Another week, another surging debut for an Internet company: Shares of Yandex (YNDX), which bills itself as the most popular search engine in Russia, are up $10.66, or 43%, from their offer price at $35.66, after opening at $35, on their first day of trading. The company this morning priced its initial public offering of 52 million class A shares at $25, above an expected range of $20 to $22.

The offering is expected to net the company $362 million, after fees, bringing its cash balance to $478 million, the company said.

Shareholders are selling the vast majority of that offering, 37 million shares, and the total shares outstanding after the offering will be 321.3 million shares, consisting of both A and B shares, the company says in its prospectus. The class B shares control 94% of the voting power in the company.

The offer price would make the company worth roughly $8 billion.

Yandex, which has offices in the Hague, The Netherlands, and in Palo Alto, California, claims to have the most revenue of any Russian Internet company, and said it has 64% of Russia’s search traffic, with 38.3 million unique visitors to the site in March.

The Russian version of the site, yandex.ru, was founded in 1997, and the current company came out of a restructuring in 2007 of what had been a Cypriot company.

Yandex made $137 million in revenue in the three months ended in March, which in Russian rubles, is a 65% year-over-year increase. The company made $29 million in net income in the quarter, or 9 cents per share, up from roughly 6 cents per share a year earlier.

Yandex lists among its global competitors Google (GOOG) and Mail.ru, which runs a free email service.

It will be interesting to see how the offering affects trading in last week’s star, LinkedIn (LNKD), given that access to Internet high-flyers is believed by some to be behind LNKD’s sharp rise. LNKD shares this morning are down $2.30, or 2.6%, at $86, still quite a bit above the offer price last week of $45.

What about the name? Well, echoes of the past, really: the company has two principal founders — where have I seen that before? — Ilya Segalovich, and Arkady Volozh, and in their attempts to formulate a unique name, they decided to call it “yet another index.”

Hmm. Wait, where have I heard that? Yes, yes, it’s: “Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle,” the name Jerry Yang and David Filo came up with when they formed Yahoo! (YHOO).

Maybe we need a new term: Yet Another Internet Company Selling, “YAICS!”

Article courtesy of Tech Trader Daily

Another week, another surging debut for an Internet company: Shares of Yandex (YNDX), which bills itself as the most popular search engine in Russia, are up $10.66, or 43%, from their offer price at $35.66, after opening at $35, on their first day of trading. The company this morning priced its initial public offering of 52 million class A shares at $25, above an expected range of $20 to $22.

The offering is expected to net the company $362 million, after fees, bringing its cash balance to $478 million, the company said.

Shareholders are selling the vast majority of that offering, 37 million shares, and the total shares outstanding after the offering will be 321.3 million shares, consisting of both A and B shares, the company says in its prospectus. The class B shares control 94% of the voting power in the company.

The offer price would make the company worth roughly $8 billion.

Yandex, which has offices in the Hague, The Netherlands, and in Palo Alto, California, claims to have the most revenue of any Russian Internet company, and said it has 64% of Russia’s search traffic, with 38.3 million unique visitors to the site in March.

The Russian version of the site, yandex.ru, was founded in 1997, and the current company came out of a restructuring in 2007 of what had been a Cypriot company.

Yandex made $137 million in revenue in the three months ended in March, which in Russian rubles, is a 65% year-over-year increase. The company made $29 million in net income in the quarter, or 9 cents per share, up from roughly 6 cents per share a year earlier.

Yandex lists among its global competitors Google (GOOG) and Mail.ru, which runs a free email service.

It will be interesting to see how the offering affects trading in last week’s star, LinkedIn (LNKD), given that access to Internet high-flyers is believed by some to be behind LNKD’s sharp rise. LNKD shares this morning are down $2.30, or 2.6%, at $86, still quite a bit above the offer price last week of $45.

What about the name? Well, echoes of the past, really: the company has two principal founders — where have I seen that before? — Ilya Segalovich, and Arkady Volozh, and in their attempts to formulate a unique name, they decided to call it “yet another index.”

Hmm. Wait, where have I heard that? Yes, yes, it’s: “Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle,” the name Jerry Yang and David Filo came up with when they formed Yahoo! (YHOO).

Maybe we need a new term: Yet Another Internet Company Selling, “YAICS!”

Article courtesy of Tech Trader Daily

Another week, another surging debut for an Internet company: Shares of Yandex (YNDX), which bills itself as the most popular search engine in Russia, are up $10.66, or 43%, from their offer price at $35.66, after opening at $35, on their first day of trading. The company this morning priced its initial public offering of 52 million class A shares at $25, above an expected range of $20 to $22.

The offering is expected to net the company $362 million, after fees, bringing its cash balance to $478 million, the company said.

Shareholders are selling the vast majority of that offering, 37 million shares, and the total shares outstanding after the offering will be 321.3 million shares, consisting of both A and B shares, the company says in its prospectus. The class B shares control 94% of the voting power in the company.

The offer price would make the company worth roughly $8 billion.

Yandex, which has offices in the Hague, The Netherlands, and in Palo Alto, California, claims to have the most revenue of any Russian Internet company, and said it has 64% of Russia’s search traffic, with 38.3 million unique visitors to the site in March.

The Russian version of the site, yandex.ru, was founded in 1997, and the current company came out of a restructuring in 2007 of what had been a Cypriot company.

Yandex made $137 million in revenue in the three months ended in March, which in Russian rubles, is a 65% year-over-year increase. The company made $29 million in net income in the quarter, or 9 cents per share, up from roughly 6 cents per share a year earlier.

Yandex lists among its global competitors Google (GOOG) and Mail.ru, which runs a free email service.

It will be interesting to see how the offering affects trading in last week’s star, LinkedIn (LNKD), given that access to Internet high-flyers is believed by some to be behind LNKD’s sharp rise. LNKD shares this morning are down $2.30, or 2.6%, at $86, still quite a bit above the offer price last week of $45.

What about the name? Well, echoes of the past, really: the company has two principal founders — where have I seen that before? — Ilya Segalovich, and Arkady Volozh, and in their attempts to formulate a unique name, they decided to call it “yet another index.”

Hmm. Wait, where have I heard that? Yes, yes, it’s: “Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle,” the name Jerry Yang and David Filo came up with when they formed Yahoo! (YHOO).

Maybe we need a new term: Yet Another Internet Company Selling, “YAICS!”

Article courtesy of Tech Trader Daily

As a follow-up to last week’s discussion of Intel’s (INTC) Investor Day presentation, Microprocessor Report‘s Thomas Halfhill this morning penned an in-depth overview of Intel’s roadmap for its “Tri-Gate” technology, which the company unveiled a few weeks back.

The Tri-Gate chips, which Intel will start making later this year, are supposed to improved performance per watt by 35%, with all kinds of advantages in improving energy efficiency when the chips are doing work or in standy-by mode. Halfhill notes that Intel will be bringing all of its existing process technology advantages into play, including “high-k” dielectric and metal layers, and a move to 22-nanometer technology ahead of the pack.

If Intel can significantly improve the x86 architecture to make it more efficient for mobile devices, that could give Atom a “one-two punch” when combined with Tri-Gate, Halfhill suggests.

And as I noted last week, Halfhill writes that Intel’s roadmap for its “Atom” chips moving to Tri-Gate by late 2012 or early 2013 represents an improved time frame for those mobile chips versus Intel’s prior transitions. That could help the company gain advantage over chips from numerous vendors based on designs by ARM Holdings (ARMH). 

(Subscription is required to read Microprocessor Report articles.)

The improved Atom outlook has UBS’s Uche Orji this morning writing positively about Intel’s improved stock outlook:

What we did not expect was an aggressive Atom road map, where we believe investors will question less if Intel can defend itself vs ARM but rather increasingly ask if Intel can execute compelling products leveraging its Tri-Gate process advantage to gain meaningful share. We believe even in 2015 for smartphones, Intel’s 14nm Airmont, which would have its first full year of production, would optimistically add ~$0.10 (100m units) to our $2.90 EPS est. We believe more impactful is our view that investors will see reduced downside risk from ARM to longer-term earnings that could result in a rising P/E multiple (currently 10x 2011 EPS) towards our 12x target.  

Article courtesy of Tech Trader Daily

Shares of LinkedIn (LNKD) are down $6.47, or almost 7%, at $86.62 this morning, after steep gains on Thursday and Friday of last week, the stock’s first two days of trading.

Over the weekend, my colleague Andrew Bary wrote that the company would have a hard time growing into its stock valuation, fetching around 20 times possible 2011 revenue of $400 million.

A skeptical article appears as well this morning by Financial Times’s Michael Mackenzie and Telis Demos, who write that the stock is “expected to come under downward pressure this week, as they attract the attention of aggressive traders who are prepared to bet on a fall in the business network’s stock price.”

The authors cite remarks by, among others, Nicole Sherrod with TD Ameritrade who cites the “trending” interest in selling short LNKD. One hitch: the 9 million-share float, out of 94 million shares outstanding, could make borrowing difficult for shorts. Restrictions on shorting LNKD will be lifted tomorrow.

Article courtesy of Tech Trader Daily

Barnes & Noble (BKS) is up $4.40, or 31%, this morning at $18.51 following word last night that Libery Media has made an offer of $17 per share for the company.

Obviously, some folks are expecting a higher offer may yet come in.

Barnes & Noble’s board of directors hasn’t accepted the offer but rather is expecting to consider it with advisors. At least one analyst thinks the offer is not sufficient, with Janney Capital this morning writing that the company has more potential than that in its “Nook” reader and eBook products, according to wire service reports.

Article courtesy of Tech Trader Daily

Apple (AAPL) is closer to a deal to sell its iPhone through China Mobile (CHL), the world’s biggest carrier with 600 million subscribers, writes Ticonderoga Securities analyst Brian White this morning. White was responding to comments made by chairman Wang Jianzhou this morning at China Mobile’s annual investor meeting.

According to a piece this morning by Bloomberg’s Young-Sam Cho, Wang told the assembled that Apple may produce a version of the iPhone that will work on a forthcoming 4G wireless network standard for China, dubbed “TD-LTE,” having decided to bypass the current “TD-SCDMA” that supports only 3G wireless connections, he said.

White writes, “Keep in mind, China Mobile has more wireless subscribers than any carrier in the world with 601 million at the end of March or 69% market share in the country, while China represents the largest mobile phone market on the planet with 876 million subscribers.” China Mobile has the TD-LTE standard up and running in trials in several cities, he notes, and should spread that throughout the country over the next year to a year and a half.

White notes that during a trip to China in December, he observed that 3 million China Mobile subscribers were already using the iPhone via a special SIM card that the carrier offers that can be inserted into the phone, and Wang today said that the total subs using the iPhone on its network is now 4 million.

White says the introduction of the iPad 2 and the white iPhone 4 in China in recent weeks were met with “Apple fever,” meaning long lines and even some “scuffles,” in some instances.

White reiterates a Buy rating on Apple shares and a $612 price target.

Apple shares today are up 64 cents at $340.51.

Article courtesy of Tech Trader Daily

Shares of Intel (INTC) are down 45 cents, almost 2%, at $23.44, after Goldman Sachs’s James Covello cut his rating on the stock this morning to Sell from Neutral, according to a write-up this morning by StreetInsider.com.

Covello warns that the recent run-up in the stock price is unwarranted given that Street estimates are too high and are bound to be ratcheted down.

Covello sees high capital expenditures impacting Intel’s chip prices and cost of goods, and reiterates a view that chips based on ARM Holdings (ARMH) designs will be formidable competition for Intel in tablet computers and smartphones.

Covello’s note comes on the heels of Intel’s investor day on Tuesday, during which the company reiterated its forecast for the year, said the current quarter was on track, and gave further details about its processor roadmap and how it will compete with ARM and others. The presentations received fairly favorable reviews from numerous Street analysts, as I wrote yesterday.

Not entirely surprising, as Covello had written a long note on the semiconductor market back on March 10th with rather grim things to say about the traditional PC chip business.

I’ll have more details on Covello’s full note a little later this morning.

Article courtesy of Tech Trader Daily

Shares of Dell (DELL) are up 67 cents, or 4%, at $16.57 this morning, following better-than-expected fiscal Q1 results last night and a reaffirmation of its year outlook.

(I would note that Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) shares continue to trade down this morning, following a raft of downgrades yesterday. The stock is currently off 67 cents, almost 2%, at $36.24.)

No upgrades so far this morning, that I can see, but estimates and price targets are going up all around, but there is still a substantial caution about whether Dell can maintain its operating profit margin, given that it was margin that allowed the company to beat earnings last night even as it missed revenue estimates:

Kevin Hunt, Auriga: Reiterates a Buy rating, and a $25 price target. Hunt raised his full-year EPS estimate to $1.86 from $1.65, leaving essentially unchanged his EPS estimate of $64.7 billion. The question is margin, he suggests, and what to believe: “Dell increased its full year operating income guidance to a range of 12-18% y/y growth from a prior view of 6-12%. While that is impressive growth, it is far short of the 74% y/y growth just posted by Dell in the first quarter, and implies a significant deceleration in margins as the year progresses, with negative profit growth later in the year, at a time when revenue is being guided upward.” Probably just being conservative, says Hunt, but it’s also possible PC pricing gets more “aggressive” this year, or component pricing rises. “So some caution does appear prudent.”

Ben Reitzes, Barclays Capital: Reiterates an Equal Weight rating on the shares, while raising his price target to $17 from $15. “We continue to believe Dell margins may have peaked,” he writes. Problem is, a wind-down of the corporate PC refresh cycle means Dell “will need to adjust pricing a bit to provide more balance,” given that revenue underwhelming in each segment in the quarter, with desktop revenue down 8% and notebook revenue of $4.7 billion slightly less than expected. Server and networking revenue of $1.97 billion was also light, as was storage revenue and software and peripherals. Services was a bright spot and it “seems like that business is on solid footing.” Reitzes raised his year EPS estimate to $1.90 from $1.70.

Brian Marshall, Gleacher & Co.: Reiterates a Neutral rating, while raising his price target to $16 from $15, though he’s not convinced Dell can maintain its operating margin improvement. “Management’s FY12 operating income guidance is for growth of 12-18% Y/Y. This implies an operating margin outlook of 7.0% at the midpoint of guidance (i.e., a material decline over the next three quarters) […] There must be a decelerating operating margin trajectory (i.e., a 220bp decline from the most recent quarter).” Marshall raised his year EPS estimate to $1.74 from $1.65 previously, on revenue of $63.5 billion, up slightly.

Shaw Wu, Sterne Agee: Reiterates a Neutral rating and a $15 price target, while raising his fiscal year ESP estimate to $2 from a prior $1.70. However, his concerns are not allayed: “we remain concerned with the company’s longer-term fundamental position and believe the company needs to take more aggressive steps to reinvent itself. In our view, the company faces formidable competitors Apple (AAPL), HP, Acer, Toshiba, and Lenovo in its core PC business, and HP, IBM (IBM), Cisco Systems (CSCO), and Oracle (ORCL) in the enterprise business.”

Richard Kugele, Needham & Co.: Reiterates a Hold rating, while raising his year estimate for EPS to $1.88, leaving his revenue more or less unchanged at $64.9 billion. “We believe that to warrant further appreciation in the stock, the street would need to: 1) suspend its negative view on tablets, 2) assume a near-term recovery in the consumer PC market, and 3) believe Dell will be able to maintain or expand margins even in the pending less favorable component environment (all of which we see as unlikely at this time).”

Keith Bachman, BMO Capital Markets: Reiterates a Market Perform rating, while raising his price target to $19 from $18. “Given weak stock price performance by HPQ, and strong stock performance by IBM (IBM), we believe that investors will consider and indeed put some new money to work in Dell,” writes Bachmn, though he’s not convinced there’s enough upside to raise his rating on the shares.

Article courtesy of Tech Trader Daily

Mizuho Securities’s Joanna Makris this morning writes that Cisco Systems’s (CSCO) CEO John Chambers is in the same spot that Lou Gerstner was in when he took over IBM (IBM) in 1993: “this is a company clearly in need of an aggressive, redefining strategy.”

Makris, who has a Neutral rating on Cisco shares, thinks Chambers must “execute a cultural transformation” at the company, the way Gerstner did after coming from RJR Nabisco.

Makris thinks Cisco’s sometime partners — Hewlett-Packard (HPQ), Oracle (ORCL), EMC (EMC), and Dell (DELL) — have been bulking up on software and services for “cloud computing” in a way that lets them “attack Cisco’s core switching fortress as its identity crisis deepened in recent years.”

Cisco, by contrast, “has not made a single significant acquisition in software or services,” since the telecom bubble burst in 2000.

“For a company of Cisco’s size and stature not to own these critical component pieces on the cusp the most significant industry wave change in over 25 years puts the company at a gaping competitive disadvantage, in our view.”

But is Chambers the kind of “strategy” CEO Cisco needs to fight back, or is it time for the board to ask whether the “master salesman CEO” that Chambers is, should go?

Cisco shares this morning are down 8 cents, or half a point, at $16.57.

Article courtesy of Tech Trader Daily