The move comes on the same day of the Google I/O developer conference in San Francisco, in which Google is set to launch a paid subscription music-streaming service akin to that of Spotify AB. In the past, the company has used this conference to preview music-related initiatives.

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In a research note to clients today, Shope wrote that “sentiment has moved ahead of reality” on HP shares, which before today had risen by more than 110 percent from a mid-December low of $11.35, to close Monday at $23.84. Today, the shares are down by more than 5.2 percent, and hit $22.09 as of 11:10 am ET.

Shope’s statement is the inverse of what HP CEO Meg Whitman has been saying about the state of the company in recent public comments. “The narrative lags the reality,” is a phrase she’s used often in public comments, such as in an interview at The Wall Street Journal’s CIO Network conference earlier this year. The point was to argue that shareholder sentiment had yet to catch up with an improvement in HP’s fortunes, and it was bolstered somewhat by HP’s first-quarter results.

Shope argued that weak PC sales will continue to drag on any improvements that HP sees in other lines of its business, including server sales, as well as operational improvements brought about by HP’s numerous restructuring moves. He took his price target down to $16, and rated the shares a “sell.”

Asa Mathat / AllThingsD.com

If you’re an Apple shareholder dismayed by the downward trajectory of the company’s stock price lately, CEO Tim Cook feels your pain.

Remarking on the value of Apple’s stock, which has plummeted by roughly a third since reaching a high last fall, Cook said the company is obviously unhappy with its price. “I don’t like it either,” he told attendees at Apple’s annual shareholder meeting today. “The board doesn’t like it. The management team doesn’t like it.”

Cook urged patience, saying that if the company continues to focus on making great products, revenue and profit will follow. “What we are focused on is the long term; this has always been the secret of Apple,” he said, adding that the company has “some great stuff” in the pipeline.

Whether that’s the much rumored Apple Television or that so-called “iWatch” the company has been testing, Cook wouldn’t say. “Obviously, we’re looking at new categories,” Cook told shareholders. “We don’t talk about them, but we’re looking at them. … We invest in things we think are great to do.”

Beyond that, Apple’s shareholder meeting was pretty much a snoozer. As expected, the company’s board and management won strong support (Cook garnered a 99.1 percent approval rating). As expected, the issue of a lawsuit that forced Apple to remove a proposal from its proxy late last week was broached. And, as expected, Cook dismissed the suit with same rhetoric he used at the Goldman Sachs conference earlier this month. “I strongly believe it was a silly sideshow, regardless of how the judge ruled,” Cook said, adding later: “I don’t think the issue of returning cash to shareholders is silly, though. We’re seriously considering it.”

Previously: Apple’s Shareholder Meeting Likely a Snoozer

The issue here is not so much that investors worry that Apple might fail to meet the competitive threat posed by companies like Google and Samsung, though that is clearly a concern. It’s the fear that Apple may not have any more disruptive innovations left in it.

Barclays Capital analyst Ben Reitzes speaks to this disquiet in his latest research note, recounting a recent bull/bear debate he held on Apple. Of those attending, 30 percent said they felt Apple was suffering from a lapse in innovation.

“Many of the questions that we fielded were around what Apple could possibly do next to help improve sentiment,” Reitzes explains. “Apple’s multiple contraction to a forward P-E of 10.6x from almost 16x earlier this year at peak clearly seems to indicate that investors do not believe that there is a ‘next big thing’ and that iPhone growth is flattening out.”

Which is obviously a problem. Consider that Apple shares closed Tuesday at $541.39, well short of their September high of $705. This during a time when the company is headed into the holiday season with one of its strongest product lineups ever: A new iPhone, iPad, iPad mini, new iPods and refreshed Mac desktops and portables. If that’s not driving Apple shares skyward, what will?

Reitzes’s take? The long-rumored Apple television. “Apple needs the living room,” he writes. “To that end, we still believe that Apple is looking into a more thoughtful TV effort either in terms of a fully integrated television set, set-top box or home media hub — and we believe plans could be unleashed in [calendar] 2013.”

The operative word here, of course, is “could.” And there are many solid for/against arguments on either side of the Apple television question. That said, when has Apple ever built a product in reaction to investor sentiment? As CEO Tim Cook recently told Bloomberg, the company’s M.O. is to do only a few products and do them very well.

“Part of our base principle [is] that we will only do a few things,” Cook said. “And we’ll only do things where we can make a significant contribution. I don’t mean financially. I mean some significant contribution to the society at large. You know, we want to really enrich people’s lives at the end of the day, not just make money. Making money might be a byproduct, but it’s not our North Star.”

Apple’s stock finished the day Wednesday down 6.43 percent at $538.81, beaten down amid continued volatility. And while it’s up 36 percent for the year, it’s down more than 20 percent from the high of $705.07 it hit in late September. That’s an ugly decline.

Apple is heading into the holidays with one of its strongest product lineups in recent memory, so why are its shares taking such a beating?

That’s not at all clear, though there are myriad theories: Fears that Apple is ceding tablet market share to rivals; the company’s refusal to issue a special dividend; concerns that iPhone sales may be a little lighter than expected; reports that clearing firms are hiking margin requirements on Apple’s stock; Nokia’s announcement that China Mobile will carry one of its new Lumia smartphones.

In truth, Apple’s recent swoon is likely being driven by a combination of all these things, which are together shaking investor confidence. Question now is, what will it take to restore it?

After a meteoric rise, Apple’s stock is falling back to earth.

At market close Friday, Apple’s share price had slipped to a little over $527. This after tumbling to $505.75 Thursday — some 28 percent off its September high of $705. That decline has shaved about $170 billion off the company’s market capitalization, which was headed toward $660 billion just two months ago.

A nasty plunge, and an oddly timed reversal of fortune for high-flying Apple, which is headed into the holiday season with one of its strongest product lineups ever: A new iPhone, iPad, iPad mini, new iPods, and refreshed Mac desktops and portables.

So, what’s behind the slump?

It could be the overall markets, which have taken a vicious beating recently. It could be persistent supply chain issues that have to some extent hamstrung Apple from meeting robust demand for some of its devices — the iPhone 5 is still showing shipping times of two to three weeks on the Apple Store nearly two months after first going on sale; the new iPad mini is also backordered. The iOS Maps debacle and a high-profile management overhaul may have also shaken investor faith in the company.

It could be that concerns over the “fiscal cliff” are weighing heavy on Apple as well. A number of hedge funds that count the company among their top holdings have been unloading some of their Apple shares. As David Greenberg of Greenberg Capital told CNBC, “Someone yelled ‘fire’ in the theater where the hedge funds were safely booking their year-end profits — and as traders do, they will trample you trying to be first to get to the exit.”

Meanwhile, individual investors are too timid at this point to rush in and buy up the stock the funds are selling off.

Another possible factor: Apple is losing its appeal as a growth story as it morphs into a classic blue chip value story, as Bernstein analyst Toni Sacconaghi recently theorized. “We believe that Apple is transitioning from a hyper-growth story to a more traditional, high quality branded company story,” he recently told clients. That’s certainly possible — Apple did pay a quarterly dividend last week.

And then there’s that litany of other concerns — the iPhone market is nearing saturation; innovation at Apple is dying; gross margins are declining; “Tim Cook is no Steve Jobs”; and so on. All can weigh on Apple’s share price.

In truth, it’s probably a combination of all these things — that clichéd “perfect storm” situation that’s so often blamed for volatility like this. With one other important bit factored in.

This pre-holiday decline is a historical pattern. It’s been happening for years. Apple shares slip late in the year amid profit-taking and some irrationality or other. And then the company reports monster first-quarter earnings in January and they spike. It happened this year. And last year. And the year before that. And the year before that as well.

Look at the chart below, which tracks closing prices from the first and last day of December and January. Over the past decade, Apple shares fell an average of more than 1 percent in December back to 2002, and rose an average of more than three percent in January (Note: That average excludes two outliers — an unusual rise in December 2007 and an unusually lousy January from 2008).

See the pattern there? What are the chances the same thing will happen come January?

We’ll just have to wait and see.

Previously: Apple Investors Are Wusses

Arik Hesseldahl contributed to this report.

A year ago, Google shares were trading at about $480. Today, they closed at $727.50, up more than 9 percent, to reach another 52-week high. And, given the company’s last earnings report — which was better than expected — and the recent introductions of new Android handsets from Samsung and Motorola, they’re likely to move higher still in the weeks ahead.

Scott Kessler at S&P Capital IQ attributes a lot of the recent momentum behind Google’s stock to the company’s second-quarter earnings. “I think there was some investor concern ahead of Google’s last quarterly report,” Kessler told AllThingsD. “But they turned in a solid quarter, and that provided the market with a lot of reassurance. Look at the stock now; it’s up about 25 percent for the past three months.”

Add to that the warm welcome given to the company’s new Nexus 7 tablet, and the company’s recent rise isn’t all that difficult to understand. Said Kessler, “They’ve had some strong product launches. The Nexus 7 is doing well.”

And despite some product missteps and the legal issues burgeoning around Android, Google remains a search advertising juggernaut. With PC search revenue continuing to produce steady cash flow and the company well-positioned to swallow a big chunk of mobile advertising revenue as well, there’s ample reason for the market’s optimism.

As Nikesh Arora, Google’s chief business officer, said during the company’s last earnings call, “The good news is, we’re seeing phenomenal growth in mobile queries across the board. Mobile is, right now, where search was in 1999.”

The Library of Virginia

After spiking to a 52-week high of $712.25 Friday, Google’s stock ended the day at $706.15, a price it hasn’t hit since 2007. That’s still a ways off from the record high of $747.24 it hit in November 2007, but it’s clearly headed into the same territory.

Google’s shares have gained about 19 percent since the company last reported earnings, when it turned in solid financials thanks to its thriving core advertising business.

More recently, they’ve been buoyed by Google’s well-received 7-inch Nexus tablet. Also fueling this resurgence of faith: What appears to be a tempering of concern over the integration of Motorola Mobility, which Google acquired earlier this year for $12.5 billion. The search behemoth recently hired Barclays to help it shop Motorola’s Home division, which makes and sells set-top boxes and cable modems. And it’s believed to be looking for a price of $2 billion.

Shares of HP fell the most of all the Dow stocks Friday, dropping 82 cents, or more than 4 percent, to $19.46 by 2:15 pm ET. The shares have been scraping along the bottom near a seven-year low for several weeks now. Their lowest point yet came on June 28 when they traded at $19.12.

Also falling today was IBM, shares of which dropped $5.25, or 2.7 percent, to $190.04. It was the lowest that IBM shares had traded at since early June. It was the Dow’s fourth-worst performer.

The primary concern is that the slowdown in hiring indicates that companies feel less confident in the state of the overall economy. HP, which in May said it would cut 27,000 jobs worldwide by the end of 2013, isn’t exactly helping the employment picture. But it’s also heavily exposed to Europe, where currency and sovereign debt concerns have weighed on the economy. HP does about 35 percent of its business there.

Worries about Europe hurt IBM, too, though weighing more heavily was a Thursday report by BMO Capital analyst Keith Bachman, who trimmed his revenue estimate, saying he expects the company to report sales below the Street consensus. IBM’s main weakness, Bachman argues, will be an unfavorable foreign exchange rate that reduces revenue by about 3 percent.

On that day, HP shares closed at $19.59. Yesterday, they closed at $19.55, marking what is officially a seven-year-low for the shares, a milepost I noticed was approaching last week. Of course it goes without saying that the drop amounts to a new 52-week low, as well.

HP shares continued their fall as markets opened in New York today. As I type, the shares are now trading at $19.36, down 18 cents, or nearly 1 percent.

It’s worth comparing 2012 to early 2005 by another number: HP’s long-term debt. The last time HP shares traded this low, it had $4.6 billion in long-term debt on its balance sheet. As of the quarter ended April 29, that figure has swelled by more than a factor of five, to $25.8 billion.

That figure by itself is alarming enough. But when HP’s debt situation is compared to its peers, the scale of the task ahead for CEO Meg Whitman becomes substantially more daunting.

HP’s net debt — the sum of its short-term and long-term debt minus cash on hand — amounts to slightly less than $21.8 billion, or about 56 percent of HP’s market capitalization as of yesterday’s closing price.

A June 11 research report by analyst Chris Whitmore of Deutsche Bank Securities called this figure out, and compared it to some of HP’s peers, including Dell, Apple and IBM. The graphic he prepared deserves a look, though it was created when HP’s net debt as a percentage of market cap was only 43 percent: Its share price has fallen that far since.

It’s an important figure, given the deteriorating conditions in the global economy, especially in Europe, where the ongoing sovereign debt crisis shows no sign of abating, and where HP historically does about 35 percent of its business, Whitmore argues. It’s a simple fact that companies with more cash and less debt on their balance sheets will probably have an easier time of it.

HP shares closed today at $20.30, down 86 cents, or more than 4 percent. Hard as it may be to believe, that’s lower than HP shares traded in the wake of the mess of Aug. 18, 2011, when former CEO Léo Apotheker sought to lead HP into PC-less era.

In fact, the last time HP shares traded this low was in May of 2005, about a month and change after Mark Hurd took over as CEO, meaning the shares are trading near a seven-year low.

For a little perspective, here are some bullet points on what this price represents:

• A 52-week low.
• A drop of more than 20 percent year to date.
• A drop of more than 28 percent since Aug. 18, 2011.
• A drop of 40 percent from a year ago today.
• A drop of 62 percent from HP’s peak price in 2010.
• A drop of 53 percent over five years.
• HP’s lowest share price since May 12, 2005.
• A gain of 28 percent over 10 years.

Of course the expected turnaround is partially under way, but it is a big job that is just now beginning. CEO Meg Whitman says the work is about 15 percent complete. One can fairly wonder how long shareholders will have patience.

Facebook shares will trade on the Nasdaq exchange for the first time at $38 per share on Friday morning, valuing the world’s largest social networking Web site at $ 104.12 billion.

At $38 a share, Facebook would raise $16 billion in the offering. The company could sell an additional 63 million in over-allotments if underwriters see the demand (which they probably will).

Facebook initially set its sights on a $28 to $35 price range, but the company steadily raised the target amid growing investor fervor for the largest technology compay IPO in history. Earlier this week, in an amended S-1 SEC filing, the company estimated its share price to be in the $34 to $38 range. The final share price will settle at the top of the estimated range, though not over.

Facebook’s offering debuts after a year replete with hot tech IPOs from Zynga, LinkedIn and Groupon. Facebook’s trumps every other. Google’s was the largest IPO in tech history when it raised $1.67 billion in August of 2004. Last year, Zynga raised $1 billion.

But many things about Facebook ramping up to its Nasdaq debut were far out of the norm for tech company IPOs. To kick off its traveling pitch to institutional investors last week, Facebook put together an extravagant, well-produced roadshow video complete with a full explanation of the company’s advertising business, the meat and potatoes of Facebook’s revenue engine. And in celebration of the IPO, the company will host an all-night hackathon at its Menlo Park headquarters on Thursday evening in order to ring in $FB’s debut “the hacker way.”

The mammoth IPO comes despite initial reports of investor reservations about said revenue engine, and General Motors’ ill-timed announcement earlier this week that it would pull its $10 million in ad spend that it reserves for Facebook, citing that the advertisements just weren’t working.

Shortly thereafter, Facebook increased the amount of shares offered to investors on Friday by nearly 25 percent.

CEO Mark Zuckerberg will be selling close to $1.2 billion in shares at the time of the IPO — for tax purposes, he says — though he still holds more than 580 million voting shares, maintaining a firm grip on complete control over the direction of his 8-year-old company.

It’s official: $FB has arrived.

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That brings the company’s highest valuation to just above $100 billion.

In all, Facebook will offer upward of 388 million shares — which includes an additional 50.6 million shares added Tuesday — raising $14.7 billion in the IPO.

Facebook also notes that while the company expected its recent acquisition of Instagram to close by the end of the second quarter, it now hopes to close the deal by the end of 2012. As reported last week by the Financial Times, the FTC launched a routine investigation looking into the acquisition, which would most likely delay the deal until well after Facebook’s initial estimated time frame.

Expect the official pricing to occur this Thursday, according to our sources, with $FB to debut on the Nasdaq exchange this Friday.

Here is a relevant and juicy new detail about Facebook’s acquisition of photo-sharing start-up Instagram, which is buried deep in the new S-1 document the social networking giant just filed:

In April 2012, we entered into an agreement to acquire Instagram, Inc., which has built a mobile phone-based photo-sharing service, for approximately 23 million shares of our common stock and $300 million in cash. Following the closing of this acquisition, we plan to maintain Instagram’s products as independent mobile applications to enhance our photos product offerings and to enable users to increase their levels of mobile engagement and photo sharing. This acquisition is subject to customary closing conditions, including the expiration or early termination of all applicable waiting periods under the Hart-Scott-Rodino Antitrust Improvement Act of 1976, as amended (HSR), and is currently expected to close in the second quarter of 2012. We have agreed to pay Instagram a $200 million termination fee if governmental authorities permanently enjoin or otherwise prevent the completion of the merger or if either party terminates the agreement after December 10, 2012.

That means in the deal, Facebook is valuing its share price at just under $31 a share or $77 billion for the whole tamale.

On Tuesday, the BlackBerry maker’s stock closed below $20 for the first time since 2004, dragged down by a Veritas report predicting the company’s market share is globally headed for the single digits. “Clearly, it’s now single-digit market share in the United States — soon, I think it will be single-digit worldwide,” Veritas analyst Neeraj Monga told the Globe and Mail.

Today brought with it more ugly news. RIM shares continued their downward spiral, hitting a new 52-week low of $18.61, well below its book value of $18.92 at the end of last quarter, according to Bloomberg. That move dropped RIM’s already much-diminished market cap south of $10 billion — $9.78 billion as I write this.

A brutal decline for RIM, whose shares once traded at $147.55, and a nasty hit to the personal wealth of its founders, who are little more than half-billionaires now. With 28,143,312 shares, or 5.37 percent equity, RIM co-founder Mike Lazaridis is worth about $523.7 million (assuming a share price of $18.61). With 28,680,490 shares, or about 5.09 percent equity, his partner, Jim Balsillie, owns about $496.5 million.

Ugly. Clearly, Balsillie’s not going to be bidding on any hockey teams any time soon.

That is, unless RIM can get its act together, something it desperately needs to do. As Canalys analyst Tim Shepherd said in a research note today, “RIM needs to deliver new, fresh, exciting products to the market and increase its pace of innovation and execution if it is going to have any chance of reasserting its position in North America. It badly needs to deliver on its potential with its new BBX platform.”

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Today it is among the most valuable companies in the world, riding high on record sales of a string of hit products that have redefined personal technology and our expectations for it. In just the first three quarters of this year alone, Apple has already racked up record sales of nearly $80 billion. By year’s end they’ll likely top $100 billion.

Something to keep in mind today as the market reacts to the sad news of Jobs’s passing.

But amid the inevitable volatility in Apple’s share price the next few days, remember this: Jobs’s absence will likely have no measurable impact on Apple’s financial performance for the foreseeable future, if ever. But his legacy of innovation will — and for years to come. As I’ve written before, it’s Apple, not the iPod, iPhone or iPad, that is Jobs’s masterpiece product, a company designed to set the bar for the industry, regardless of whether he’s leading it or not.

As Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster wrote in a note to clients late Wednesday, “We believe the ethos of Steve Jobs, his vision and his work ethic, will forever drive Apple. As such, we reiterate, without hesitation, our Overweight rating on [the company's shares]. We believe Tim Cook is the ideal candidate to continue the work of the irreplaceable Steve Jobs. … While there may be concerns among investors as to whether or not Cook can continue Jobs’ streak of innovation, we believe there is no better candidate to lead the company Jobs co-founded. And in many ways, it will be Jobs and his deeply rooted vision that will always guide Apple and its leaders.”

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Shares in the company rose well over 2 percent Monday, sending its stock price as high as $411.50 — well above its all-time high close of $403.41, set back in July.

The spike, which has pushed Apple’s market capitalization beyond $380 billion, is further evidence of the market’s continuing faith in the company after founder Steve Jobs stepped down as CEO in late August.

[Image credit: NASA]

“If Apple views HTC as one of its major competitors in US market for high end smartphones and leverages these legal tactics to seek royalty payments, this could raise HTC’s cost structure relative to Apple and other Android makers,” Morgan Stanley analyst Jasmine Lu said in a note to clients. “[And that] could adversely affect HTC’s share opportunity if other Android makers are not required to pay the same royalties as HTC in the near future.”

HTC plans to appeal the ruling. But as many an observer has pointed out, preliminary ITC determinations are seldom overturned.

At the company’s annual shareholder meeting Tuesday, Chief Executive Steve Ballmer and Chairman Bill Gates sought to calm investors, some of whom asked if the maker of Windows operating systems and Xbox game consoles would be more valuable as individual companies.

“Is it time to consider breaking this company up?” one investor, grousing over Microsoft’s share price, asked Mr. Ballmer.
Mr. Ballmer, who has run Microsoft for the past 10 years, dismissed the idea, saying it would reduce Microsoft’s value by making it more difficult for the company to compete.

“I obviously don’t think it is time” for a break up, Mr. Ballmer responded, noting that many of Microsoft’s products, including Windows and the Office suite, are sold to consumers and corporations alike.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

Palm lost about half a billion dollars in market value last week after the company warned of a nasty revenue shortfall. And it seems that was only the beginning of what may prove to be a long and painful decline. Investors brutalized Palm (PALM) Thursday, slashing nearly five percent from its share price, dragging it to $5.98 from $6.26.

$5.98 per share. A year ago Palm’s stock was trading at $18.09. Now, analysts like Matthew Thornton at Avian Securities are saying they see it falling to $4–at least in the short term.

Lousy sales of the company’s webOS smartphones have clearly undermined Palm’s efforts to regain its former glory. With the mood on The Street this dark, you’ve got to wonder if anyone believes that’s even possible anymore.

UPDATE: Here’s a bit of good news for Palm. At the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco next week, the company plans to release its webOS Plug-in Development Kit, a set of tools that may spur development or more, and higher quality, third party apps.