The Best (And Worst) Tech Vendor Stocks Of Q1

Best (And Worst) Q1 Vendor Tech Stocks

Technology stocks were hot and cold during the first quarter of 2011. Of 35 companies watched by CRN, 12 posted double-digit percentage gains but 14 posted share-price decreases in the quarter, including five that fell by more than 10 percent.

Here's a look at the tech sector's big winners and losers on Wall Street.

Quantum

Mar. 31, 2011: $2.52
Dec. 31, 2010: $3.72
Change: -32.3%

More than 30 million Quantum shares exchanged hands on Jan. 27, about 10 times the daily activity the storage vendor normally sees on a given day. Unfortunately, the volume was generated after Quantum posted financial results that investors didn't like and the stock dropped 58 cents per share. It dropped another 25 cents the following day and hasn't traded near $3 per share since early February.

Cisco Systems

Mar. 31, 2011: $17.15
Dec. 31, 2010: $20.23
Change: -15.2%

Historically a darling of both resellers and investors, Cisco still hasn't rebounded on Wall Street from its inventory issues of 2010. Shares fell more than $3 on Feb. 10 to their lowest level since July 2009 after releasing financial results that included lower year-over-year profits. Shares continued to fall more than a dollar-and-a-half over the next 50 days too.

NetApp

Mar. 31, 2011: $48.15
Dec. 31, 2010: $54.96
Change: -12.4%

NetApp shares eclipsed the $60 mark as recently as Feb. 11, but shares fell precipitously after the company delivered a weak outlook. During the quarter, NetApp reached a deal to acquire LSI's Engenio external storage business for $480 million in cash.

Lenovo Group

Mar. 31, 2011: $11.30
Dec. 31, 2010: $12.70
Change: -11.0%

Lenovo shares had a roller-coaster ride in the first quarter, reaching a high of $12.71 on Feb. 17 and a low of $10.07 a month later. Late in the quarter, the company detailed its tablet roadmap after launching LePad in China.

Panasonic

Mar. 31, 2011: $12.59
Dec. 31, 2010: $14.10
Change: -10.7%

Panasonic's share price steadily decreased throughout the quarter as investors may be cautious in waiting to see what kind of impact the tsunami in Japan has on component prices and Japanase-based companies in general.

Microsoft

Mar. 31, 2011: $25.39
Dec. 31, 2010: $27.91
Change: -9.0%

Microsoft issued a 16-cent-per-share dividend on Feb. 15, but it still wasn't enough to keep investors satisfied in the first quarter. On Jan. 27, Microsoft reported that net income had slipped 0.4 percent despite a 5 percent revenue uptick.

VMware

Mar. 31, 2011: $81.54
Dec. 31, 2010: $88.91
Change: -8.3%

VMware was the darling of Wall Street for so long, it's perhaps not surprising that the virtualization giant took a step back towards earth during the first quarter. After being featured as CRN's top tech stock of 2010, VMware shares fell several dollars per share over several different days during the first quarter.

Xerox

Mar. 31, 2011: $10.65
Dec. 31, 2010: $11.52
Change: -7.6%

The acquisition of BPO provider ACS helped give Xerox a top line boost, but the company reported in early February that profit declined 5 percent due to costs of restructuring.

Seagate Technology

Mar. 31, 2011: $14.41
Dec. 31, 2010: $15.03
Change: -4.1%

Seagate shares closed as low as $12.29 on March 1 but increased more than $1 per share on March 7 after rival Western Digital said it planned to buy Hitachi GST for $4.3 billion. Also in the quarter, Seagate introduced its first 3-TB desktop hard drive.

Intel

Mar. 31, 2011: $20.18
Dec. 31, 2010: $21.03
Change: -4.0%

Intel issued an 18-cent dividend in the first quarter but in late March an analyst said demand for second-generation Sandy Bridge Core processors was less than expected.

Netgear

Mar. 31, 2011: $32.44
Dec. 31, 2010: $33.68
Change: -3.7%

Netgear shares fell almost $4 per share on Feb. 9 after the company fell short of fourth-quarter earnings expectations. Meanwhile, last month, Netgear said it planned to acquire all assets of the Customer Networking Solutions (CNA) division of Westell Technologies, a move that would make the company a provider of carrier-class broadband networking products to U.S. telecommunications service providers.

Hewlett-Packard

Mar. 31, 2011: $40.98
Dec. 31, 2010: $42.10
Change: -2.7%

Hewlett-Packard shares closed as high as $48.90 in mid-February but the stock took a nose dive of more than 10 percent on Feb. 23 after HP said sales were down due to weakness in its PC and services divisions.

CA Technologies

Mar. 31, 2011: $24.18
Dec. 31, 2010: $24.44
Change: -1.1%

CA Technologies continued its push to be a dominant player in the cloud computing space with the launch of a trio of new products in January as part of its CA Automation Suite designed to speed the move from virtualization to the cloud, but Wall Street was not impressed. Shares stayed basically between the $23 and $25 range for most of the quarter.

Red Hat

Mar. 31, 2011: $45.39
Dec. 31, 2010: $45.65
Change: -0.6%

Shares of Red Hat had slipped considerably in the first three months of 2011, but then the open-source developer gained it all back in late March after eclipsing revenue and earnings forecasts for its fiscal fourth quarter and proclaiming that it's on track to surpass $1 billion in annual revenue.

Novell

Mar. 31, 2011: $5.93
Dec. 31, 2010: $5.92
Change: 0.2%

Novell shares remain relatively stable as the company waits for its acquisition by Attachmate to close. Meanwhile, the company rolled out an overhauled channel program that executives said would reduce the complexity of registering deals.

Salesforce.com

Mar. 31, 2011: $133.58
Dec. 31, 2010: $132.00
Change: 1.2%

Salesforce.com shares closed as high as $146.47 in mid-January and as low as $120.01 on March 18. Late in the quarter, shares increased after the company announced it would company acquire Radian6, a developer of technology for monitoring social media networks, for $276 million in cash and $50 million in stock.

Advanced Micro Devices (AMD)

Mar. 31, 2011: $8.60
Dec. 31, 2010: $.18
Change: 5.1%

AMD made some progress against rival Intel on Wall Street in the first quarter, if not in the processor wars between the two chip giants. AMD also went out of its way to blast Intel's Sandy Bridge technology in early March.

Lexmark International

Mar. 31, 2011: $37.04
Dec. 31, 2010: $34.82
Change: 6.4%

Lexmark shares jumped more than $4.50 per share on Feb. 1 after the company reported strong earnings.

Oracle

Mar. 31, 2011: $33.43
Dec. 31, 2010: $31.30
Change: 6.8%

Oracle shares enjoyed a slow, steady increase for much of the first quarter of 2011 and last month posted solid revenue and earnings numbers for the fourth quarter. The company also said it expected no impact on hardware components due to the tsunami in Japan.

Dell

Mar. 31, 2011: $14.51
Dec. 31, 2010: $13.55
Change: 7.1%

Dell shares increased more than 10 percent on Feb. 16 after reporting that hardware and channel sales helped propel fourth-quarter sales and profit.

Citrix Systems

Mar. 31, 2011: $73.46
Dec. 31, 2010: $68.41
Change: 8.5%

Citrix shares gained more than $7 over a 1-week period in mid-February and then made another splash a week later after agreeing to acquire EMS-Cortex and a new cloud app delivery group.

Apple

Mar. 31, 2011: $348.51
Dec. 31, 2010: $322.56
Change: 8.0%

It's always interesting to watch Apple's stock following one of the company's big product launches and Mar. 2 was no different. A day after introducing the iPad 2, Apple's stock increased $7 per share.

QLogic

Mar. 31, 2011: $18.55
Dec. 31, 2010: $17.02
Change: 9.0%

QLogic shares remained between $17 and $18 for most of the quarter. Its $18.55 close on March 31 was the high mark for the quarter. The company said it gained market share in fibre channel, FCoE and 10Gb Ethernet adapters in 2010.

Western Digital

Mar. 31, 2011: $37.29
Dec. 31, 2010: $33.90
Change: 10.0%

Western Digital shares closed as low as $29.44 on Mar. 1 but they increased $4.67 per share on March 7 after the company announced it planned to purchase Hitachi GST , and shares continued to climb for the rest of the quarter too.

Check Point Software Technologies

Mar. 31, 2011: $51.05
Dec. 31, 2010: $46.26
Change: 10.4%

Check Point shares were relatively flat for the first 45 days of the quarter, then climbed to $50 in the matter of a few days and have remained around that mark ever since. On Jan. 31, Check Point reported a fourth-quarter sales increase of 17 percent and an earnings increase of 20 percent.

Symantec

Mar. 31, 2011: $18.54
Dec. 31, 2010: $16.74
Change: 10.8%

Symantec made several announcements during the quarter, including the launch of Endpoint Protection 12 at the RSA Conference in February.

IBM

Mar. 31, 2011: $163.07
Dec. 31, 2010: $146.76
Change: 11.1%

IBM had a busy quarter expanding its "Smarter Planet" initiative through new managing and monitoring tools, settling a bribery suit in Asia for $10 million and agreeing to acquire Tririga, a developer of facility and real estate management applications.

Motorola

Mar. 31, 2011: $44.69
Jan. 4, 2011: $39.77
Change: 12.4%

Motorola split into two companies in early January, Motorola Solutions is focused on the commercial market while Motorola Mobility Holdings targets consumer products and services. CRN will track Motorola Solutions in its quarterly stock watch. During the quarter, Motrola Solutions and announced new additions to its PTP 200 Series portfolio of point-to-point (PTP) wireless Ethernet bridges designed to lower broadband connectivity charges.

Websense

Mar. 31, 2011: $22.97
Dec. 31, 2010: $20.25
Change: 13.4%

Websense shares jumped 12 percent on Mar. 16 after reports that the company and might be seeking potential buyers.

Juniper Networks

Mar. 31, 2011: $42.08
Dec. 31, 2010: $36.92
Change: 14.0%

Juniper shares closed as low as $34.82 on Jan. 25 and almost $10 higher a few weeks later. In late February, Juniper took the wraps off of QFabric, its long awaited data center fabric.

EMC

Mar. 31, 2011: $26.56
Dec. 31, 2010: $22.90
Change: 16.0%

EMC saw a slow, steady rise in its share price over the quarter, a period in which company executives said the company is on track to become a $28 billion company in only three years.

Brocade Communications

Mar. 31, 2011: $6.15
Dec. 31, 2010: $5.29
Change: 16.3%

Brocade shares got a small spike after the company reported its fiscal first quarter results on Feb. 17. More recently, the company announced software release version 12.3 for the Brocade ServerIron ADX Series of application delivery switches.

NetSuite

Mar. 31, 2011: $29.08
Dec. 31, 2010: $25.00
Change: 16.3%

NetSuite enjoyed a solid quarter on Wall Street, and the company's channel partners were a big part of its success, registering a 67-percent increase in new business bookings, according to the company.

SAP

Mar. 31, 2011: $61.36
Dec. 31, 2010: $50.61
Change: 21.2%

Like other strong-performing companies in the first quarter, SAP enjoyed a slow, steady climb on Wall Street. Meanwhile, the company announced it's shipping a new release of its governance, risk and compliance (GRC) application suite that provides a unified system for managing and analyzing an organization’s risk and regulatory compliance activities.

CommVault Systems

Mar. 31, 2011: $39.88
Dec. 31, 2010: $28.62 Change: 39.3%

CommVault earns the title for top technology stock performer in the first quarter after its shares increased nearly 40 percent thus far in 2011. On Feb. 1, CommVault reported an 18-percent increase in sales and a 33-percent increase in net income.