business

By Leah Schnurr

Wall Street was poised for a higher open on Wednesday, buoyed by a solid outlook from IBM, while investors were looking for measures from President Barack Obama to keep the year-long recession from worsening.

Dow component International Business Machines Corp (IBM.N: Quote, Profile, Research) could provide a boost after the world's top technology services firm posted quarterly profit and a 2009 profit outlook that surpassed expectations. For details, see [ID:nN20268352].

Shares of IBM were up 4.2 percent at $85.45 in premarket trading.

"IBM's guidance painted a rosy picture which the market's going to hang their hat on today," said Andre Bakhos, president of Princeton Financial Group in Princeton in New Jersey.

"With the inaugural pomp and circumstance being over, President Obama will be rolling up his sleeves to work on bank rescue plans and there is a little optimism that under the new administration, something magical can come out."

The U.S. stock market had ushered in the Obama presidency with a record Inauguration Day drop on Tuesday amid fresh signs the global bank crisis was far from over. Now investors were watching for maneuvers from the new president, who has vowed bold and swift action to deal with the economic downturn.

Obama will meet with his economic advisors, who are working with the Democratic-led Congress on an $825 billion fiscal stimulus package. [ID:nN20421893].

S&P 500 futures SPc1 were up 6.10 points and above fair value, a formula that evaluates pricing by taking into account interest rates, dividends and time to expiration on the contract. Dow Jones industrial average futures DJc1 were up 48 points, and Nasdaq 100 NDc1 futures were up 3.25 points.

Tuesday's decline for the Dow marked the largest point and percentage drop for the index since Dec. 1, 2008, and the first time the Dow has been below 8,000 since Nov. 20, 2008.

Although the broad S&P 500 has rebounded from its Nov. 21 intraday low, the broad index has fallen 10.9 percent this year on worries about the deepening global recession.

Investors will also be watching a hearing by the Senate Finance Committee on the nomination of Timothy Geithner to be Treasury secretary.

Wall Street had initially cheered Obama's choice of Geithner but the nomination has since come under controversy and Geithner is expected to face questions about his past failure to pay some taxes. [ID:nN20429629].

Among the morning's round of earnings results, diversified manufacturer United Technologies Corp (UTX.N: Quote, Profile, Research) posted a rise in profit as revenue from maintenance of its products offset slowing orders for new equipment.
The Financial Select Sector SPDR XLF.P rose, snapping a five-day losing streak the day after a sell-off in banks led the markets lower. JPMorgan Chase (JPM.N: Quote, Profile, Research) was up 2.9 percent at $18.60 before the opening bell, while Bank of America (BAC.N: Quote, Profile, Research) rose 3.7 percent to $5.29.

However, Bakhos noted that the sector remains plagued by fears of further losses at banks and the possibility they will have to raise more capital.

Analysts also said expectations for the earnings season overall remain low.

But the tech sector saw another bright spot when Ericsson (ERICb.ST: Quote, Profile, Research), the world's top mobile telecom equipment maker, posted better-than-expected earnings, although the company promised deeper savings, including 5,000 job cuts. [ID:nLL732625].

Wall Street will get a further look at how the tech sector is faring when iPod and iPhone maker Apple Inc (AAPL.O: Quote, Profile, Research) reports quarterly results after the bell. (Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)

source : Reuters UK

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By JORDAN ROBERTSON

In what promises to be a dismal year for tech spending, IBM Corp. packed a wallop of a surprise with its 2009 profit guidance: the numbers were so far ahead of Wall Street's forecast they were initially met with disbelief.

The Armonk, N.Y.-based company predicted at least $9.20 per share in profit in 2009, a full 45 cents per share better than the average estimate of analysts polled by Thomson Reuters. The forecast is an extremely bullish statement by IBM. It reflects the company's belief that it can outmaneuver the financial crisis by focusing on services and software deals that carry big profit margins, but also help businesses cut costs by offloading some of their tech chores.

IBM revealed the rosy forecast Tuesday as it reported profit for the fourth quarter of 2008 that also sailed past analyst estimates, while sales fell short.

IBM's net income for the period was $4.4 billion, or $3.28 per share. That amounted to a 12 percent profit increase from $3.95 billion, or $2.80 per share, in the same period a year earlier.

Analysts were expecting IBM to earn $3.03 per share this time.

IBM shares jumped 4 percent in extended trading.

"To be honest, I didn't believe they could show something like this — I think the results they posted were stellar," said Peter Misek, an analyst with Canaccord Adams. "They just executed really well — really, really, really well."

Analysts had been expecting IBM to be hurt worse by its heavy dose of sales to big banks and other customers devastated by the economic downturn. Instead, IBM's results show that while the company has seen some sales vaporize, it is still able to wring out better profits because of aggressive cost-cutting and by focusing only on the most profitable deals.

One key measure of profitability — IBM's gross profit margin — expanded to 47.9 percent of revenue, three percentage points better than the year-ago period. IBM credits its services business with leading the gain.

The higher profits came even as IBM's revenue fell 6 percent to $27 billion, short of the $28.1 billion analysts were expecting. IBM said revenue would have decreased only 1 percent were it not for currency fluctuations, but sales were down in all major geographic areas.

Revenue in services, IBM's largest business segment, dropped 4 percent, but IBM was able to ink $17.2 billion in new services contracts. That was a healthy showing that demonstrates companies are still forking out for outsourcing and other technical support contracts, which are often viewed as money-savers in the long run.

Hardware revenue fell 18 percent. Mainframe revenue fell 6 percent, and sales of lower-end servers based on industry-standard processors fell 32 percent.

Weakness in hardware sales was expected, since companies don't buy as much new machinery when times get tough. But even struggling businesses generally keep ponying up for the services contracts they have locked into, since many of those arrangements are for vital parts of the business, like managing their billing or maintaining the databases.

Rick Hanna, an equity analyst with Morningstar Inc., said he is concerned about the slowdown in some of IBM's hardware sales, since having IBM machines inside a business helps sell software and other services. Still, Hanna said he was "very, very impressed" with IBM's ability to improve profit margins despite the grisly economic landscape.

"When I was reading through it my first comment was 'wow,'" he said. "It really speaks to them developing their high-value-added strategy and executing it. ... You've got to recognize that this isn't your father's IBM. It's not the one that's so hardware-dependent. Software and services tend to be more resilient, and they're proving that."

IBM did not announce widespread job cuts, which some analysts believed were imminent, but repeated that it is still doing targeted layoffs as part of ongoing cost-cutting. IBM lays off thousands of workers each year, but overall head count keeps rising as the company adds jobs in faster-growing regions or more profitable divisions.

IBM employed more than 400,000 people at the end of 2008, the first time in more than 20 years the company's work force has swelled that big. The last time IBM employed a work force that size, a severe downturn caused the company to jettison many of those workers in waves of brutal downsizing.

IBM shed more than 150,000 workers in the 1990s as the company racked up nearly $16 billion in losses over a five-year stretch.

For all of 2008, IBM earned $12.3 billion, or $8.93 per share. That represents an 18 percent jump from a year ago. Sales were $103.6 billion, a 5 percent increase.

The earnings report came out after IBM shares closed at $81.98, down $2.94, or 3.5 percent. The stock jumped to $85.30 in after-hours trading.

source : Assosiated Press

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by:Tata Sutabri S.Kom, MM
Changes for the changes that occur from one period to the next era have entered the human accompany the digital era, an era that often raises the question: whether we still live in the present or have been living in the future. This question arises because almost all things which are not imagined would happen at this time, suddenly appear in front of us. The future seems to be faster from the time that the present operation, owing to advances in information technology.



Information and communications technology or telecommunications service technology (information and communication technology-ICT) has been recognized as one of the world's facilities and infrastructure to overcome the main problems the world. Technology, telecommunications service known as the convergence of communications technology (communication), processing (computing) and information (information) that diseminasikan practice of multimedia facilities. The problem in Indonesia is the main problem is how to solve the digital gap is still very large with menumbuh-developed innovations or teknopreneur telecommunications service industry. Technopreneurship or entrepreneurship, technology is a process and the formation of a new business that involves technology as a base, with the hope that the creation and innovation strategy that can be put right soon the technology as one of the factors for the development of national economy.



Employers technology (Technopreneur), especially information technology (IT) requires the existence of freedom in the innovating, without bridled by the regulations that hamper. The government loosen regulations that set strict grass root movement in the Indonesian IT community, it will provide a positive impact on the growth of IT itself and also the business aspect. This is very important because it was the experience in the field, which often occur between the interests of business entities as a business that demands to always behave and behave as entrepreneurs and make changes, adjust the fact that there are changes with the demands and increase business, but on the other hand, there are interests that the Government may be contrary to the interests of business as a unit. Technopreneurship needed in the spirit of competition that dominant, that is not left behind from the turbulent global business.



In the long period of time, knowledge is placed in the "box" apart exclusively, seems to be deported from economic activities. World knowledge or call us with education, is not considered to be a part of the economic system. Education is seen as a cloistered world where the development value of sterling, while the world economy is seen as a world full of cheating, injustice, even as a world tanpai value (value). Dikotomis perspective that is, in the long period of time that can not be good terjembatani. Each of the more important and party-claim as the most correct.



That we need to know is that in the era of knowledge-based economy that knowledge, education is a manifestation of the success of the national development of a country. Even education can be a superior competitiveness of a country. In other words, the strategic role of education in the nation's economic advancement. And this has been proven by industrial countries such as the new Singapore, Taiwan and Malaysia, where the building of education facilities and infrastructure are seriously in the last ten years, the quality of life of nations continued to increase.

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