NASDAQ:ERTS

IPOs To Dominate This Week, Stocks to Watch: ERTS, BBY, GE, AMZN, MSFT, ATVI

December 12, 2011 By Leave a Comment

IPOs are set to dominate this week with big names including Zynga, Jive Software and Michael Kors Holdings all going public. Some of these companies could still delay their IPOs this week and some have citing market conditions. It will still be a busy week regardless for these new stocks.

Zynga is set to offer 100 million shares at a price range of $8.50 to $10 and could raise as much as $1 billion. If the company raises $1 billion it would be the largest Internet IPO since Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) in 2004.

Jive Software is offering 11.7 million shares between $8 to $10. The company is expected to begin trading on Tuesday.

Michael Kors Holding is a fashion design company and will offer about 42 million shares at a price range of $17 to $19.

Other companies going public this week include energy companies and tech companies.

Zynga’s IPO is likely to overshadow all the other IPOs and will see lots of investor attention on Monday.

Other stocks to watch on Monday include Electronic Arts (NASDAQ:ERTS), Best Buy Co., Inc. (NYSE:BBY), General Electric (NYSE:GE), Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN), Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) and Activision Blizzard, Inc. (NASDAQ:ATVI)

Electronic Arts Inc. (NASDAQ:ERTS) closed Friday up 2.33% at $21.99. EA’s Battlefield 3 came in third for the November 2011 NPD Sales Numbers. Battlefield 3 sold at least 1.26 million copies last month. The company also unveiled the newest Command and Conquer game at Spike’s Videogame Awards Show over the weekend. Electronic Arts Inc. has a market cap of 7.29 billion.

Best Buy Co., Ltd. (NYSE:BBY) finished Friday up 2.52% at $28.11. BBY trades 6.02 million shares a day on average. Best Buy is set to release their earnings in pre-market on Tuesday. Analysts expect Best Buy to report revenue of $12.1 billion. The company has a market cap of 10.18 billion.

General Electric Company (NYSE:GE) closed Friday up 3.25% at $16.84. GE traded 85.74 million shares on Friday, 23 million more shares than the company trades on average. GE will be holding an investor outlook meeting on Tuesday. General Electric has a market cap of 177.79 billion.

Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) closed Friday up 1.34% at $193.03. AMZN trades 6.53 million shares a day on average. AMZN closed last week down from a high of $198 a share. Amazon has a market cap of 87.78 billion.

Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) finished Friday up 1.18% at $25.70. MSFT trades 51.05 million shares a day on average. Microsoft’s Xbox 360 was the highlight for November’s NPD numbers as the video game console sold 1.7 million units. Xbox 360 sales were up 23% year over year in November. The Xbox 360 also held four of the top 10 selling console games including: Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3, Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, Assassin’s Creed: Revelations and Battlefield 3. Microsoft has a market cap of 216.19 billion.

Activision Blizzard, Inc. (NASDAQ:ATVI) closed Friday up 2.60% at $12.24. ATVI trades 13.05 million shares a day on average. Activision sold 9 million copies of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 last month. The company has a market cap of 14.01 billion.

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Zynga Inc. Looks To Raise $925 Million In IPO

December 2, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Zynga Inc. could raise $925 million, in what is one of the largest and most hotly anticipated Internet IPO’s in years. The Facebook game maker plans to sell 100 million shares, or 14.3% of the company, at $8.50 to $10 per share, according to a regulatory filing on Friday.

Zynga’s debut follows on the heels of IPO’s by Groupon Inc. (NASDAQ:GRPN) and LinkedIn Coroporation (NYSE:LNKD). Based on the midpoint of Zynga’s price range, the company could raise $925 million. It had filed in July to raise up to $1 billion.

The IPO would value the 5-year-old company, which made its name on viral games such as “FarmVille,” at a range $7.7 billion to $9.04 billion, based on 904 million fully diluted shares, which catapults it to the top of the U.S. game industry. Excluding stock options and based on 699 million shares, the company values itself as high as $7.1 billion.

Rival game-makers Electronic Arts Inc. (NASDAQ:ERTS) has a market value of $7.73 billion, while Activision Blizzard Inc. (NASDAQ:ATVI) has a market value of $14.21 billion.

Mark Pincus, a serial entrepreneur before he founded Zynga, will hold a class of shares with 70 times more voting power than the regular stock that will be sold in the offering.

Google, one of the early investors in Zynga, will be offering about 1.7 million shares, according to a regulatory filing. Other companies selling shares include Institutional Venture Partners and Union Square Ventures.

Zynga was founded in 2007 and has been riding the wave of Facebook’s growth and the popularity of lightweight social games, which are free to play. In those games, such as FarmVille and CityVille, users play for free and pay real money for virtual goods.

Zynga reported net income of $12.5 million in the third quarter ended Sept. 30, down 54% from $27 million a year ago, according to an updated S1 filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Revenue was $307 million in the quarter, up 80% from $170.6 million a year ago. In the second quarter, Zynga reported only $1.4 million in profits on $280 million in revenue, so the third quarter report is an improvement on a quarter-to-quarter basis.

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Tech Stocks to Watch: DVOX, CA, ADBE, ELNK, ERTS

November 10, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Here’s five tech stocks to watch as the market begins to rally today.

Dynavox Inc. (NASDAQ:DVOX) is up 26% at $4.28 in afternoon trading. Dynavox announced first quarter fiscal year 2012 results yesterday and beat expectations by $0.03. The company’s net sales increased 21% tot $26.2 million compared to $21.6 million in the same quarter last year. Dyanavox is forecasting an increase in net sales by 3% to 7%. DVOX has traded 188 thousand shares today, triple its average volume. The company has a current market cap of 41.34 million.

CA Technologies (NASDAQ:CA) is up $0.11 at $21.39, a gain of 0.52%. CA announced a quarterly dividend of $0.05 per share yesterday. 2.3 million shares have been traded of CA stock so far today, about half its daily average with 2 hours left in the trading day. The company has a current market cap of 10.53 billion.

Adobe Systems Inc. (NASDAQ:ADBE) is up $0.02 at $28.10 today. ADBE is trading flat one day after saying they will no longer push its flash software on mobile devices. ADBE stock has traded 5.8 million shares today and is on pace to trade its daily average volume. The company has a current market cap of 13.76 billion.

EarthLink Inc. (NASDAQ:ELNK) is up $0.12 at $6.84, a gain of 1.79% today. ELNK is bouncing back a little bit today after the stock followed the rest of the market down yesterday. ELNK has traded 645 thousand shares today, less than its daily average of about 1.6 million shares. The company has a current market cap of 738.67 million.

Electronic Arts Inc. (NASDAQ:ERTS) is up 3.17% today at $23.76. ERTS is up as Activision announces a significant drop in World of Warcraft subscribers. Electronic Arts is releasing the much anticipated Star Wars: The Old Republic later this year to compete with World of Warcraft. ERTS has traded 4.9 million shares today so far today, about half its average volume. The company has a current market cap of 7.89 million.

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Investors Watch Activision Blizzard as Call of Duty Releases and WoW Subscribers Slip

November 9, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Activision Blizzard (ATVI) Beats 3Q Estimates

Activision Blizzard Inc. (NASDAQ:ATVI), the world’s largest video game publisher reported its third quarter results posting third-quarter sales, excluding changes in deferred revenue, fell 27% to $627 million from $857 million a year earlier. On that basis, analysts predicted $554.1 million, the average of 18 estimates. Total revenue gained 1.2% to $754 million, the company said.

Activision’s reported third-quarter net income almost tripled to $148 million, or 13 cents a share,. Excluding some items, profit of 7 cents exceeded the 2-cent average of 19 analysts’ projections compiled by Bloomberg.

For the year, profit excluding some items will be 85 cents a share, compared with 77 cents predicted by Activision in August and the 79-cent average estimate of 20 analysts.

One piece of bad news from the earnings results is the drop in World of Warcraft subscribers. The company reports current subscriptions at 10.3 million, a drop of 10% since May.
Robert Kotick, Chief Executive Officer, Activision Blizzard, said, “Today, we launched Call of Duty®: Modern Warfare 3™, which is perhaps the most anticipated video game in history and Call of Duty Elite, our new online service that makes playing together easier and more fun than ever before. Call of Duty Elite is a truly new form of entertainment combining Facebook-like social networking features and online television shows, offering the most accessible way to play Call of Duty games with other people.”

Kotick continued, “We continue to strengthen our position as the worldwide leader in interactive entertainment and the broadening of our audiences is confirmation that games are becoming as important as film and television as a mass-market form of entertainment. Our record nine-month results were driven the by the continued strength of our online-enabled franchises. Based on our third-quarter performance, stronger than expected consumer response to our new entertainment property, Skylanders: Spyro’s Adventures™, and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, we are raising our full-year financial outlook and expect once again to deliver record operating margins and the highest earnings per share in our company’s history.”

Kotick added, “As we focus on 2012, we have a strong product pipeline which features a minimum of two highly-anticipated new titles from Blizzard Entertainment, including Diablo® III, and a new Call of Duty game from Activision Publishing. As a result, we expect to deliver another year of profitable growth. I believe our unyielding commitment to excellence and our creative talent around the globe will continue to position Activision Blizzard as the leader in interactive entertainment.”

Shares of Activision were trading at 13.24, down 5.38% at 11:14 am ET on Wednesday.

Competitors to Watch: Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc. (NASDAQ:TTWO), THQ Inc. (NASDAQ:THQI), Ubisoft Entertainment SA (EPA:UBI) and Electronic Arts Inc. (NASDAQ:ERTS)

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Activision Blizzard, Inc. (ATVI) Gears Up for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 Release

November 7, 2011 By Leave a Comment

On Tuesday, Activision Blizzard, Inc. (NASDAQ:ATVI) is set to release Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, which many analysts expect to be the biggest entertainment launch this year and maybe ever. Activision has already announced that pre-orders for the newest Call of Duty have “significantly exceeded” pre-orders for their previous installment, Call of Duty: Black Ops. Call of Duty: Black Ops sold 5.6 million copies on its first day of release. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 should exceed those numbers.

Bobby Kotcick, CEO of Activision, believes strongly in their new social service launching beside the game called Call of Duty Elite. “We believe that Call of Duty Elite, which was built for Modern Warfare 3 and is expected to launch with the game on November 8, should redefine social connectivity for multiplayer gaming,” he said during their previous earnings report.

Activision Blizzard, Inc. is set to release earnings on Tuesday and analysts expect EPS of $0.02 and $558 million in revenue. Earnings for their next quarter will be significantly higher with the release of their flagship title Call of Duty.

Activision Blizzard, Inc. (NASDAQ:ATVI) closed the day Friday up 1.35% AT $13.56. ATVI traded above average volume with 9.71 million shares. The company has a current market cap of 15.50 billion.

Activision’s main competitor is Electronic Arts Inc. (NASDAQ:ERTS). Electronic Arts released their flag ship title, Battlefield 3, in mid-October and the game has seen critical and customer acclaim. Electronic Arts announced they have shipped over 10 million copies of Battlefield 3 and sold 5 million in the first week alone.

Activision is expected to sell more than 5 million copies of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, but it will be interesting to see if Battlefield 3 cuts into the Call of Duty player base any.

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Nasdaq Stocks Trending Higher: INHX, DRWI, GRPN, SBUX, ERTS, QCOM

November 6, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Here’s six stocks that ended last week higher than where they started.

Inhibitex, Inc. (NASDAQ:INHX) closed Friday up 115% at $8.54. The company announced positive data for its hepatitis C drug early Friday and caused INHX stock to double. INHX traded 29.6 million shares on Friday, well above its daily average volume of less than a million shares. The stock hit a new 52-week high of $9.45 and has a current market cap of 667.7 million.

DragonWave Inc. (NASDAQ:DRWI) closed Friday up 41% at $5.09. DragonWave announced it is buying Nokia Siemens microwave business on Friday for 15 million euros. DRWI traded 2.8 million shares on Friday, above its daily volume of 369 thousand shares. The company has a current market cap of 180.85 million.

Groupon, Inc. (NASDAQ:GRPN) closed Friday up 30% at $26.11. Groupon, Inc started trading on Friday following its IPO. GRPN actually opened Friday at $30 and quickly ran up to $31.14 before coming back down. GRPN traded large volume on Friday with 49.81 million shares traded. At its current price, Groupon has a market cap of 15.68 billion.

Starbucks Corporation (NASDAQ:SBUX) closed Friday up 6.74% at $44.19. SBUX posted strong fiscal fourth-quarter results late last week and expects more growth in 2012. SBUX traded 17.1 million shares Friday, more than twice its daily volume. The company has a current market cap of 32.97 billion.

Electronic Arts Inc. (NASDAQ:ERTS) closed Friday up 3.36% at $25.20. ERTS traded 15.1 million shares on Friday, nearly double its daily average of 8.7 million shares. The company has a current market cap of 8.34 billion.

Qualcomm, Inc. (NASDAQ:QCOM) closed Friday up 0.70% at $56.90. QCOM posted strong earnings last week and saw a nice jump on Thursday. The stock traded over 21 million shares on Friday, about 4 million more shares than usual. The company has current market cap of 94.98 billion.

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