Investors look to Amazon, Caldera
Amazon's analyst meeting and Caldera's earnings report will be among the main attractions for tech investors as they head into the last month of the quarter.
Amazon's analyst meeting will take place Tuesday. It could be an interesting encounter. The company has been under fire from a group of analysts who express concern about its finances and corporate governance.
The New York Society of Security Analysts has hosted forums on Amazon, criticizing the financial information it provides to investors and arguing that its board of directors does not have the experience necessary to run the company.
At a shareholders' meeting last month, CEO Jeff Bezos tried to address those concerns by announcing that Amazon is considering expanding its board.
The company may also face questions about its privacy policies. The Federal Trade Commission said last week that Amazon and its Alexa Internet subsidiary probably made deceptive statements about their practices when they said they didn't keep personally identifiable information in Alexa's database of Web-usage patterns. But the FTC decided not to punish the company because the problem has been addressed.
• Caldera will report its first quarterly results after its acquisition of The Santa Cruz Operation. Analysts expect the maker of Linux software to post a loss of 23 cents per share in its second quarter.
While times have been tough for Linux companies, analysts are somewhat optimistic about Caldera's prospects. Wells Fargo Van Kasper analyst Jennifer Jordan recently raised her rating on the stock from "underperform" to "market perform," noting that the company "has exited the unprofitable business of packaging Linux operating systems on a retail basis," and is instead focusing on creating software applications and infrastructure to support Linux in a networked corporate environment.
• California Micro Devices will give a midquarter update on Thursday. The company makes integrated passive devices and integrated circuits used in semiconductors and power management devices. It told investors in April that it expects the first quarter to be weak, with revenue down from the $12 million it recorded in the March quarter.