Seems I struck a nerve with some Intel investors reading this morning's post on the company's steep decline following yesterday's earnings.
Here's a taste:
Bill Jameson writes, "Felt the same way. Nice report."
He wasn't alone, with many of you questioning Wall Street's motives in setting the expectation bar pretty high, based not on what the company forecast, but on analysts' own projections.
RSchule writes, "Good follow up. the Street should pay more attention to their own problems. Since when does a miss by 1 or 2 cents justify a 10 to 15 percent drop. Who needs analysts anymore; start listening to what the companies say, not the crystal ball's report."
Echoed by Bob Ljungquist who writes, "If you go back to the 3rd quarter press release from Intel, their 4th quarter outlook was revenue between $10.5 billion and $11.1 billion, and gross margin of 57 percent, plus/minus a couple of points. Looks to me they did what they said they were going to do."
"What a shame," writes Joe Pankowski, "this stock has to get hammered like it is after hours."
Hassan Adarm says, "Your article was perhaps the most balanced judgment made on Intel's results. I am disappointed with Intel management that they reported 38 cents including items. The cost of divesting the non-core assets should not have been included in the EPS number. Stacy Smith made the rookie error and we all got burned for being long on the stock."
I did ask Intel about this today and the company rejects the idea that the charge was a "rookie error." The company says reporting the impairment charge was a "legal reporting requirement." I guess I just take issue with whether it needed to be in the EPS number, or whether it could've been broken out on its own.
Douglas Estadt tells me he feels "like I'm living in upside-down land or it is opposite day on Wall Street...but when I view Intel gross margins growing around 15 percent and their net profit growing around 50 percent, I tend to view that as a positive...Not sure how to play this market when I see Circuit City announce sales are down 11 percent and their shares rise 12 percent the following day, and Intel has increases and their shares fall."
Jen writes, "Since when is a 51 percent rise in profit disappointing? This company is being unjustly punished."
Uwe Grobecker blames fund managers: "Our financial markets are not reflecting a true value as long as we have such massive amounts of money controlled by just a few people...To make a long story short, either stay of this market or have enough staying power to weather it out."
And Jerry Cipriano points out that I failed to mention whether I owned Intel stock, that "this is an important tenet of journalistic ethics, which respectable journalists usually place at the end of their article. Without that information, your op-ed article is of little value."
I thought it was pretty well known that we can't own shares in individual stocks here at CNBC, but maybe not. So, to be clear, I don't own individual shares in Intel, or any other stock.
As of this writing, Intel's off its lows. But only barely.
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