Como se combate o populismo? "Com eleições", responde Fukuyama

[vmerck]

boa para vender na abertura?

[stella maris]

Obrigado Info pelas suas mensagens.

[pvk]

IBM Plans to Cut Up to 13,000 Jobs as Profit Trails (Update2)

May 4 (Bloomberg) -- International Business Machines Corp., the world's biggest computer-services company, plans to eliminate 10,000 to 13,000 jobs after quarterly profit trailed forecasts and the stock had its longest losing streak in three decades.

The cuts are primarily in Europe, where growth is slower, IBM said today in a statement. Pretax costs will total $1.3 billion to $1.7 billion this quarter, and savings will start in the second half of the year, Armonk, New York-based IBM said.

This marks IBM's biggest restructuring since Chief Executive Sam Palmisano slashed 15,600 jobs in 2002 after five straight quarterly sales declines. Palmisano now wants IBM to move into higher-growth markets such as consulting deals to help clients use technology to streamline business processes.

``They're doing the right things,'' said Jim Grossman, who helps manage $63 billion including IBM shares at Thrivent Financial in Appleton, Wisconsin. ``They can solve their problems, they can make up this ground.''

IBM will make changes in lower-growth European countries to have teams work across borders and eliminate the need for a traditional pan-European management layer. That means creating smaller local units in the region, with more employees working directly with clients to shore up growth.

Shares of IBM rose 82 cents to $77.90 in extended trading after the report. The stock had added 61 cents to $77.08 as of 4 p.m. in New York Stock Exchange composite trading and fell 14 days in a row last month.

Reducing Bureaucracy

``We are, as I put it, lowering the center of gravity of IBM,'' Palmisano said April 26 at IBM's shareholder meeting. He said IBM was cutting costs, without detailing how many jobs he planned to lose. ``This means restructuring parts of our operations to reduce bureaucracy.''

Palmisano last month said his top 50 managers will give up pay increases this year after the computer company's first-quarter sales grew 3 percent to $22.9 billion, the slowest pace in 10 quarters. Profit from continuing operations rose to 85 cents a share, lagging behind the 90-cent average of 17 estimates in a Thomson Financial survey.

Analysts including UBS AG's Ben Reitzes in New York had predicted as many as 10,000 job cuts before another meeting with investors on June 9.

``They've had a lot of things working against them,'' Thrivent's Grossman said. ``But the things they did have control of, they messed up.''

Final Weeks

IBM reported less than $293,000 in sales per employee last year, less than Dell Inc.'s $891,000, Hewlett-Packard Co.'s $529,000 and Sun Microsystems Inc.'s $320,000, according to Bloomberg data. Electronic Data Systems Corp., the No. 2 computer- services company after IBM, generated $177,000 per employee.

IBM said sales stalled in the final weeks of the quarter as demand for software programs withered and clients pared orders for computers ahead of IBM's planned sale of its personal-computer division to China's Lenovo Group Ltd.

Services sales climbed 6.1 percent, missing the 7.2 percent estimate of Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. analyst Toni Sacconaghi, the top-ranked computer analyst in a survey by Institutional Investor magazine.

[Ertai]

Vamos ter gap down amanhã.. NASDAQ no After já vai a descer 0,30%

Um bom conjunto de bigcaps a descer bastante no after.. penso que já tivemos um cenário parecido no ano passado.. ei de ver o historial para ver se decubro o que aconteceu nesse dia..

Talvez abra logo nos suportes do SP500 e suba durante o dia para aliviar a descida do gap... a ver vamos

[nunofaustino]

desce cerca de 2.25% no After... (a sunw desce perto dos 5%)

Um abraço
nuno

[Info....]

IBM Posts 3 Percent Rise in 1Q Profit
Thursday April 14, 4:31 pm ET
IBM Posts Lower-Than-Expected First-Quarter Earnings, Revenue Is Light

ARMONK, N.Y. (AP) -- International Business Machines Corp., the world's top provider of computer hardware, said Thursday that first-quarter earnings edged up 3 percent year-over-year, missing Wall Street expectations as the company reported difficulty in closing transactions.

IBM had been expected to report quarterly results on Monday, April 18. Shares of the company were halted earlier pending news, having closed down 93 cents at $83.64 on the New York Stock Exchange.

Net income rose to $1.40 billion, or 84 cents per share, from $1.36 billion, or 79 cents per share, a year ago. Earnings from continuing operations totaled $1.41 billion, or 85 cents per share, including stock-based compensation expenses.

Revenues grew 3.3 percent to $22.91 billion from $22.18 billion last year, driven by growth in the Americas and Europe/Middle East/Africa regions.

Analysts surveyed by Thomson Financial were looking for the company to report higher earnings of 90 cents per share on sales of $23.65 billion in the latest quarter.

Chairman and CEO Samuel J. Palmisano said, "After a strong start, we had difficulty closing transactions in the final weeks of the quarter, especially in countries with soft economic conditions, as well as with short-term Global Services signings. As a result, we did not achieve all of our goals for the quarter."

In the Americas, first-quarter revenue from continuing operations was $9.3 billion, up 2 percent from the 2004 period. Revenues from Europe/Middle East/Africa were $7.7 billion, an increase of 7 percent. Asia-Pacific revenue grew 1 percent to $5.2 billion.

The company said original equipment manufacturing revenue increased 3 percent to $691 million in the latest first quarter.

Software revenue grew 2 percent to $3.6 billion, with sales of IBM's middleware brands -- which include WebSphere, DB2, Rational, Tivoli and Lotus products -- up 3 percent at $2.8 billion. Operating systems revenue decreased 2 percent to $590 million compared with the first quarter of 2004.

IBM said it expects to gain or hold market share for the first quarter in the collaborative software, systems management and security software, Web services and data management categories.

Revenue from Global Services, including maintenance, increased 6 percent to $11.7 billion. IBM signed services contracts totaling $10 billion and ended the quarter with an estimated services backlog, including strategic outsourcing, business consulting services, integrated technology services and maintenance, of $110 billion.

Hardware revenue from continuing operations was essentially flat at $6.7 billion. Sales from the company's systems and technology group totaled $3.9 billion for the quarter, up 2 percent on eServer revenue increases.

Total gross profit margin from continuing operations was 36 percent in the latest first quarter, which includes the effect of expensing equity compensation, compared with 35.6 percent a year ago.

IBM said it ended the first quarter of 2005 with $8.7 billion of cash on hand.