THE DAY AHEAD: Stocks to Watch
Expect the following technology stocks to be among Tuesday's most actively traded issues: Applied Materials, Cirrus Logic, Dell, Hewlett-Packard, Lycos and Ultradata.
The world's largest semiconductor-equipment manufacturer will report its second-quarter earnings Tuesday with analysts expecting a profit of 27 cents a share.
The graphics chipmaker won its patent infringement lawsuit against three companies. But it seems too little, too late, since Cirrus has lost a great deal of its stature in the computer graphics market. Shares dropped 1/4 to 7 5/16.
Investors are banking on another stellar earnings report Tuesday from Dell. First Call consensus expects the PC maker to earn 16 cents a share in its first quarter.
Much like Applied Materials, Dell doesn't disappoint too often.
In the year-ago quarter, it made $305 million, or 11 cents a share, on sales of $3.92 billion.
Another technology behemoth should see a nice stock improvement Tuesday. H-P easily topped analysts' estimates in its second quarter, earning $918 million, or 88 cents a share, on sales of $12.4 million.
First Call consensus expected H-P to earn 80 cents a share in the quarter.
The last big independent Web portal is scheduled to report its April quarter results after the bell today. The First Call Corp. consensus is expecting a loss of 3 cents a share. It should be interesting to see how Lycos fares, since many thought that this quarter's results would be glossed over because of the now failed merger with USA Networks Inc. (Nasdaq: USAI). Shares of Lycos rose 1 3/8 to 108 1/2.
The information management software company agreed to be acquired by CFI ProServices Inc. (NYSE: CFI) for $7.50 a share, a 25 percent premium to Monday's close. Ultradata rose 3/4 to 6.
Eric C. Fleming and Sergio Non contributed to this report.