Comcast Cool in Rough Times

Comcast (NASDAQ:CMCSA) repeated their previous quarter’s outperformance, an achievement in this difficult quarter. Q4 revenues of $8.77 billion were better than the market’s expectations of $8.64 billion and recorded growth of 9% annually. EPS of $0.27 was significantly higher than the market’s expectations of $0.22 and grew 35% over the year. Bravo! >>>

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Wipro Needs To Think Differently

Even as the economic headwinds approach gale force, the Indian IT outsourcing industry continues to deal with the aftermath of the Satyam fraud revealed earlier this year. Amid such worries, Wipro Ltd (NYSE:WIT), another Indian giant and one of my Top 10 Outsourcing Stocks, announced rather depressing Q3 results. >>>

Oracle to Acquire Informatica in ’09?

The leading data integration enterprise, Informatica (NASDAQ:INFA), recently announced their Q4 results. Revenue of $124.4 million grew 9% over the year but fell short of the Street’s expectations of $127 million. During the quarter, license revenue grew a record 4% over the year and contributed 46% of the total revenue. Services revenue grew 14% over the year to $67.2 million. >>>

VMWare Outperforms, Cisco Watching?

VMware (NYSE:VMW) kept up with its previous quarter’s performance of exceeding the market’s expectations in the recently announced Q4 results.

Revenues for the quarter of $515 million exceeded the market’s expectations of $512 million and reported 25% annual growth. EPS for the quarter of $0.36 was significantly higher than the market’s expectations of $0.26 and recorded growth of 38% over the year. >>>

McAfee May Be Recession Proof

McAfee doesn’t seem to be terribly bothered by the recession. The Security software category should be relatively recession proof, and McAfee will continue to benefit from that. Also, the company has a good track-record of M&A, and in this market, with valuations compressed, they can pick up whatever is missing in their portfolio at attractive prices. Among those, I’d say, Qualys could be a top target, setting them up for managed security in a SaaS mode. [Read: Top Seven SaaS Startups.] Let’s look at the Q4 and 2008 results and acquisitions. >>>

Intuit Needs To Acquire Into SaaS

Yesterday, Intuit Inc. (NASDAQ: INTU), the tax preparation and small business accounting software maker with annual revenue of $3.1 billion, reported mixed second quarter results that beat earnings estimates. We recently looked at the latest US employment statistics reported by ADP. Intuit is another company that provides a fair idea about the health of the economy. Let’s take a closer look at its results. >>>

Media Sector: Viacom, NYT

Time to take a look at the Media sector, and how things are going there.

Viacom (VIA) has made some smart moves in the past that are now enabling the company to perform better than media industry peers. In its recently announced results, Viacom reported flat Q4 revenues of $4.24 billion. For the year, revenue grew 9% to $14.63 billion. >>>

HP Succumbs, But Likely to Acquire

Hewlett Packard Co (NYSE:HPQ), the leader in the PC market with annual revenue of $118.4 billion, had been reporting strong quarters till now and had seemed to be recession-proof. Not any more. Yesterday, the company reported a mixed first quarter, missing revenue estimates but meeting earnings estimates. It experienced growth only in the Services segment, which was helped by the EDS acquisition. Its outlook was also disappointing. >>>

Semi Infrastructure: KLA, Novellus, Amkor

Let’s do a quick roundup of the semiconductor infrastructure sector.

KLA-Tencor, (NASDAQ: KLAC) the world leader in yield management and process control solutions for semiconductor manufacturing and related industries, announced Q2 results on January 29. Though they managed to exceed the Street’s expectations on revenue, they fell short in their EPS figures. >>>

Struggles at Seagate, SanDisk

Seagate and SanDisk, both storage solutions companies, are having a hard time in this economic environment. Both are leaders in their markets, but need massive restructurings to stay afloat.

On January 21, Seagate Technology (NASDAQ: STX), the leader in hard disk drives and storage solutions with annual revenue of $12.7 billion, reported dismal results for the second quarter that missed analyst earnings estimates by huge margins. >>>