Splunk Inc Jumps Another 5% Ahead of Earnings (SPLK, ALU, STX, CREE)
Splunk Inc(NASDAQ:SPLK) extended its uptrend for the third straight session and rose another 5% to $33.32 ahead of its quarterly earnings today. The stock started to move higher on Monday when analyst at Barclays Capital started coverage on the stock and rate the stock as an Overweight. The firm set a price target of $40, arguing that the company is “the first ‘next generation’ vendor in the emerging Big Data category.” The company made debut on April 19. Analysts are estimating the company to report a loss of 7 cents a share on revenue of $33.57 million.
Alcatel Lucent SA (ADR)(NYSE:ALU) was up 3.38% to $1.53 with the help of bullish commentary regarding its 7950 XRS core router line, launched yesterday. Deutsche thinks the products offer “meaningful improvements” over rival offerings, and could take 5%-10% of the U.S. core router market simply by leveraging Alcatel’s mobile carrier relationships. Goldman thinks the hardware could cause some headaches for Juniper
Seagate Technology PLC(NASDAQ:STX) fell 3.26% to $25.50 . The company is acquiring French external hard drive/low-end storage vendor LaCie for $186M. Seagate declares the companies’ offerings to be “highly complementary” (in spite of moderate overlap), and touts LaCie’s ability to bolster its European and Japanese presence. Seagate might also be interested in the potential to boost LaCie’s margins by having the company rely on Seagate’s hard drives.
Cree, Inc.(NASDAQ:CREE) fell another 6% to $25.56 after slumping 6.50% in the previous trading session on news of CFO John Kurtzweil’s plans to leave for Extreme Networks. Not helping is a downbeat assessment from Canaccord, which views the move as a “momentum killer” that while drive Cree shares lower over the near-term. The firm speculates Kurtzweil’s departure is linked to a shift in Cree’s business model to selling LED lighting fixtures instead of LED chips