Shares of Avnet (AVT) were off 0.4% to a recent $36.08 despite the firm’s beat and raise quarter.

For the third quarter, Avnet said it earned $1.10 a share, compared to 76 cents a share in the year-ago period. Revenue grew to $6.71 billion.

Analysts were expecting the company to earn 99 cents a share on revenue of $6.31 billion.

For the fourth quarter, Avnet guided for $1.10-$1.22 a share, on revenue of $6.6 billion to $7.3 billion. Both beat consensus of $1.04 EPS and revenue of $6.5 billion.

Barrons.com spoke with CEO Roy Vallee who says it was a good quarter that “hit on nearly all cylinders” and that he sees the stock’s weakness today as a result of general softness in the semiconductors (as about half of Avnet’s overall revenue comes from the industry).

Vallee says that the impact of the Japanese earthquake is at this point too difficult to quantify. “Japan has a big impact on the technology supply chain as a consumer, a producer of goods, and a producer of raw materials that they sell to other producers all over the world. We’re working closely with all our suppliers to understand what the impact will be down to the part level, but we don’t have a good view yet. However, at this point we don’t think there is going to be a significant impact on the June quarter.”

Going forward, he thinks the company’s free cash flow will be a driver for the stock: “We just put up our fourth quarter in a row of roughly 40% year-over-year growth, and when we grow that rapidly, we can find ourselves with negative cash flow, and that was true for the quarters prior to this last quarter. We’ve turned the corner now, where the earnings growth overtook the revenue growth, and we were able to generate $188 million in cash flow from operations; as wel look forward, we expect that cash flow to stay nicely positive.

“The key [takeaway from the quarter] for us is that we have very strong revenue in both of our businesses [electronics marketing and technology solutions], in all regions of the world, and technology really seems to be leading the global economic recovery. Within that, Avnet is growing faster than the tech industry, including investments we’ve made in high growth markets like Latin America, Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Asia; so we’ve created an exciting growth profile. We’re putting up record EPS [results] while making these investments to increase our exposure to high growth markets, so there are parts of the portfolio that aren’t even contributing to margins, returns and profits in the way they will as we scale up.”

Article courtesy of Tech Trader Daily

Depending on how much cash you’ve got.

“I’d been told by many men in Memphis, including my banker, that there was a girl who’d give golfers [oral sex] when they got to the 16th hole at Southwind,” Sherrie Daly, the fourth ex-wife of golfer John Daly revealed. “Apparently, all they had to do was pay $300 when they got there, and she’d take them into the bushes and she’d do it for them right there.”

[DM]

Article courtesy of Dealbreaker

Wiedman was an assistant manager at a fast-food joint at the time, and wearing one of those flimsy paper hats. His colleague Rick thought it would be a riot — and a fitting tribute to April Fools’ Day — to sneak up behind his buddy and set his cap aflame. Rather than creating a slow burn, though, the gag made the manager’s hat go up like a bonfire on the Fourth of July. “He had to pull it off, throw it on the floor, and stamp out the flames,” remembers Wiedman, who’s now a business professor in Lincoln, Nebraska. “I’d been singed, and for several weeks, it looked like I was going bald.” [Reuters]

Article courtesy of Dealbreaker

Shares of Amazon.com were down almost 10 percent in extended trading after the company posted less-than-stellar earnings for its most recent operating quarter.

Amazon.com generated about $12.95 billion in sales in the fourth quarter of 2010, up 36 percent from $9.5 billion in the same quarter in 2009. The site served as a major hub for shoppers during the holiday season. Holiday sales were quite good by most metrics, so expectations were pretty high for Amazon. The site had 25 percent more unique visitors during the holiday shopping season in 2010 when compared to a year earlier, according to comScore.

But that just wasn’t enough for investors, with its shares dropping to around $166.45. Analysts on Wall Street estimated that the company would bring in $13.01 billion in revenue. While Amazon just barely missed the mark, the fact that it underperformed during what was supposed to be a heavy shopping season — now that the economic recession has for most intents and purposes come to an end — apparently didn’t bode well for the company.

Bezos did his best to spin the news in a positive light, pulling a card from Apple’s deck in exclaiming that the company finally hit a $10 billion quarter (Steve Jobs was on Apple’s third-quarter conference call to commemorate the company’s first $20 billion quarter.) Unfortunately for Bezos, Amazon didn’t have the firepower to crush earnings expectations like Apple typically does. The online retailer’s income was up 8.3 percent, from $384 million in the holiday shopping season in 2009 to $416 million in the fourth quarter of 2010.

The company (as usual) was mum about how many Kindles, the company’s electronic book reader, it sold during the holiday season. The device is typically pegged as one of the top Christmas gifts on many sites. But it did say that for every 100 paperback books sold off Amazon.com, the company sold 115 eBooks for Kindle readers.

Tags: online retail, stocks

Companies: Amazon

People: Jeff Bezos

Article courtesy of VentureBeat » deals

Venture capitalists invested the most money last year since 2007, pumping $21.8 billion into 3,277 deals in 2010, according to a MoneyTree Report released today by PricewaterhouseCoopers and the National Venture Capital Association.

Using data from Thomson Reuters, the study showed a spike of 19 percent in dollars and a 12 percent rise in deals over the prior year, with almost all sectors showing double-digit gains.

Investments in the fourth quarter of 2010 alone totaled $5 billion in 765 deals, a 2 percent increase in dollars, but a 3 percent decrease in deals from the prior quarter, when $4.9 billion went into 789 deals.

The stats are welcome news for an industry that had struggled at times in 2010 to prove it was no longer spooked by the credit crisis and was ready to jump back into the fray.

The software industry roared back to reclaim its status as the single largest investment sector for the year, rising 20 percent over 2009 to $4 billion in 2010, which was poured into 835 deals.

The investment was a 21 percent rise over the prior year and helped make software the number one sector for both dollars invested and total number of deals in the fourth quarter.

It was also the only industry sector to receive more than $1 billion during that same period.

Overall, software investing leapt in the fourth quarter of 2010 to the highest quarterly dollar level since the third quarter of 2007, with $1.1 billion going into 218 deals.

Other sectors reaping the benefits of less cautious VCs included the clean technology and Internet-specific categories, which both saw double-digit increases.

Investment dollars also increased across every stage of development, except seed-stage investing, which fell 2 percent.

However, first-time financings rose in 2010 compared to the prior year, despite a fourth quarter drop in both first-time dollars and deals when compared year-over-year.

All of this bodes well for VC financing in 2011, said Mark Heesen, president of the NVCA, who said the community is clearly in recovery mode with investment levels reflecting the economic reality of the VC business overall.

“Continued fundraising and exit market challenges have greatly reduced the probability of investment bubbles in specific sectors as there simply is not enough capital to overinflate any particular market,” said Heesen. “The year’s increase in first time deals and early stage investment is encouraging as this trend suggests that the venture community is doing more with less.”

Tags: Venture Capital

Companies: national venture capital association, pricewaterhousecooper, Thomson Reuters

People: Mark Heesen

Article courtesy of VentureBeat » deals

Apple chief operating officer Tim Cook said he envisions an entire business run from a single iPad.

He’s probably not that far off. Apple’s iPad made a serious push into the enterprise space in the fourth quarter last year, and 80 of the largest companies in the world on the Fortune 100 list are now testing or deploying iPads. That’s up from 65 of the companies on the Fortune 100 list the last time Apple reported its quarterly earnings in September.

The iPhone also increased its presence in the enterprise space, with 88 of the companies on the Fortune 100 list either testing or deploying applications on it. The iPhone was deployed with 85 of the companies on the Fortune 100 list at the end of its last quarter in September.

Among the latest companies to join the list of those deploying the iPad and iPhone are some financial services companies like JP Morgan Chase and Wells Fargo. Which is saying something — typically the enterprise is a very slow-moving space, and financial services are reluctant to pick up new technology for fear of it failing at inopportune times.

iPad sales were also a whopping 7.3 million for the fourth quarter last year, up from 4.19 million iPads sold during the third quarter. Apple sold close to 16 million iPads in 2010, despite the fact that it only began shipping the devices in April. Cook made the comments on Apple’s quarterly conference call to discuss earnings.

Apple hasn’t been particularly silent in its enterprise strategy — going so far as to snap up former Research in Motion talent to help turn its devices running on the iPhone operating system into viable enterprise tools.

Apple’s App Store recently crossed the 300,000-app milestone and sports a number of popular business applications like Yammer and Chatter. The most popular category for apps on the App Store was also the business application section, where downloads grew by 186 percent in 2010 compared to 2009, according to a recent report from Distimo. A large number of organizations — especially those on the Fortune 100 list — are now developing custom applications for their businesses as well, said Apple chief financial officer Peter Oppenheimer.

“You could run your whole business off an iPad or an iPhone,” said Apple’s Cook. “The list of things you can do on those devices today were simply unimaginable a few months ago. And we have a higher customer satisfaction rating in the surveys for enterprise — everyone just wants to use an iPhone and the companies are letting them.”

Research in Motion is still the reigning champion of the enterprise space for mobile phones. The iPhone 4 accounted for more than 30 percent of mobile device activations for enterprise purposes, and more than 10 percent of activations were iPads. But those numbers are dwarfed by Research in Motion’s 55 million BlackBerry users — a massive share of which are enterprise users.

Cook was quick to point out that Apple would add a chunk of new enterprise features in each new iteration of the iPhone operating system. But because Apple’s products are traditionally consumer-facing devices, the newest enterprise updates tend to get lost in the noise and excitement about other features.

The iPhone 4 and iPad are still facing some pretty ravenous demand, Cook said. Apple is getting closer to an equilibrium point where the amount of iPads and iPhones it was producing is equivalent to the demand. But the company still isn’t doing enough to make more iPads, he said. An analyst with Wall Street firm Piper Jaffray said Apple could probably sell 21 million iPads next year as a result of its presence in the enterprise space. Maynard Um of UBS Investment Research said in November that Apple could sell up to 28 million iPads in 2011, as well.

Said Cook: “I feel great that the demand is so high, but at this point I’m not going to predict where supply and demand will meet. The results have been absolutely staggering.”

Tags: apps, enterprise, iPad, iPhone

Companies: Apple

People: Peter Oppenheimer, Tim Cook

Article courtesy of VentureBeat » deals

Citigroup Swings To Fourth Quarter Profit (MarketWatch)
Citi said this morning that it earned a $1.31 billion, or 4 cents a share profit in its fourth quarter, compared to a loss of $7.58 billion, or 33 cents a share a year ago. Total revenues in the fourth quarter were $18.37 billion, compared to $5.41 billion a year ago. Analysts polled by FactSet Research had expected Citigroup to earn 8 cents a share in the fourth quarter.

Ex-Banker Gives Data on Taxes to WikiLeaks (NYT)
Rudolf M. Elmer, who ran the Caribbean operations of the Swiss bank Julius Baer for eight years until he was dismissed in 2002, refused to identify any of the individuals or companies, but he told reporters at a news conference that about 40 politicians and “pillars of society” were among them.

Goldman Limits Facebook Offering (WSJ)
The bank slammed the door on U.S. clients hoping to invest in a private offering of shares in Facebook Inc., because it said the intense media spotlight left the deal in danger of violating U.S. securities laws…The change could damage Goldman’s ties to some of its most lucrative clients, left empty-handed just as they were deciding whether to invest in Facebook, clients say. Facebook executives were frustrated by the headache of restructuring the deal at the last minute, according to people familiar with the situation.

Goldman Fails to See Hype That Derailed Facebook Sale (Bloomberg)
“You would have thought that this was an issue from the start, they should have realized this up front,” said Peter Hahn, a lecturer in corporate finance at Cass Business School in London. “If I invited my 500 best friends to a party, would it be a secret? And the answer is no.”

Toward A 21st Century Regulatory System (WSJ)
Barack Obama: “…creating a 21st-century regulatory system is about more than which rules to add and which rules to subtract. As the executive order I am signing makes clear, we are seeking more affordable, less intrusive means to achieve the same ends—giving careful consideration to benefits and costs. This means writing rules with more input from experts, businesses and ordinary citizens. It means using disclosure as a tool to inform consumers of their choices, rather than restricting those choices. And it means making sure the government does more of its work online, just like companies are doing.”

Schumer Will Push Currency Measure Aimed at China (Bloomberg)
The legislation, which will be officially introduced when the Senate returns from a break next week, would allow domestic manufacturers to seek duties on imports from any country that is found to have a currency that is “fundamentally misaligned.”

Urn Stolen By Ash-Hole (NYP)
A Connecticut man has been charged with stealing a funeral urn containing the ashes of his girlfriend’s grandmother. Mark Kzakrzeski, 37, of Southbury, said he threw the ashes and urn — taken during a fight Friday at the girlfriend’s Oxford home — in the woods, say Connecticut State Police.

Citigroup Gain Masks Flawed Mortgages Sold to Freddie Mac (Bloomberg)
Three years after bad home loans helped trigger the recession and six weeks after the government cashed in the last of its $45 billion Citigroup investment, the New York-based bank is still selling mortgages that violate quality standards, according to an internal Freddie Mac review obtained by Bloomberg.

Steve Jobs’s health to overshadow quarterly Apple sales (Reuters)
Apple said on Monday Jobs was taking a medical leave of absence without specifying a return date or detailing his condition.

Santander Chief Is Said to Be Banned From Banking (Dealbook)
Alfredo Sáenz, chief executive of Santander, has been fined, sentenced to a suspended eight-month prison term and banned from banking by the Spanish supreme court, the daily newspaper El Mundo reported on Monday…Without citing sources, El Mundo said Mr. Sáenz, the most important executive at Santander after its chairman, Emilio Botín, had been sentenced for fraud and making false claims while he was president of Banesto in the 1990s.

Fed Officials Signal Growth Pickup Won’t Alter Bond Purchases (Bloomberg)
Bernanke said last week that “we see the economy strengthening,” and added, “you’re not going to reduce unemployment at the pace that we’d like it to.” Fed Bank of St. Louis President James Bullard said in an interview that while the U.S. outlook has improved, he wants to see more evidence before altering the Fed’s plan to buy $600 billion in Treasuries through June.

The New Starbucks Trenta Cup Is Bigger Than Your Stomach (Gizmodo)
Starbucks will introduce a 916ml Trenta cup. That’s more than the average capacity of the human stomach.

Article courtesy of Dealbreaker

Commenting tonight on Intel’s (INTC) having passed $40 billion in annual revenue for the first time ever last year, CEO Paul Otellini, during a conference call with analysts, made a big stump speech for the server side of computing.
One of the notable standout performers in the fourth quarter was our [...]

Article courtesy of BARRONS.com: Tech Trader Daily

JP Morgan hardware analyst Mark Moskowitz this morning cut his outlook for the PC market again, which he counts as his fourth downgrade of the growth outlook since June.
Moskowitz is now looking for Q3 PC units to rise just 8.4%, year over year, versus a prior 9.1% estimate. For Q4, [...]

Article courtesy of BARRONS.com: Tech Trader Daily

Oppenheimer & Co. analyst Ittai Kidron this morning offered his thoughts from running Research in Motion’s (RIMM) upcoming Playbook tablet through his earnings model: he sees 100,000 units of the device being sold in the fourth fiscal quarter of the year, which is the December through February quarter. (The device [...]

Article courtesy of BARRONS.com: Tech Trader Daily