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Mark Gomes submits:Most of Voltaire's (VOLT) revenues come from sales of InfiniBand switches, which are most-often used to tie together Intel-based servers in corporate data centers. Over the past few weeks, sell-side analysts and my own contacts have indicated that data center equipment experienced strong levels of budget flush (end of year spending). We've seen this thesis play out via strong Q4 results from companies like F5 (FFIV), Seagate (STX) and IBM (IBM).In regard to Voltaire, IBM’s "System x" server business is arguably the greatest contributor to the company's switch sales. On Tuesday, IBM provided a positive sign for Voltaire's upcoming earnings report (they will announce Q4 results on February 8). Specifically, System x was one of the key highlights on IBM's call. Sales increased 37% year over year, accelerating from Q3's 1% growth rate and Q2's 22% decline. On the call, management said “Year-to-date growth improved again in the fourth quarter, with share gains in most brands and particular strength in System x.”IBM's Systems group also saw the company's greatest increase in gross margins in Q4 (+2.6%), which was a very nice improvement considering that systems margins were down 0.2% on a full year basis. This is a sign that demand is beginning to outstrip supply.Further, IBM gained market share during the quarter, but only 3 points. To see System x revenues up 37% y/y with only 3 points of market share gains implies that the entire market experienced strength in Q4. This bodes very well for VOLT, which also generates sales from Sun (JAVA), NEC (NELTY.PK), and SGI. The company also has a buding relationship with Fujitsu. As VOLT signs new OEM partners, the company should continue to grow at a faster rate than the market.Finally, IBM’s report only adds to the recent wave of positive data points for VOLT. Most recently, on January 12, Mellanox (MLNX) presented at the Needham conference. MLNX supplies VOLT with the InfiniBand chips that help power its products. Mellanox painted a bullish picture for the future of InfinBand and confirmed sell-side reports that version 2 of ORCL’s Exadata offering is experiencing a meteoric rise in popularity. This impacts Voltaire because Exadata boxes are most often tied together using InfiniBand switches, like the ones sold by Voltaire.Bottom Line: VOLT holds a commanding lead in selling InfiniBand switches into the commercial market (the company claims 90% market share). It is also well-positioned with new products to benefit from the emergence of 10Gb Ethernet, which appears to be ramping ahead of analyst projections.My positive view of Voltaire has been centered on its best-of-breed leverage to these high-growth segments. Based on the recent commentary provided by IBM and MLNX, it appears that the sell-side's estimates are conservative for VOLT's December quarter, as well as 2010. As a result, I believe that the stage is set for a strong beat-and-raise when the company reports its Q4 results.Disclosure: I hold a long position in VOLT.Complete Story »

Wade Slome submits:

We laughed, we cried, we kissed another ten years goodbye. It is virtually impossible to cram ten years into one article, nonetheless I will attempt to chronicle some of the central and silly events that bubble up in my memory bank. 2000Complete Story »

Frederic Ruffy submits: SentimentThe major averages opened modestly higher and are holding slim gains in slow trading Monday. The Dow Jones Industrial Average followed European equity benchmarks higher after Abu Dhabi agreed to lend Dubai $10 billion to avert a default on a key bond set to expire today.Merger and acquisition news helped as well. XTO Energy (XTO) rallied on news Exxon Mobile (XOM) is buying the company for $41 billion and a 25 percent premium Friday's closing price. Sun Micro (JAVA) jumped after Oracle said it was in constructive talks with the EU about its bid for JAVA.Complete Story »

Stocks discussed on the in-depth session of Jim Cramer's Mad Money TV Program, Friday December 11. Game Plan for the Coming Week: Best Buy (BBY), Adobe (ADBE), Boeing (BA), Precision Castparts (PCP), Honeywell (HON), Joy Global (JOYG), Bucyrus International (BUCY), Paychex (PAYX), Discover Financial Services (DFS), General Mills (GIS), Darden Restaurants (DRI), Oracle (ORCL), Nike (NKE), Research in Motion (RIMM), Palm (PALM), Sun Microsystems (JAVA), Nokia (NOK), Apple (AAPL)Complete Story »

Tech Confidential submits:
It's not much of a surprise, but Oracle Corp. (NASDAQ:ORCL) isn't rolling over in the face of European antitrust objections over its pending bid for Sun Microsystems Inc. (NASDAQ:JAVA). Reports emerging from Oracle's meeting Thursday with the European Commission describe the enterprise software giant as mounting a stiff counterattack against Brussels, which has complained that combining Sun's MySQL open-source database unit with Oracle's proprietary database software would harm competition. The Wall Street Journal on Friday says that Oracle accused the EC of misrepresenting the views of database users to bolster its case, and distorting the view of the marketplace by cherry-picking data that supported its arguments.Complete Story »

Frederic Ruffy submits: SentimentStocks rallied around surprising jobs numbers early Friday, but the rally ran out of gas midday and the major averages are holding only modest gains late in the trading session.The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 150 points early after the Labor Department reported that the US economy lost just 11,000 jobs in November. The headline number was significantly better than the 120,000 loss economists were expecting. October numbers were revised to show a loss of 111,000 jobs, compared to an initial reading of -190,000. In addition, the unemployment rate fell to 10 percent, from 10.2 percent. Economists were looking for an increase to 10.3 percent.Complete Story »

As I recover from this weekend's Thanksgiving festivities, I’ve been struck by two thoughts regarding last week’s Dreamforce conference,

• Salesforce.com’s (CRM) new Chatter social computing functionality may be a defensive as well as proactive move.
• An acquisition of Salesforce.com by Oracle (ORCL) may be a friendly maneuver rather than a hostile takeover.

As I reported in my previous blogpost, Salesforce.com’s introduction of Chatter last week at Dreamforce was met with mixed reviews. Many customers, partners, analysts, press and even internal staff and salespeople were uncertain about the company’s goals and capabilities in this new area.Complete Story »

Robert Salomon submits: I have written much about the perils and pitfalls of acquisitions (see Why M&A Deals Go Bad, Acquisitions: A Great Shareholder Ripoff?, or DaimlerChrysler Post Mortem). So in the interest of fairness I thought I would share a story of a deal that seems to have provided value to the acquirer. In an article that appeared in today’s New York Times, Ashlee Vance details how HP (HPQ) was able to derive value from its acquisition of EDS (EDS) (see HP’s Bet Seems a Winner). Consistent with what I’ve mentioned in previous posts, it is in the integration phase where deals are either won or lost, …and HP seems to have been able to generate both cost saving and revenue enhancement synergies through this deal.Complete Story »

Zacks.com submits:
At an event in San Jose, Mr. Larry Ellison, the Chief Executive and Chairman of Oracle Corp. (ORCL), the largest software company said that its proposed acquisition of Sun Microsystems, Inc. (JAVA) for $7.4 billion ($9.50 a share) has been slowed by an ongoing antitrust review in Europe and the company is still waiting for clearance by the European Commission. The delay in approval from the regulatory body is causing Sun Micro to lose about $100 million each month. The major issue lingers on Oracle's potential acquisition of Sun's MySQL – an open-source database software which overlaps Oracle’s own database software. This could smother competition in the database software industry. However, Mr. Ellison said the deal is expected to be cleared by European regulators, despite the delay. It still remains unclear how long the European approval would take.Complete Story »

Hickey and Walters (Bespoke) submit:
The average year to date change of stocks in the S&P 500 is 33.27%, even though the index itself is up just 16.54% YTD. The average estimated P/E ratio for next year for stocks that actually have earnings in the index is 19.47. Twenty-six stocks in the S&P 500 are expected to lose money over the next year. Below we provide a list of S&P 500 stocks that are up more than 100% year to date along with their estimated P/E ratios. As shown, there is a pretty wide variation in valuations of the best performing stocks year to date, with some having low P/Es and some having high or negative P/Es. Micron (MU), Advanced Micro (AMD), Sun Micro (JAVA), Sprint (S), and Office Depot (ODP) are the five stocks up more than 100% in 2009 with negative estimated P/Es. Other strong performing stocks with high valuations include THC, F, SNDK, MOT, and MWV. XL Capital has the lowest P/E estimate of the stocks listed below at 7.40. It is up 370% year to date. Genworth (GNW) is up 325% with a P/E estimate of 11.06, and WDC is up 218% with a P/E estimate of 9.76. Other stocks on the list with a ratio below 20 include FCX, GT, EXPE, WYN, MEE, JWN, GS, CTSH, and LIFE. Complete Story »