Tech Vendor Stocks Fight Back In Q1

Technology Stocks Show Slight Q1 Gains

Technology vendors overall had a solid first quarter on Wall Street, with 22 of the 32 companies featured here posting increases in their share prices on March 31, 2010, compared to Dec. 31, 2009. Nine companies posted gains of at least 10 percent, while only three companies saw their shares fall by a double-digit percentage. Here are the companies, from best performers to worst performers.

Novell

March 31, 2010: $6.00
Dec. 31, 2009: $4.15
Change: 44.6%



Novell's shares had steadily risen for the first two months of the quarter, but then they increased more than $1.25 per share on March 2 after the company got a $1.8 billion offer from private equity firm Elliott Associates, a 48 percent premium at the time of the announcement.

Lexmark International

March 31, 2010: $36.08
Dec. 31, 2009: $25.98
Change: 38.9%



Lexmark shares jumped more than $2 per share on Feb. 2 and another $2 the next day after the imaging company posted stellar fourth-quarter earnings of $1.16 per share before one-time charges. Analysts had expected earnings of 70 cents per share.

Websense

March 31, 2010: $22.77
Dec. 31, 2009: $17.46
Change: 30.4%



Websense didn't enjoy the benefit of a one- or two-time spike in its stock price. Instead shares steadily rose throughout the quarter, reaching a high closing price of $24.17 on March 18 before settling back down a bit.

Netgear

March 31, 2010: $26.10
Dec. 31, 2009: $21.69
Change: 20.3%



Netgear's shares gained more than $2 per share on Feb. 10, a day after announcing a $7.9 million profit for the fourth quarter, a swing from a $7.3 million loss in the year-ago quarter. The company's shares increased nearly that amount again from Feb. 26 to March 2 too, around the time it introduced two new high-performance ReadyNAS solutions for virtualized environments.

Xerox

March 31, 2010: $9.75
Dec. 31, 2009: $8.46
Change: 15.2%



Xerox shares topped the $9 mark in January, but then fell to $8.38 as late as Feb. 9 before rebounding in March. The company's stock closed at $10.11 on March 23 before settling back down a shade. On March 30, Wall Street had little reaction to the news Anne Mulcahy was retiring as chairman and a board member.

Juniper Networks

March 31, 2010: $30.68
Dec. 31, 2009: $26.67
Change: 15%



Juniper's stock didn't move a lot for much of the first two months of the quarter, but rose steadily in March, hitting the $30 mark on March 15. In February, Juniper announced a new software group organized around the company's Junos platform.

SonicWall

March 31, 2010: $8.69
Dec. 31, 2009: $7.61
Change: 14.2%



SonicWall saw its stock jump by nearly $1 per share on Feb. 12 after its fourth-quarter earnings increased 43 percent to 9 cents per share, despite nearly flat revenue. It stayed around the $9 mark for much of March after it unveiled a new enterprise firewall and virtual security appliances.

Lenovo Group

March 31, 2010: $13.80
Dec. 31, 2009: $12.35
Change: 11.7%



Lenovo had a roller-coaster quarter on Wall Street, reaching a high of $15.20 per share on Jan. 15 and then falling to $13.07 less than two weeks later. Shares oscillated between $13 and $14 during March.

Apple

March 31, 2010: $235.00
Dec. 31, 2009: $210.73
Change: 11.5%



Apple shares slipped below $200 as late as Feb. 23 but steadily rose during March, including an increase of $8 per share on March 5, when the company revealed that the iPad would hit stores on April 3.

Intel

March 31, 2010: $22.29
Dec. 31, 2009: $20.40
Change: 9.3%



Intel's shares dipped as low as $19.02 on Feb. 4 before cracking the $22 mark on March 16, when the company ushered in its new 32-nanometer Gulftown class of processors, including six-core Xeon 5600 series processors that should lead to more energy-efficient servers.

Cisco Systems

March 31, 2010: $26.03
Dec. 31, 2009: $23.94
Change: 8.7%



Like several other companies, Cisco's shares rose steadily through the quarter. The networking giant's stock didn't register much movement after announcing solid second-quarter results on Feb. 3. For the quarter ended Jan. 23, Cisco posted $1.85 billion in earnings, or 32 cents per share, up from $1.5 billion, or 26 cents per share, from the same quarter a year ago.

Panasonic

March 31, 2010: $15.32
Dec. 31, 2009: $14.35
Change: 6.8%

Panasonic made a splash in the first quarter with the introduction of its 3-D HDTV, but the buzz didn't reach Wall Street, where the company's stock didn't register much movement after the announcement. Still, Panasonic's shares increased nearly 7 percent in the quarter, hitting several hills and valleys along the way.

Oracle

March 31, 2010: $25.71
Dec. 31, 2009: $24.53
Change: 4.8%



Oracle offered investors a 5 cent dividend per share in January, but the stock tumbled more than $2 per share by the end of the month. It reached the $25 mark again in mid-March, where it's remained ever since. In late March, the company detailed its plans to emphasize direct sales of Sun Microsystems' products to large customers and leverage the channel for midmarket accounts.

Dell

March 31, 2010: $15.02
Dec. 31, 2009: $14.36
Change: 4.6%



Dell shares fell nearly a $1 per share on Jan. 22 and reached a low close of $12.90 a week later before beginning a long, slow climb back to the $15 mark. The company said in late March that it was launching a new set of products and services for cloud computing.

CA

March 31, 2010: $23.47
Dec. 31, 2009: $22.46
Change: 4.5%



CA shares dipped as low as $21.52 on Feb. 8 but have been over the $23 mark since St. Patrick's Day. On March 18, the company unveiled major enhancements to its ARCserve data protection software brand. ARCserve 15 will have two key components: ARCserve Backup for a complete disk-to-disk-to-tape offering; and ARCserve D2D, a more lightweight version with disk-to-disk protection, according to the company.

Check Point Software Technologies

March 31, 2010: $35.07
Dec. 31, 2009: $33.88
Change: 3.5%



Check Point shares posted a modest gain during the quarter, despite falling 5 percent after posting its fourth-quarter financials on Jan. 28, which included a 25 percent increase in revenue and a 27 percent increase in net income compared to the year-ago quarter.

EMC

March 31, 2010: $18.04
Dec. 31, 2009: $17.47
Change: 3.3%



EMC shares got a bump in mid-March, jumping to a high of $18.94 on March 23 before falling 50 cents per share on March 29. Earlier that month, EMC made headlines for hiring Jeremy Burton, a former Symantec and Oracle executive, as its first-ever chief marketing officer.

SAP

March 31, 2010: $48.17
Dec. 31, 2009: $46.81
Change: 2.9%



SAP shares reached $50.64 on Jan. 11 before falling to $42.81 a month later. Since then, the company's stock has steadily rose, cracking the $48 mark on March 29. Earlier in March, SAP said it had hired Mike Coleman, a former Hewlett-Packard executive, to manage volume channel operations.

Hewlett-Packard

March 31, 2010: $53.15
Dec. 31, 2009: $51.51
Change: 2.5%



Like many other companies in the first quarter, Hewlett-Packard's stock was up and down, dipping to $47.03 on Feb. 4 before cracking the $53 plateau on March 23.



Former Lenovo channel chief Stephen DiFranco officially took a similar position with HP in March, becoming the company's vice president and general manager of HP's SPO Americas.

3Com

March 31, 2010: $7.67
Dec. 31, 2009: $7.50
Change: 2.3%



3Com shares edged up slightly, a quarter after HP announced it planned to buy the networking vendor for $2.7 billion. HP expects the acquisition to close in the third quarter of 2010.

Seagate Technology

March 31, 2010: $18.26
Dec. 31, 2009: $18.19
Change: 0.4%



Seagate is the last company highlighted here to show a stock increase in the first quarter, a modest rise of 0.4 percent. The company's stock increased more than $1 per share, to $21.35 on March 1, but two days later it had dipped to $19.63. The company's shares dipped March 26 after an analyst wrote that disk drive pricing had become more aggressive.

McAfee

March 31, 2010: $40.13
Dec. 31, 2009: $40.57
Change: -1.1%



McAfee stock declined slightly in the first quarter, but it has rebounded sharply after hitting a low of $36.94 on Feb. 4. A week later, the company revealed major enhancements to its 2010 consumer products line, including expanded threat protection and up to 325 percent faster scans.

IBM

March 31, 2010: $128.25
Dec. 31, 2009: $130.90
Change: -2.0%



IBM's stock was steady between $120 and $130 during the first quarter, even after former executive Robert Moffat pleaded guilty to insider trading. On a brighter side, maybe the Moffat case was offset by Wall Street's impressions of the company's new cloud-based development services for partners and customers, unveiled March 16.

Microsoft

March 31, 2010: $29.29
Dec. 31, 2009: $30.48
Change: -3.9%



Microsoft shares dipped as low as $27.93 on Feb. 12, but began a slow climb back after the company announced a 13 cent dividend on Feb. 16. It appears Wall Street is waiting for businesses to warm up to Windows 7, which may be happening sooner than later, according to a Dimensional Research study.

AMD

March 31, 2010: $9.27
Dec. 31, 2009: $9.68
Change: -4.2%



AMD lost Wall Street momentum to its rival Intel during the first quarter but rebounded somewhat during the quarter. AMD shares reached a low of $7.19 on Feb. 4 before hitting the $9 mark again on March 16 after announcements that the companies were both rolling out a new round of server processors.

Red Hat

March 31, 2010: $29.27
Dec. 31, 2009: $30.90
Change: -5.3%



Red Hat shares were up and down during the quarter, hitting between $27 and $31. Most recently, shares fell $1.80 per share on March 25 after the company said that its 2011 earnings outlook would be short of analysts' expectations.

Symantec

March 31, 2010: $16.93
Dec. 31, 2009: $17.89
Change: -5.4%



Symantec shares fell more than 5 percent from the end of 2009, but the decline is even worse from Jan. 19 when the stock was at a 2010 high of $19.14 per share. The company's shares tumbled $1.20 on Jan. 28 after the security giant said its fourth fiscal quarter outlook would miss analysts' expectations.

Motorola

March 31, 2010: $7.02
Dec. 31, 2009: $7.76
Change: - 9.5%



Motorola's stock fell almost 10 percent in the first quarter, but it could have been worse.



Shares were trading for as low as $6.15 on Jan. 29. A day earlier, shares fell nearly a dollar after it issued a warning that profits would miss Wall Street's estimates.

Quantum

March. 31, 2010: $2.63
Dec. 31, 2009: $2.93
Change: -10.2%



Quantum's shares closed as high as $3.06 on Jan. 28 but fell 50 cents the next day after another disappointing outlook.

Western Digital

March 31, 2010: $38.99
Dec. 31, 2009: $44.15
Change: -11.7%



Western Digital lost more than $4 per share on Jan. 22 despite announcing fourth-quarter earnings of $1.85 per share, compared to earnings of 6 cents per share in the year-ago quarter.

Compellent

March 31, 2010: $17.55
Dec. 31, 2009: $22.68
Change: -22.6%



Compellent's stock plummeted more than $5 per share on Feb. 12 after the company announced that fourth-quarter earnings were 4 cents per share, far off the 9 cents per share expected by analysts. Typically, about 500,000 shares are traded daily, but more than 5 million hit the market that day. The stock reached its quarterly nadir on Feb. 24 at $15.40 and has since regained some momentum.