PALM Beats Investor Expectations 13
Palm's Q4 FY09 results showed a net loss, but it wasn't as a big as many expected and their stock has made a notable jump so far today.
Eric Savitz of Barron's Tech Trader Daily kept close tabs on Palm's stock stock leading up to the call -- especially the ups and downs of how the analysts are rating it. Wednesday morning, Savitz noted that RBC Capital analyst Mike Abramsky just repeated his Outperform rating on Palm (PALM), while boosting his price target on the stock to $18, from $14. Abramsky also increased his estimate of how many Pres have been sold to date by Sprint (150,000 , up from his previous 120,000 forecast). Unfortunately, Palm refused to provide specific numbers on Pre sales during the call.
After the call, the Wall Street Journal named PALM a 'Hot Stock'. Savitz has also rounded up the Bulls and Bears on Palm today, noting that reaction has been largely positive. It's not universal acclaim, however, as Scott Mortiz of the Street expressed concern that Palm's relatively small size will hamper their growth.
13 Comments
Quick note: Neither Annie nor I own any Palm stock.
Let's see where they are next Friday. This could be investor enthusiasm for being less bad than we thought they were. Or it could have been a short squeeze and when the shorts are unwound, might go back to where they were before the earnings announcement.
Now should really firestorm the airwaves with new and dynamic marketing of the Pre! They need to keep demand ahead of the supply.
Palm > GM
I guess this means I don't have to worry about getting warranty work done for the next year.
Just think that if you had faith in Palm and bought stock right after they made an annoucement that they were going to be at CES. So they didn't annouce the pre yet, you could of bought shares at 3 bucks. You would have 5x your investment today. If you bought it right after the pre announcement you would have doubled. If they stay on course too their stock will hit 30 bucks, so its still a valid investment if you ask me. Once webOS is global and on multiple carriers.
good point. maybe ill load up.
"Just think that if you had faith in Palm and bought stock right after they made an annoucement that they were going to be at CES. So they didn't annouce the pre yet, you could of bought shares at 3 bucks..."
--- did that ;)
this is why i laugh when tech people freak out when hearing stock analyst news or that debt is at such and such a place. Good companies don't always mean it's a good stock to buy at that moment. Apple for example. And just debt isn't the whole story nor is profits etc without context.
Scott Moritz has waxed and waned on PALM. He called it wrong about a month ago saying then that it was dead meat, then he jumped on the bandwagon a few weeks ago without even commenting on his change of heart (yeah, more like the change in stock price which proved him wrong, let alone the stellar debut of the Pre), now he's hedging again. He's useless.
If you want to buy PALM do wait for some pullback. Yes, there is or was a huge short squeeze today. Compare trading volume today to normal. It was freakin' off the charts. PALM normally trades around 9 million shares a day. Today it traded over 74 MILLION! Approximately 1/3 of PALM's outstanding shares were shorted. There were tons of shorts scrambling.
I'm not saying it's going to drop like a rock, but typically it does pullback a bit after big leaps. Pay attention to the market dynamics in general, too.
And FWIW, I'm long PALM. I didn't sell today even with a 60% profit. This is sort of faith-based investing now. PALM quite easily could become another AAPL type success story in a year or more.
However, I feel confident because I'm intimately knowledgeable about the product and the management. They're also beautifully handling their cash having reduced spending by a phenomenal amount given their superior development process. I've got to say, I am incredibly impressed with what appears to be all the right moves.
That story was so poorly written and full of "insider rumors" that didn't make sense and didnt' happen, it was clear that some one told Moritz to create negative press to please their advertisers. Sorta like the 3G S vs. Pre speed trials on Precentral where journalistic and scientific integrity went the way of the Iranian election results. But it was funny to see Scott enlighten us later with fantastic tech news. Does he even realize its the same device he pooped on?
agreed. i could take some profits but mine aren't that large because well i kept waiting for a pull back that didn't come but that's a different story. now i wouldn't be surprised if it pulled back near where it was at a prior close i think near 14.50 or so but that's just guessing. but 74 mill is a large volume increase. But i like you bought it with an eye to the type of product they are looking to put out. it's more software based. they are less restrictive about licensing their software then say apple and it's O.S., I like the move of for the new CEO. They have been recieved will. profits are up without the pre factored in, Still a debt issue but they are denting it. and the O.S. has a ton of room to grow onto other platforms. in fact i think the O.S. is what everyone kinda hoped Android would be. but maybe that's just me. And look at RIMs numbers. I think much more then the iphone palm will compete with RIM. Because it's does have a rep already as a business oriented phone. something apple struggles with cause it's rep is more of a consumer phone. palm is in the middle and so far doing a good job. Wouldn't be surprised to see a keyboardless version in the near future, the EOS or something to replace the centros, and maybe even a another form factor of slider maybe for other carriers next year. Me i think it's got a lot of room to run
If he were dead, Ed Tufte would be rolling in his grave upon viewing that chart. By offsetting the y-axis away from zero, the chart makes the share price jump look much more dramatic than it really was.