphones, which have been one of the brighter spots in Nokia’s portfolio. Robison, in fact, [...]

Shares of solar energy technology providers SunPower (SPWR) and First Solar (FSLR) are jumping this afternoon following word that the U.S. Department of Commerce has imposed a tariff of 31% on imports of solar panels by Chinese competitors such as Trina Solar (TSL) and Suntech Power Holdings (STP). That duty would be much larger than [...]

The Wall Street Journal‘s Deal Journal‘s David Benoit today reports that Facebook will likely price its initial public offering toward the top of a quoted range of $34 to $38, citing unnamed sources. The IPO would be worth $18.4 billion, writes Benoit, having sold out its entire “over-allotment,” and Facebook will have a market value at [...]

Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) may cut up to 25,000 jobs, or 8% of its workforce, writes Aaron Ricadela of Bloomberg this afternoon, citing unnamed sources that have apparently been briefed on the computer maker’s plans. The cuts could include 10,000 to 15,000 layoffs in the company’s “enterprise” services group, Ricadela reports. The report echoes a report this morning [...]

Shares of organic light-emitting diode technology maker Universal Display (PANL) are down $3.22, or 10%, at $29, and down almost 18% in the last five trading days. There has been quite a conflicting flow of news the last several days. This morning kicks off with an 8-K filing from the company in which it said it learned yesterday that Japan's high court affirmed the country's patent offices decision to "invalidate the broadest claims" in one of Universal's patents. The company relates that it also learned last week that the patent office invalidated the broadest claims in a second patent. In a note to clients today, Piper Jaffray's Jagadish Iyer reiterated an Underweight rating on Universal stock, writing that "While it is premature to infer on the implications given that PANL has a vault of 1400 patents, it clearly suggests that it there is a window open for competitors to pursue OLED opportunities by circumventing some of PANL's patents within Japan." Those engagements include a deal to supply "PHOLED" material to Tohoku Pioneer for displays; a deal with Panasonic for lighting products; a deal with Sony (SNE) for AMOLED display products, and some PHOLED materials for "evaluation"; materials for lighting products from Konica Minolta; and a license agreement from 2009 with Showa Denko for lighting products. On the other hand, Ernie Besso, a semiconductor analyst for boutique firm  JNK Securities in New York, put out a note today in which tempered somewhat negative remarks he'd made yesterday about Universal's sales of materials to Samsung Electronics (005930KS), and instead came up with rather positive conclusions:

Based on further research regarding Samsung’s use of green host and emitter from Dow Chemical (DOW) we would like to provide the following views to clarify this development: