Top 10 News Items 5/16-5/20: LinkedIn IPO Wows the Street; Barnes & Noble Receives $17/Share Offer from Malone's Liberty; HP Shares Tumble Amid Warning
Here is a recap of the top news items from this week on Wall Street:
1. Professional social networker LinkedIn (Nasdaq: LNKD) made its Wall Street debut this week, surging about 15 percent from where it opened ($83/share) and a jaw-dropping 111 percent from where the stock priced at $45/share. Amid the massive wave of buying, outraged pundits on the Street speculated the underwriters sandbagged the deal so that major investors could profit. LinkedIn's $9 billion market cap makes it more valuable than nearly 4 AOL's and almost as large as Netflix.
2. Barnes & Noble, Inc. (NYSE: BKS) announced late Thursday that it received a proposal from John Malone's Liberty Media (Nasdaq: LINTA) to acquire the company at a price of $17 per share in cash. The stock surged about 30 percent on Friday to close near $18.30.
3. Hewlett-Packard (NYSE: HPQ) shares tumbled more than 7 percent on Tuesday after the company's CEO Leo Apotheker warned of "another tough quarter." As the stock begun selling off amid the exec's comments, HP decided to announce results one day early (Tuesday morning). The company said Q2 EPS were $1.24, $0.03 better than the analyst estimate of $1.21. Revenue for the quarter came in at $31.6 billion versus the consensus estimate of $31.54 billion. The company also guided Q3 and FY11 below the Street.
4. Shares of Staples (Nasdaq: SPLS) fell more than 15 percent on Wednesday following concerning Q1 results: EPS of $0.28, $0.04 worse than the analyst estimate of $0.32. Revenue for the quarter came in at $6.2 billion versus the consensus estimate of $6.19 billion. Sees Q211 EPS of $0.18 - $0.20, versus the consensus of $0.25. Also sees revs growth of flat to slightly positive. Sees FY11 EPS of $1.35 - $1.45, versus the consensus of $1.52. Also sees revs growth in the low single-digits.
5. Elsewhere on the earnings front: JCPenney (NYSE: JCP), Lowe's (NYSE: LOW), Home Depot (NYSE: HD), Wal-Mart (NYSE: WMT), Dell (Nasdaq: DELL), Deere (NYSE: DE), Target (NYSE: TGT) and Gap (NYSE: GPS) reported.
6. Goldman Sachs caused a ruckus in the Semi sector Thursday after downgrading Intel (Nasdaq: INTC) and KLA-Tencor (Nasdaq: KLAC) to Sell and Applied Materials (Nasdaq: AMAT) to Neutral. The firm also upgraded shares of Lam Research (Nasdaq: LRCX) to Buy.
7. The Federal Reserve released the much-anticipated minutes of the April 26-27, 2011 FOMC meeting which saw the Fed leave interest rates unchanged, but acknowledge higher inflation. The minutes revealed the FOMC spent considerable time discussing its exit strategy. Nearly all FOMC members indicated the first step toward normalization should be ceasing to reinvest payments of principal on agency securities and, simultaneously or soon after, ceasing to reinvest principal payments on Treasury securities.
8. 13F's from the Street's most prominent hedge funds hit this week. Visit our 13F category to see highlights from all the 13F's including Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway, Bill Ackman's Pershing Square, John Paulson's Paulson & Co. and David Einhorn's Greenlight Capital.
9. Data on the US housing market is worse than expected this week: housing starts fell 11 percent to 523,000, vs. the economist estimate of 569,000, and existing home sales fell 0.8 percent to 5.05 million, vs. the consensus of 5.2 million.
10. The Philly Fed index for the month of May plunged from 18.5 in April to just 3.9. Economists had been expecting a reading of 20. The Dow Jones fell about 53 points just after the release of this data point, however recovered to close higher.
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1. Professional social networker LinkedIn (Nasdaq: LNKD) made its Wall Street debut this week, surging about 15 percent from where it opened ($83/share) and a jaw-dropping 111 percent from where the stock priced at $45/share. Amid the massive wave of buying, outraged pundits on the Street speculated the underwriters sandbagged the deal so that major investors could profit. LinkedIn's $9 billion market cap makes it more valuable than nearly 4 AOL's and almost as large as Netflix.
2. Barnes & Noble, Inc. (NYSE: BKS) announced late Thursday that it received a proposal from John Malone's Liberty Media (Nasdaq: LINTA) to acquire the company at a price of $17 per share in cash. The stock surged about 30 percent on Friday to close near $18.30.
3. Hewlett-Packard (NYSE: HPQ) shares tumbled more than 7 percent on Tuesday after the company's CEO Leo Apotheker warned of "another tough quarter." As the stock begun selling off amid the exec's comments, HP decided to announce results one day early (Tuesday morning). The company said Q2 EPS were $1.24, $0.03 better than the analyst estimate of $1.21. Revenue for the quarter came in at $31.6 billion versus the consensus estimate of $31.54 billion. The company also guided Q3 and FY11 below the Street.
4. Shares of Staples (Nasdaq: SPLS) fell more than 15 percent on Wednesday following concerning Q1 results: EPS of $0.28, $0.04 worse than the analyst estimate of $0.32. Revenue for the quarter came in at $6.2 billion versus the consensus estimate of $6.19 billion. Sees Q211 EPS of $0.18 - $0.20, versus the consensus of $0.25. Also sees revs growth of flat to slightly positive. Sees FY11 EPS of $1.35 - $1.45, versus the consensus of $1.52. Also sees revs growth in the low single-digits.
5. Elsewhere on the earnings front: JCPenney (NYSE: JCP), Lowe's (NYSE: LOW), Home Depot (NYSE: HD), Wal-Mart (NYSE: WMT), Dell (Nasdaq: DELL), Deere (NYSE: DE), Target (NYSE: TGT) and Gap (NYSE: GPS) reported.
6. Goldman Sachs caused a ruckus in the Semi sector Thursday after downgrading Intel (Nasdaq: INTC) and KLA-Tencor (Nasdaq: KLAC) to Sell and Applied Materials (Nasdaq: AMAT) to Neutral. The firm also upgraded shares of Lam Research (Nasdaq: LRCX) to Buy.
7. The Federal Reserve released the much-anticipated minutes of the April 26-27, 2011 FOMC meeting which saw the Fed leave interest rates unchanged, but acknowledge higher inflation. The minutes revealed the FOMC spent considerable time discussing its exit strategy. Nearly all FOMC members indicated the first step toward normalization should be ceasing to reinvest payments of principal on agency securities and, simultaneously or soon after, ceasing to reinvest principal payments on Treasury securities.
8. 13F's from the Street's most prominent hedge funds hit this week. Visit our 13F category to see highlights from all the 13F's including Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway, Bill Ackman's Pershing Square, John Paulson's Paulson & Co. and David Einhorn's Greenlight Capital.
9. Data on the US housing market is worse than expected this week: housing starts fell 11 percent to 523,000, vs. the economist estimate of 569,000, and existing home sales fell 0.8 percent to 5.05 million, vs. the consensus of 5.2 million.
10. The Philly Fed index for the month of May plunged from 18.5 in April to just 3.9. Economists had been expecting a reading of 20. The Dow Jones fell about 53 points just after the release of this data point, however recovered to close higher.
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