Equity Analysis

Major U.S. stock market indices may have spent much of the most recent week moving sideways, but that didn’t stop investors from pouring more money into conventional stock mutual funds, even as they pull back from the more passive equity ETFs. Stronger economic data in both the United States and China may not have produced [...]

It may be difficult to pin a precise value to Dell’s shares at a moment when so much is in flux, but StarMine data suggest that at $13.65 a share, Michael Dell and his private equity be partners may be getting a bargain. What is the fair value of Dell’s shares? For that matter, how [...]

Lucent’s name became synonymous with great technological innovation when it acquired Bell Labs in the 1990s, but even the Alcatel-Lucent (created by the company’s 2006 merger with French telecom industry heavyweight Alcatel) has struggled to parlay innovation into profits in recent years, and a tentative return to profitability in 2011 appears to have been doomed [...]

Plagued by lackluster domestic demand and geopolitical wrangles, Shiseido’s sales slump is likely to take a toll on the company’s profits. The attempts at stimulating Japan’s economy and the other concept enshrined in what has become known worldwide as “Abenomics” in honor of Japan’s newly-elected prime minister, Shinzo Abe, have yet to benefit Shiseido Co. [...]

With the fourth-quarter earnings season heading into the home stretch, even some sectors that analysts had expected would report underwhelming results are delivering positive surprises. One week after the next, companies in the S&P 500 have reported stronger than expected earnings. Of the S&P 500 companies that reported last week, 75% reported better-than-expected results and [...]

Even if consumers are swapping their PCs for tablets, the one constant will be their demand for touch screen devices, and Taiwan-based TPK Holdings is well positioned to profit from that and capture additional market share going forward. Two of the most buzzed-about topics in the technology world these days are the slowdown in the [...]

In spite of a brief selloff and some economic clouds on the horizon, investors continued to emphasize equity fund investments, with mutual funds and ETFs together reporting $6.1 billion of fresh inflows in the week ended February 6. Investors pushed key stock market indices to new highs during the week ended February 6, a period [...]

Across the board, retailers posted significantly better-than-expected advances in same-store sales in January, with the cold weather helping the index record its biggest advance since September 2011. Retail sales posted a better-than-expected gain during January, as the Thomson Reuters Same Store Sales Index registered a 5.8% jump over year-earlier levels. Although including the results from [...]

Shoppers found bargains in discounted cold-weather merchandise in January, and analysts expect to see a 3.1% gain in the Thomson Reuters Same Store Sales Index for January 2013. Cold weather sent some shoppers to the mall in search of warm weather apparel during January, while others were tempted into stores in search of other sale-priced [...]

Advantest is facing a double whammy: demand from two key kinds of clients (smartphone companies and the PC manufacturers) is falling, putting the semiconductor testing equipment company on course to deliver a negative earnings surprise this spring. The kind of turbo-charged growth in demand for smartphones – at least in North America and Europe – [...]