After a long period of uninterrupted growth, Sony (NYSE: SNE) has announced its first full-year loss in 14 years due to a downturn in consumer spend on gadgets and the collapse of financial markets and currencies in Japan and worldwide. In its full-year results to March 31, the company announced an overall sales drop of 12.9 percent and a net loss of 98.9 billion Yen ($1.01 billion), compared to profits of 369.4 billion Yen ($3.86 billion) a year ago. It could have been worse—Sony actually predicted a 150 billion Yen loss. More after the jump… The company argues that much of the loss comes from things it can’t control such as the depreciation of the Yen against the dollar and Euro, which cost it 279 billion yen ($2.92 billion), and the collapse of the Japanese stock market. Plus the downturn in global spend has hit it hard as sales of films, games consoles and software slow up in the recession. Analyst Fujio Ando of Chibagin Asset Management says (via bbc.co.uk): “Their outlook gave me the impression that their business is heading for a gradual recovery”, but he adds, “it would all depend on whether they would be able to start producing popular products, because right now they have no ‘number one’ products.” Release | Webcast | Slides —Q4 losses, cuts: Sony also posted its second consecutive quarterly loss: between January and March, Sony’s Q4, the company made an operating loss of 294.3 billion yen ($3.09 billion), down from a 6.18 billion yen profit a year earlier. The company is busy cutting 16,000 full- and part-time staff in a bid to save $1 billion in 2009 and CEO Howard Stringer announced today an extra three factories in Japan will close to save $500 million, bringing the total plants to close by March 2010 to eight. —Games, electonics decline: Sony’s electronics sales were down 17 percent year on year to 5.48 trillion Yen ($55.9 billion), while in the games division sales dropped 18 percent to 1.05 trillion Yen ($10.7 billion). Sales of next-gen Sony consoles are increasing, but only just: 14.11 PSPs were sold during the year, a rise of 300,000, while Sony sold 10.06 million PS3s, a year-on-year rise of just 940,000. PS3 software continues to do well, however: 103.7 million units were shifted during the year, a 45.8 million increase. —Sony Ericisson losses: Downturns in profits at partner companies which contributed 125.9 billion Yen ($1.31 billion) in losses to Sony’s full-year earnings—its stake in mobile manufacturer Sony Ericsson (NSDQ: ERIC) cost 30.3 billion Yen ($309 million) alone. —Outlook: There’s no quick way out of the tunnel: despite the drastic cost savings, Sony is forecasting revenues of 7.3 trillion Yen ($76.43 billion) for the year to March 31 2010 and a loss of 120 billion Yen ($1.2 billion).

After a long period of uninterrupted growth, Sony (NYSE: SNE) has announced its first full-year loss in 14 years due to a downturn in consumer spend on gadgets and the collapse of financial markets and currencies in Japan and worldwide. In its full-year results to March 31, the company announced an overall sales drop of 12.9 percent and a net loss of 98.9 billion Yen ($1.01 billion), compared to profits of 369.4 billion Yen ($3.86 billion) a year ago. It could have been worse—Sony actually predicted a 150 billion Yen loss. The company argues that much of the loss comes from things it can’t control such as the depreciation of the Yen against the dollar and Euro, which cost it 279 billion yen ($2.92 billion), and the collapse of the Japanese stock market. Plus the downturn in global spend has hit it hard as sales of films, games consoles and software slow up in the recession. Analyst Fujio Ando of Chibagin Asset Management says (via bbc.co.uk): “Their outlook gave me the impression that their business is heading for a gradual recovery”, but he adds, “it would all depend on whether they would be able to start producing popular products, because right now they have no ‘number one’ products.” More after the jump… Release | Webcast | Slides —Q4 losses, cuts: Sony also posted its second consecutive quarterly loss: between January and March, Sony’s Q4, the company made an operating loss of 294.3 billion yen ($3.09 billion), down from a 6.18 billion yen profit a year earlier. The company is busy cutting 16,000 full- and part-time staff in a bid to save $1 billion in 2009 and CEO Howard Stringer announced today an extra three factories in Japan will close to save $500 million, bringing the total plants to close by March 2010 to eight. —Games, electonics decline: Sony’s electronics sales were down 17 percent year on year to 5.48 trillion Yen ($55.9 billion), while in the games division sales dropped 18 percent to 1.05 trillion Yen ($10.7 billion). Sales of next-gen Sony consoles are increasing, but only just: 14.11 PSPs were sold during the year, a rise of 300,000, while Sony sold 10.06 million PS3s, a year-on-year rise of just 940,000. PS3 software continues to do well, however: 103.7 million units were shifted during the year, a 45.8 million increase. —Sony Ericisson losses: Downturns in profits at partner companies which contributed 125.9 billion Yen ($1.31 billion) in losses to Sony’s full-year earnings—its stake in mobile manufacturer Sony Ericsson (NSDQ: ERIC) cost 30.3 billion Yen ($309 million) alone. —Outlook: There’s no quick way out of the tunnel: despite the drastic cost savings, Sony is forecasting revenues of 7.3 trillion Yen ($76.43 billion) for the year to March 31 2010 and a loss of 120 billion Yen ($1.2 billion).

Sprint’s message following the release of its first-quarter financial results today was this: Most of the company’s major initiatives are in place—now it has to wait for the impact to show up in the second half of the year. Sprint’s CEO Dan Hesse, who took on the task of turning around the company two years ago, said during the company’s conference call: “We recognize there’s a lag between improvements and when the market recognizes these improvements. We have strengthened the company finally. We have more cash and less debt...We are far from satisfied with post-paid subscribers, but we are hopeful that the Palm (NSDQ: PALM) Pre and other initiatives we have planned will help over the year. The hard work is not over, but we have enough cash to give us time to figure things out.” After the call, I followed up with Hesse to discuss about what the company has left to do; rumors about outsourcing the company’s network; the role of app stores; the company’s new $50 pre-paid offering, which struggled under the weight of unexpected popularity; and about the upcoming Palm Pre, which they confirmed will launch by the end of June. Excerpts after the jump… Q: In previous conference calls, you were always very honest about how much work you still had left to do. Today, you said “we have strengthened the company finally.” Is that a sign that you have turned a corner? How much do you have left to do? Hesse: It’s all relative given the economic climate. We still have a lot of areas for improvement, but I feel good about the fact that we are generating a lot of free cash flow. We have enough cash to get us into 2012, and in today’s environment that’s a big plus. A year ago, even six months ago, it wasn’t like that given some of the debt maturities—our cash position has improved. What gives us the most optimism is what we have been working on from day one is where we are improving [like generating cash flow and improving customer service]...Generating cash flow gives you lots of time to turn the company around. We have a lot of work left, but what we have been working on has been paying off. We’ve been making progress on a turnaround. Q: One of the ways you could continue to make progress is by outsourcing parts of your network to a company, like Ericsson (NSDQ: ERIC). Can you comment on the latest rumors today, saying you are close to a deal with them? Hesse: No. We have said publicly, on a number of occasions, that we are looking at all possible alternatives. Everything is on the table, including outsourcing. There’s nothing new there. We’ve been every open that we are open to exploring alternatives, like outsourcing parts of our network management. No decisions have been made, so we can’t comment on any speculation. Q: In my opinion, you have been one of the more aggressive companies at building out a wholesale business with devices like the Amazon (NSDQ: AMZN) Kindle. Are you worried about becoming a dumb pipe, like other carriers? Hesse: We think the model of the future is to bring as many devices as possible on to our network. If you take a look at the growth possibilities, you have post-aid, which is dominated by cellphones and smartphones, PDAs and air cards, and then you have two areas of growth: prepaid and wholesale. That’s our Boost Unlimited offer and wholesale, which is everything from traditional phones, like Virgin Mobile (NYSE: VM), to all sorts of embedded devices, and machine to machine. You can look at the new Ford truck, which is embedded with Sprint (NYSE: S). We don’t consider it being a dumb network if people get there newspaper or book immediately by downloading it over our network, like the Amazon Kindle. We see that as a terrific opportunity. Q: Carriers are making a lot of money today selling ringtones and other content. Do you see a model forming where the carrier plays less of a role, and there’s someone like Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) that manages the App Store and keeps the revenues? Hesse: Those are the kinds of things we are looking at. There’s going to be a proliferation of applications, and we have a very open approach. We have 250 devices that don’t carry the Sprint name. We’ve had an open development platform for some time that uses standard tools like, Java, which makes it easy for a web application developer to port over to a Sprint mobile device. We want to encourage as much app development as possible, and customers are going to be looking for an increasing number of applications. As you know, our 4G strategy includes owning 51 percent of Clearwire (NSDQ: CLWR). They also have very much of an open model. One of the significant investors is Intel (NSDQ: INTC), which wants chips in as many devices as possible. Q: What about things like the BlackBerry App World? Is that a threat because it rolled out directly to customers and doesn’t share revenues with the carrier? Hesse: I think the market is going to evolve. We don’t view changes to the market as threatening, but opportunities. We ask, how can we create a win-win here? The customer is going to do what they want to do. Q:What about Sprint’s exclusive content agreements with Nascar and the NFL? Do you see Sprint continuing partnerships like that? Hesse: I think that’s going to be very, very important. You’ll still have exclusive content that we only provide to our customers. You’ve named two of our most important, NFL Mobile Live, and Nascar Mobile Live. Subscribers can get access to all sorts of content they can’t get anywhere else. And, about a year ago, in March 2008, we opened up full HTML browsing to all of our CDMA phones. That’s unique in the industry. In the ideal world, we have exclusive content that’s optimized around the mobile experience. For instance, with Nascar, you can listen live to any race, any pit crew that you want. You can listen to the chatter if you are in Seattle, and the race is in Daytona. We at Sprint plan to bring customers special content for them, but we don’t want to limit them from getting other content. Q: You rolled out Simply Everything a year ago. On the earnings call, you called it the MVP for subscriber acquisition, subscriber retention and average revenue per user (ARPU). Do people use a tremendous amount of data? Hesse: What they love about it is the simplicity. While at AT&T (NYSE: T) Wireless, we rolled out the Digital One Rate plan 11 years ago (which gave people nationwide calling for one rate). Customers just want to use the device for all it’s capable of doing, including NFL Mobile Live, or Nascar. They can go to Sprint TV and they can go to the web. These devices are Swiss Army knives. We don’t want to limit them. If they like to Twitter, they can do it to their heart’s content. Q: The adoption of the Boost Unlimited plan, which offers unlimited voice, text, push-to-talk and web, was unexpectedly high, and caused text message delays. You said today on the call that those issues have been fixed. What happened? Hesse: The demand for Boost Unlimited significantly exceeded our forecast. It was much more successful than we thought it would be. The iDEN network itself ran perfectly. There was plenty of additional voice capacity, but the messaging platform was overloaded. We had under-forecast demand. We think those problems, those delays of text messages, are behind us, and it’s operating more at normal levels. Q: How did demand exceed capacity. Are typical iDEN users not heavy texters? Hesse: They were texters, and they continue to be, but we are talking big subscriber numbers, and that’s why you are seeing the street react. It’s 50 bucks, there’s no hidden fees. You get the great iDEN network that covers the entire country, unlike its competitors that don’t have the coverage. Q: You are obviously pegging a lot of the company’s success on the upcoming Palm Pre roll-out. Have you said how long you have the exclusive for? Hesse: No.

Sprint’s message following the release of its first-quarter financial results today was this: Most of the company’s major initiatives are in place—now it has to wait for the impact to show up in the second half of the year. Sprint’s CEO Dan Hesse, who took on the task of turning around the company two years ago, said during the company’s conference call: “We recognize there’s a lag between improvements and when the market recognizes these improvements. We have strengthened the company finally. We have more cash and less debt...We are far from satisfied with post-paid subscribers, but we are hopeful that the Palm (NSDQ: PALM) Pre and other initiatives we have planned will help over the year. The hard work is not over, but we have enough cash to give us time to figure things out.” After the call, I followed up with Hesse to discuss about what the company has left to do; rumors about outsourcing the company’s network; the role of app stores; the company’s new $50 pre-paid offering, which struggled under the weight of unexpected popularity; and about the upcoming Palm Pre, which they confirmed will launch by the end of June. Excerpts after the jump… Q: In previous conference calls, you were always very honest about how much work you still had left to do. Today, you said “we have strengthened the company finally.” Is that a sign that you have turned a corner? How much do you have left to do? Hesse: It’s all relative given the economic climate. We still have a lot of areas for improvement, but I feel good about the fact that we are generating a lot of free cash flow. We have enough cash to get us into 2012, and in today’s environment that’s a big plus. A year ago, even six months ago, it wasn’t like that given some of the debt maturities—our cash position has improved. What gives us the most optimism is what we have been working on from day one is where we are improving [like generating cash flow and improving customer service]...Generating cash flow gives you lots of time to turn the company around. We have a lot of work left, but what we have been working on has been paying off. We’ve been making progress on a turnaround. Q: One of the ways you could continue to make progress is by outsourcing parts of your network to a company, like Ericsson (NSDQ: ERIC). Can you comment on the latest rumors today, saying you are close to a deal with them? Hesse: No. We have said publicly, on a number of occasions, that we are looking at all possible alternatives. Everything is on the table, including outsourcing. There’s nothing new there. We’ve been every open that we are open to exploring alternatives, like outsourcing parts of our network management. No decisions have been made, so we can’t comment on any speculation. Q: In my opinion, you have been one of the more aggressive companies at building out a wholesale business with devices like the Amazon (NSDQ: AMZN) Kindle. Are you worried about becoming a dumb pipe, like other carriers? Hesse: We think the model of the future is to bring as many devices as possible on to our network. If you take a look at the growth possibilities, you have post-aid, which is dominated by cellphones and smartphones, PDAs and air cards, and then you have two areas of growth: prepaid and wholesale. That’s our Boost Unlimited offer and wholesale, which is everything from traditional phones, like Virgin Mobile (NYSE: VM), to all sorts of embedded devices, and machine to machine. You can look at the new Ford truck, which is embedded with Sprint (NYSE: S). We don’t consider it being a dumb network if people get there newspaper or book immediately by downloading it over our network, like the Amazon Kindle. We see that as a terrific opportunity. Q: Carriers are making a lot of money today selling ringtones and other content. Do you see a model forming where the carrier plays less of a role, and there’s someone like Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) that manages the App Store and keeps the revenues? Hesse: Those are the kinds of things we are looking at. There’s going to be a proliferation of applications, and we have a very open approach. We have 250 devices that don’t carry the Sprint name. We’ve had an open development platform for some time that uses standard tools like, Java, which makes it easy for a web application developer to port over to a Sprint mobile device. We want to encourage as much app development as possible, and customers are going to be looking for an increasing number of applications. As you know, our 4G strategy includes owning 51 percent of Clearwire (NSDQ: CLWR). They also have very much of an open model. One of the significant investors is Intel (NSDQ: INTC), which wants chips in as many devices as possible. Q: What about things like the BlackBerry App World? Is that a threat because it rolled out directly to customers and doesn’t share revenues with the carrier? Hesse: I think the market is going to evolve. We don’t view changes to the market as threatening, but opportunities. We ask, how can we create a win-win here? The customer is going to do what they want to do. Q:What about Sprint’s exclusive content agreements with Nascar and the NFL? Do you see Sprint continuing partnerships like that? Hesse: I think that’s going to be very, very important. You’ll still have exclusive content that we only provide to our customers. You’ve named two of our most important, NFL Mobile Live, and Nascar Mobile Live. Subscribers can get access to all sorts of content they can’t get anywhere else. And, about a year ago, in March 2008, we opened up full HTML browsing to all of our CDMA phones. That’s unique in the industry. In the ideal world, we have exclusive content that’s optimized around the mobile experience. For instance, with Nascar, you can listen live to any race, any pit crew that you want. You can listen to the chatter if you are in Seattle, and the race is in Daytona. We at Sprint plan to bring customers special content for them, but we don’t want to limit them from getting other content. Q: You rolled out Simply Everything a year ago. On the earnings call, you called it the MVP for subscriber acquisition, subscriber retention and average revenue per user (ARPU). Do people use a tremendous amount of data? Hesse: What they love about it is the simplicity. While at AT&T (NYSE: T) Wireless, we rolled out the Digital One Rate plan 11 years ago (which gave people nationwide calling for one rate). Customers just want to use the device for all it’s capable of doing, including NFL Mobile Live, or Nascar. They can go to Sprint TV and they can go to the web. These devices are Swiss Army knives. We don’t want to limit them. If they like to Twitter, they can do it to their heart’s content. Q: The adoption of the Boost Unlimited plan, which offers unlimited voice, text, push-to-talk and web, was unexpectedly high, and caused text message delays. You said today on the call that those issues have been fixed. What happened? Hesse: The demand for Boost Unlimited significantly exceeded our forecast. It was much more successful than we thought it would be. The iDEN network itself ran perfectly. There was plenty of additional voice capacity, but the messaging platform was overloaded. We had under-forecast demand. We think those problems, those delays of text messages, are behind us, and it’s operating more at normal levels. Q: How did demand exceed capacity. Are typical iDEN users not heavy texters? Hesse: They were texters, and they continue to be, but we are talking big subscriber numbers, and that’s why you are seeing the street react. It’s 50 bucks, there’s no hidden fees. You get the great iDEN network that covers the entire country, unlike its competitors that don’t have the coverage. Q: You are obviously pegging a lot of the company’s success on the upcoming Palm Pre roll-out. Have you said how long you have the exclusive for? Hesse: No.

Sprint’s message following the release of its first-quarter financial results today was this: Most of the company’s major initiatives are in place—now it has to wait for the impact to show up in the second half of the year. Sprint’s CEO Dan Hesse, who took on the task of turning around the company two years ago, said during the company’s conference call: “We recognize there’s a lag between improvements and when the market recognizes these improvements. We have strengthened the company finally. We have more cash and less debt...We are far from satisfied with post-paid subscribers, but we are hopeful that the Palm (NSDQ: PALM) Pre and other initiatives we have planned will help over the year. The hard work is not over, but we have enough cash to give us time to figure things out.” After the call, I followed up with Hesse to discuss about what the company has left to do; rumors about outsourcing the company’s network; the role of app stores; the company’s new $50 pre-paid offering, which struggled under the weight of unexpected popularity; and about the upcoming Palm Pre, which they confirmed will launch by the end of June. Q: In previous conference calls, you were always very honest about how much work you still had left to do. Today, you said “we have strengthened the company finally.” Is that a sign that you have turned a corner? How much do you have left to do? Hesse: It’s all relative given the economic climate. We still have a lot of areas for improvement, but I feel good about the fact that we are generating a lot of free cash flow. We have enough cash to get us into 2012, and in today’s environment that’s a big plus. A year ago, even six months ago, it wasn’t like that given some of the debt maturities—our cash position has improved. What gives us the most optimism is what we have been working on from day one is where we are improving [like generating cash flow and improving customer service]...Generating cash flow gives you lots of time to turn the company around. We have a lot of work left, but what we have been working on has been paying off. We’ve been making progress on a turnaround. More excerpts after the jump… Q: One of the ways you could continue to make progress is by outsourcing parts of your network to a company, like Ericsson (NSDQ: ERIC). Can you comment on the latest rumors today, saying you are close to a deal with them? Hesse: No. We have said publicly, on a number of occasions, that we are looking at all possible alternatives. Everything is on the table, including outsourcing. There’s nothing new there. We’ve been every open that we are open to exploring alternatives, like outsourcing parts of our network management. No decisions have been made, so we can’t comment on any speculation. Q: In my opinion, you have been one of the more aggressive companies at building out a wholesale business with devices like the Amazon (NSDQ: AMZN) Kindle. Are you worried about becoming a dumb pipe, like other carriers? Hesse: We think the model of the future is to bring as many devices as possible on to our network. If you take a look at the growth possibilities, you have post-aid, which is dominated by cellphones and smartphones, PDAs and air cards, and then you have two areas of growth: prepaid and wholesale. That’s our Boost Unlimited offer and wholesale, which is everything from traditional phones, like Virgin Mobile (NYSE: VM), to all sorts of embedded devices, and machine to machine. You can look at the new Ford truck, which is embedded with Sprint (NYSE: S). We don’t consider it being a dumb network if people get there newspaper or book immediately by downloading it over our network, like the Amazon Kindle. We see that as a terrific opportunity. Q: Carriers are making a lot of money today selling ringtones and other content. Do you see a model forming where the carrier plays less of a role, and there’s someone like Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) that manages the App Store and keeps the revenues? Hesse: Those are the kinds of things we are looking at. There’s going to be a proliferation of applications, and we have a very open approach. We have 250 devices that don’t carry the Sprint name. We’ve had an open development platform for some time that uses standard tools like, Java, which makes it easy for a web application developer to port over to a Sprint mobile device. We want to encourage as much app development as possible, and customers are going to be looking for an increasing number of applications. As you know, our 4G strategy includes owning 51 percent of Clearwire (NSDQ: CLWR). They also have very much of an open model. One of the significant investors is Intel (NSDQ: INTC), which wants chips in as many devices as possible. Q: What about things like the BlackBerry App World? Is that a threat because it rolled out directly to customers and doesn’t share revenues with the carrier? Hesse: I think the market is going to evolve. We don’t view changes to the market as threatening, but opportunities. We ask, how can we create a win-win here? The customer is going to do what they want to do. Q:What about Sprint’s exclusive content agreements with Nascar and the NFL? Do you see Sprint continuing partnerships like that? Hesse: I think that’s going to be very, very important. You’ll still have exclusive content that we only provide to our customers. You’ve named two of our most important, NFL Mobile Live, and Nascar Mobile Live. Subscribers can get access to all sorts of content they can’t get anywhere else. And, about a year ago, in March 2008, we opened up full HTML browsing to all of our CDMA phones. That’s unique in the industry. In the ideal world, we have exclusive content that’s optimized around the mobile experience. For instance, with Nascar, you can listen live to any race, any pit crew that you want. You can listen to the chatter if you are in Seattle, and the race is in Daytona. We at Sprint plan to bring customers special content for them, but we don’t want to limit them from getting other content. Q: You rolled out Simply Everything a year ago. On the earnings call, you called it the MVP for subscriber acquisition, subscriber retention and average revenue per user (ARPU). Do people use a tremendous amount of data? Hesse: What they love about it is the simplicity. While at AT&T (NYSE: T) Wireless, we rolled out the Digital One Rate plan 11 years ago (which gave people nationwide calling for one rate). Customers just want to use the device for all it’s capable of doing, including NFL Mobile Live, or Nascar. They can go to Sprint TV and they can go to the web. These devices are Swiss Army knives. We don’t want to limit them. If they like to Twitter, they can do it to their heart’s content. Q: The adoption of the Boost Unlimited plan, which offers unlimited voice, text, push-to-talk and web, was unexpectedly high, and caused text message delays. You said today on the call that those issues have been fixed. What happened? Hesse: The demand for Boost Unlimited significantly exceeded our forecast. It was much more successful than we thought it would be. The iDEN network itself ran perfectly. There was plenty of additional voice capacity, but the messaging platform was overloaded. We had under-forecast demand. We think those problems, those delays of text messages, are behind us, and it’s operating more at normal levels. Q: How did demand exceed capacity. Are typical iDEN users not heavy texters? Hesse: They were texters, and they continue to be, but we are talking big subscriber numbers, and that’s why you are seeing the street react. It’s 50 bucks, there’s no hidden fees. You get the great iDEN network that covers the entire country, unlike its competitors that don’t have the coverage. Q: You are obviously pegging a lot of the company’s success on the upcoming Palm Pre roll-out. Have you said how long you have the exclusive for? Hesse: No.

Mobile Router Integrates Internal 3G HSPA Radio, 802.11n Wireless and 10/100LAN

Leading Telecommunications Vendor Builds Leadership Team to Match Its Ambitions

See the rest of the story here.

Theflyonthewall.com is Wall Street's specialist in breaking equity news. Veteran traders build a proprietary feed of news that's faster and more relevant than any other source. Try us for free and discover for yourself.

The rivals will face off (figuratively) at Mobile World Congress, each pitching big plans for the future of the mobile network

See the rest of the story here.

Theflyonthewall.com is Wall Street's specialist in breaking equity news. Veteran traders build a proprietary feed of news that's faster and more relevant than any other source. Try us for free and discover for yourself.

Carriers' needs are diverging from what Ericsson saw in 2008, so its packet-optical strategy is getting a refresh with a new metro box

Cablevision among the early takers for a wideband-capable WiFi access point optimized for wireless video and voice applications

We downgrade our recommendation for Novatel Wireless Inc. (NVTL) to Neutral, which means the stock should perform in line with the broader market. The company is facing intensifying competition for its core embedded solutions for wireless access. In addition to its traditional rival, Sierra Wireless (SWIR), Novatel is facing significant challenges from newly launched products by [...]

(NVTL) Novatel Wireless Gets Downgraded

We downgrade our recommendation for Novatel Wireless Inc. (NVTL) to Neutral, which means the stock should perform in line with the broader market. The company is facing intensifying competition for its core embedded solutions for wireless access. In addition to its traditional rival, Sierra Wireless (SWIR), Novatel is facing significant challenges from newly launched products by ...

( click to enlarge ) (MOT) - I will take long positions at this point hoping that this stock has reached the bottom. The reason for that is due to the fact that the stock has traded a huge amount of shares on Monday, again, probably a sign of capitulation. Could this be the reversal ? ...

LM Ericsson Telephone Company (ERIC) reported 82% year-over-year drop in fourth quarter 2009 net income at SEK 0.7 billion ($100 million) on revenues of SEK 58.3 billion ($8.3 billion). Networks’ sales in the quarter declined by 16% year-over-year. Full year sales declined by 3%. The mobile infrastructure market share was maintained well in 2009. During the [...]

(ERIC) LM Ericsson Telephone Company’s Quarterly Profit Falls 82%

LM Ericsson Telephone Company (ERIC) reported 82% year-over-year drop in fourth quarter 2009 net income at SEK 0.7 billion ($100 million) on revenues of SEK 58.3 billion ($8.3 billion).[More...]

Two Veteran Wall Street Analysts discuss: (Val:) T, CHSI, SBH; (Vern:) ERIC, JCI, GNTX

Elizabeth Harrow takes a look back at news driving the market today.

Andrea Kramer takes a look at opening activity on Wall Street

Let's recap the worst performing stocks of the day and the 52-week lows and see if anything in the trash is worth mentioning.  The market was on fire today so for these stocks to fall tells us that either their complete crap or it was just an unlucky day.  Let's get started...

WebMD (WBMD) fell 13% to a new 2 month low. Shares are still overpriced at $50, we'll wait for a new 52-week low before considering buying a web 2.0 company that only trades with a P/E of 235.  You've got to be kidding me.

Corinthian Collegee (COCO) fell 9% because no one wants to go there for a "post-secondary education".  Shares are now at $14, whatever, let the Apollo Group (APOL) buy them at which point we'll consider bitting.

New 52-week low for Gymboree Corporation (GYMB) at $34 and junk.  Don't touch that stock with a 50 foot pole, it's got Fad written all over it.

Level 3 (LVLT) and Ericsson (ERIC) hit new lows today, now that maybe worth dusting off and seeing if it's worth a bite.

ZipRealty (ZIPR) is absolute garbage. Fellow StockMasters slammed them good on 247WallSt there other day, click here to read Frank's takedown - ZipRealty needs to face REALITY

There you have it fellow Masters, way too much trash today, nothing re-cycleable.

---

AVOID TRASH STOCKS - The Stockmasters Master Picks newsletter has been kicking ass and taking names for the past year. Our new publication just came out on Monday (10/15) and our newsletter produced over a 100% gain with Onyx Pharmaceuticals (ONXX) and a 50% gain with Savient Pharmaceuticals (SVNT) within 3 months.  In October 07's newsletter we cashed out:
Activision, Inc. (ATVI)  up almost 20% since we told you to buy in April 2007.
Service Corp. International (SCI) up 43% since our 1st newsletter back in October 2006.
In March 2007 we said buy Halliburton Company (HAL), it's up more than 25% since we told you to buy.
Blockbuster Inc. (BBI) ran up 36% since told Masters to buy back in June 2007.
We recommend stocks that don't take years to see a return, we look for returns within 2 to 5 months, this isn't grandpa's buy and hold strategy.
The Masters don't play when it comes to their money our your's for that matter. 
Our Original newsletter that has enlightened our our subscribers for over a year. It contains What to Buy, What to Sell, and Market Commentary. We've had impressive returns, great feedback, and in turn have already created a unique following of thousands of Stockmasters, on sale at WallStNewsletters.com. for only $45 a year. That's cheaper than a round of beers and an order of hot wings for your crew. Why not have more money in your pocket for beers and wings?

Joseph Hargett takes a look at news on the Street before the market opens.Joseph Hargett takes a look back at news that drove the major market indices today.