By Rex Crum
Tech stocks wavered in Tuesday's trading session, as efforts to
come back from the previous day's retreat took a backseat to
reaction to the earnings reports from the likes of Seagate
Technology and Texas Instruments Inc.
Shares of Seagate (STX) fell by 40 cents to $17.44 recently,
after the hard-disk drive maker reported a fiscal third-quarter
profit of 25 cents a share, on $2.7 billion in revenue. Analysts
surveyed by Thomson Reuters had forecast Seagate to earn 27 cents a
share on sales of $2.66 billion.
Seagate also said it agreed to acquire the hard-disk drive
business of Samsung Electronics for $1.4 billion, and that Samsung
will acquire a 9.6% stake in Seagate.
TI's (TXN) shares fell 38 cents to $34.41 after the chip giant
said late Monday that it earned $666 million, or 55 cents a share,
on sales of $3.4 billion for its fiscal first-quarter. During the
same period a year ago, TI earned $658 million, or 52 cents a
share, on $3.2 billion in sales.
TI said its results were impacted by about 2 cents a share due
to the effects of March's earthquake in Japan on the company's
operations in the country. Wall Street analysts had forecast TI to
earn 58 cents a share on $3.4 billion.
Research In Motion Ltd. (RIMM) shares fell by 60 cents to $54.23
as the maker of the BlackBerry smartphone released its new Playbook
tablet computer.
The tech sector was likely to be busy after the market closes,
with earnings reports due from IBM (IBM) , Yahoo Inc. (YHOO), Intel
Corp. (INTC) and Juniper Networks Inc. (JNPR).
-Rex Crum; 415-439-6400; AskNewswires@dowjones.com