Standard & Poor's Ratings Services on Thursday lowered its corporate credit rating on Palm Inc. as the maker of Treo smart phones and other devices faces declining sales.
Standard & Poor's on Thursday downgraded the corporate credit rating of Palm Inc. to CCC+ from B- because of lower sales. The outlook is negative. S&P also lowered ratings on Palm's secured term loan and revolving credit facility to CCC from B-.
TSC's Gary Krakow attended Nokia's Capital Markets Day '08, here in Brooklyn, where company officials put a happy face on their latest forecast of a mobile device market slowdown.
NEW YORK (AP) - Standard & Poor's Ratings Services on Thursday lowered its corporate credit rating on Palm Inc. as the maker of Treo smart phones and other devices faces declining sales.
SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- Standard & Poor's on Thursday downgraded the corporate credit rating of Palm Inc. to CCC+ from B- because of lower sales. The outlook is negative. S&P also lowered ratings on Palm's secured term loan and revolving credit facility to CCC from B-. "The actions reflects Palm's announcement that sales in the November 2008 quarter will decline to about half of the August quarter's level, reflecting challenging economic conditions and market share losses," said Bruce Hyman, an S&P credit analyst, in a statement.
How long before Elevation Partners seeks higher ground?
Palm's (PALM) market cap now stands at slightly over $200 million after the company's stock plunged 10 percent following an ominous earnings warning Monday after the stock market closed.
Palm’s (PALM) shocking FY Q2 revenue warning has doused the hopes of the few remaining bulls on the stock, and raised questions about the smartphone pioneer’s long-term viability. The Street this morning scrambled to cut estimates, ratings and price targets - with some analysts wondering out loud whether the company can survive. Here’s a rundown on some of the Street’s commentary:
Amir Rozwadowski, Barclays Capital: He repeated his Underweight rating, and cut his target to $1 from $2. Despite cost-cutting moves, he writes, “visibility to profitability...
Remember when Palm - maker of the Pilot and Tungsten PDAs and later the Treo smartphone - was the dominant player in the handheld device business? Today, it’s a completely different landscape. Apple’s iPhone has recently dominated the smartphone space. RIM is making a big push with the launch of consumer-friendly versions of the Blackberry. And Google (GOOG) has now entered the space with its Android operating system and the G1 device for T-Mobile. For Palm (PALM), pretty much a minor player these days, the future doesn’t look so hot.
In yesterday morning’s Wall Street Journal, Apple (AAPL) has a full page ad advertising its #1 ranking in US business user customer satisfaction as reported by JD Power and Associates. In a near tie for second were RIM (RIMM) (BlackBerry) and Samsung (SSDIF.PK), with HTC (HTC), Motorola (MOT) and Palm (PALM) (Treo) posting below-average scores. Nokia (NOK) apparently had too few US customers to be measured.
The BlackBerry was tops this year and its score was essentially unchanged. The iPhone passed it, setting a new standard for customer expectations of a...
One of the most frustrating things about working as a private equity investor is being structurally committed to a “long-only” outlook. To be successful in any market, it is equally important to understand both the trends that will make you money and those that will lose you money. However, investors working in private equity – and most mutual funds – can only profit from the former. In my opinion, this is one of the larger challenges to the long-term success for each of these industries.
Restrictions on capital flexibility limit intelligent investors’ ability to generate profit (and preserve capital)....
Elevation Partners co-founder Roger McNanmee said in a statement that his firm has no plans to exit its investment in Palm (PALM). McNamee, who is a member of the Palm board, said he is “very pleased” with the progress the company is making.
As noted in a post earlier today, Global Crown Capital analyst Pablo Perez-Fernandez wrote in a research note Monday that Elevation might be looking for a way out of its 25% stake in the company, for which it paid $325 million. The...
One of the last times we wrote about struggling smart phone maker Palm Inc. (PALM), we reviewed how the 2007 investment it had received from private equity firm Elevation Partners would probably not be enough to save it.
A cash infusion, and even some substantial management changes, seemed insufficient to address the lack of innovation that over the years had changed the company's status from cutting-edge smart phone inventor to increasingly irrelevant player falling further behind up-and-comers like Apple Inc. (AAPL) and Research in Motion Ltd. (RIMM)
At a moment in time when smartphones are one of the few hot tech products, Palm (PALM), the industry’s pioneer, appears to be dying.
This morning, Global Crown Capital analyst Pablo Perez-Fernandez cut his rating on the company to Underweight from Neutral, setting a $1.50 price target, well below the current level. Perez-Fernandez provides a damaging list of factors now facing the company and the stock, all of which add up to a deteriorating position in a market where competition is heating up considerably. In the debate over...
(Note: Before reading this update, make sure you check out the preface to the series we're doing on Hedge Fund 13F's here).
This is the Third Quarter 2008 edition of our ongoing hedge fund tracking series. We've already covered Whitney Tilson's T2 Partners, Peter Thiel's Clarium Capital, Bill Ackman's Pershing Square, and Stephen Mandel's Lone Pine Capital. Next up, we have Maverick Capital. Lee Ainslie started Maverick Capital back in 1993 with $38 million. Nowadays, the fund is worth $10 billion. Ainslie, like many of the other fund managers we've profiled, has...
Nokia (NOK) this morning said out loud what everyone in the mobile phone business kind of knew already: demand in 2009 is going to be down from 2008. This is an industry that had become accustomed to seeing unit growth in the 10% plus range; to see the industry’s most important player forecast a down year is a shocker, even if you suspected that something like this was inevitable.
Nokia’s warning is weighing heavily on a variety of players in industry: other phone companies; wireless carriers;...
Things aren?t looking so cheery for handset makers. Research in Motion Ltd (RIM), Palm Inc. and Nokia Oyj have all heavily cut forecasts as purchases of cellphones slow. And global sales are ...
Palm Inc.'s and Apple Inc.'s smartphone rival Research in Motion Ltd. lowered its outlook for its latest quarter in the face of declining demand and more competition. The BlackBerry maker (NASDAQ ...
NEW YORK (Associated Press) - Standard & Poor's Ratings Services on Thursday lowered its corporate credit rating on Palm Inc. as the maker of Treo smart phones and other devices faces declining ...
Standard & Poor's today downgraded Palm Inc.'s corporate credit rating to CCC+ from B- on account of their recent revenue warning. S&P has also lowered its ratings on Palm's secured term loan and ...
Morgan analyst says, "We believe Palm is one of the few smart phone makers that has a major carrier distribution channel, the internal ability to scale, and has added key personnel with a proven ...
Here are the results for today's unusual stock volume scan. The scan looks at the previous day's volume and compares it to the recent average volume. It then sorts the stocks based on those that ...
Does the stunning collapse in quarterly sales figures reported by Palm Inc represent the final death throes of company that lost its way or is it a sign that hand held devices are going to be ...
SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- Standard & Poor's on Thursday downgraded the corporate credit rating of Palm Inc. to CCC+ from B- because of lower sales. The outlook is negative. S&P also lowered ratings on Palm's secured term loan and revolving credit facility to CCC from B-. "The actions reflects Palm's announcement that sales in the November 2008 quarter will decline to about half of the August quarter's level, reflecting challenging economic conditions and market share losses," said Bruce Hyman, an S&P credit analyst, in a statement.
BlackBerry maker Research in Motion slashes its third-quarter revenue and earnings goals for the fiscal third quarter, becoming the latest maker of mobile devices to pare estimates as the world economy languishes.
Research in Motion, maker of the BlackBerry mobile phone and email device, warned of lower profits and sales on Wednesday, making it the latest handset company to succumb to the effects of a slowing global economy. (Dec. 3)
U.S. stock futures crawled off the floor on Tuesday, a day after the fourth-sharpest point decline in the Dow Jones Industrial Average since the key index was created in 1896.
Jobs return to the spotlight ahead of the government's November payrolls report; don't expect a very merry Christmas for the auto industry; more debt counseling scammers are answering our desperate calls for help.
Stocks expected to move significantly in trading on Tuesday include the major industrial groups as well as Boeing, GE, Goldman Sachs, Monsanto, Palm, Sears Holdings, Titan Pharma, UAL, Walgreen and Zoltek.
Stocks 
Remember when Palm - maker of the Pilot and Tungsten PDAs and later the Treo smartphone - was the dominant player in the handheld device business? Today, it’s a completely different landscape. Apple’s iPhone has recently dominated the smartphone space. RIM is making a big push with the launch of consumer-friendly versions of the Blackberry. And Google (GOOG) has now entered the space with its Android operating system and the G1 device for T-Mobile. For Palm (PALM), pretty much a minor player these days, the future doesn’t look so hot.
