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April 22, 2002
Telecom tidings sock techs again
Tech stocks
suffered losses again Monday as more bad news from the
telecommunications industry spooked investors.
Amid a revenue warning from voice and data services provider
WorldCom and worse-than-expected earnings from telecom equipment
maker Lucent, CNET's Tech index fell 41.11 points, or 3.2 percent,
to 1,286.45. The tech-packed Nasdaq composite index shed 2.1 percent
to close at 1,758.64.
With Dow Jones average components AT&T and SBC Communications
falling, the blue chip index dropped 1.2 percent to 10,136.43. The
S&P 500 slid 1.5 percent to 1,107.82.
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Growing
pains for Amazon's used goods
A wave of glitches
at Amazon.com's storefronts over the past week is just the latest
problem for the company's burgeoning used-goods business. Dozens of
used-goods merchants, often just individuals moonlighting as
booksellers, complained on the e-tail site's discussion boards about
such things as not being able to list new items or access their
accounts. In many cases, the sellers, who pay Amazon a fee to sell
products on its site, said that they were completely prevented from
doing business. "This is getting me real annoyed," said one post
from a seller who couldn't put up new listings on Amazon. "I don't
know what they are doing, but something is wrong."
AMAZON.COM
14.31 -1.51%
HP
integration carries on in merger limbo
The fate
of the merger between Hewlett-Packard and Compaq Computer will be in
the hands of a Delaware court this week, but the massive job of
integrating the two companies continues unabated. HP had hoped the
merger would close by April 1 and had planned to have all its
integration plans ready by that point. Instead, three weeks later,
the company is set to go to court and defend itself against a
lawsuit from dissident director Walter Hewlett, who is asking the
Delaware Chancery Court to overturn the vote by HP shareholders to
approve the deal.
HEWLETT-PACKARD 18.27 -2.25%
Lucent
posts 8th straight qtly loss, sees more cuts
MURRAY HILL, N.J. - Lucent Technologies Inc. on
Monday posted its eighth consecutive quarterly net loss, and said it
would cut more jobs and possibly take more charges in its efforts to
return to profitability amid the spending slowdown in the global
telecom industry. Lucent, the world's largest telecommunications
equipment maker, which launched its massive restructuring in January
2001, said it will reduce its work force to close to 50,000 by the
end of September from 56,000 at the end of March. The Murray Hill,
New Jersey-based company repeated it will return to profitability
during fiscal 2003, and said more cost cutting will be needed, but
did not say whether that means more job cuts.
LUCENT
TECHNOLOGIES 4.49 4.66%
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AOL
spin-off? Possible but Wall St says unlikely
NEW
YORK - AOL Time Warner Inc. shares have fallen to levels that have
caused some on Wall Street to have visions of an AOL spin-off, but
most believe such a move any time in the near future is unlikely.
Shares of the world's largest Internet and media company have fallen
to December 1998 lows that many analysts said value the AOL Internet
unit at almost zero, leading some to mull "what if" scenarios for
spinning off AOL. Even the mere thought of such a move suggests how
much has changed since AOL agreed to buy Time Warner in January
2000. At that time, investors had worried that Time Warner's "old
media" businesses of music, film, publishing and television would
drag down the growth by hypercharged AOL. Now investors are worrying
about AOL's growth as subscriber growth slows and advertising
remains in the doldrums, leading many to question the benefits of
the largest U.S. merger.
AOL TIME WARNER INC 19.87 -5.06%
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Gates:
States' remedy an industry setback
WASHINGTON--Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates told a
crowded courtroom Monday that a proposed antitrust remedy would
fragment the Windows operating system, creating a chaos of
incompatibilities and turning back the clock on the software
industry. Testifying in person for the first time during the nearly
4-year-old antitrust case against the software giant, Gates argued
that the remedy's provision on code removal would split Windows into
many different versions. The remedy, proposed by nine states and the
District of Columbia, calls for Microsoft to ship a version of
Windows with so-called middleware, such as browsing software,
stripped out.
MICROSOFT CORP 55.59 -2.81%
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