Word: rated
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...earnings announcement on Thursday as an indicator of how the technology company will be able to grapple with the tough economic climate. Ross Sandler, senior internet analyst at RBC Capital Markets, expects Google's revenue to be up 33.5% over the same time last year with a 3% growth rate from second to third quarter, even though its stock price recently sank to the lowest it has been in two years. "Google is down 25% in the last month or so, but ... there is nothing wrong with Google structurally," says Sandler. "Every company exposed to advertising is having problems because...
...even if banks were to open the taps, there are growing questions about whether that could buck other worrying trends. On Wednesday, Britain announced its unemployment rate had jumped half a point to 5.7% - its highest in eight years. Last month the government acknowledged that France lost 40,000 jobs in August despite predictions of a net gain. Unemployment data and generally sagging company results, observers say, reinforce the view that Europe has already entered a recession...
...European slowdown is likely to be a rise in unemployment. The number of jobless in the E.U. dropped sharply between 2005 and 2007 and then flattened out at 25-year lows. But the latest statistics from France, Ireland, the U.K. and some other countries show that the unemployment rate is starting to pick up again. The IMF, which has slashed its growth forecast for the euro-zone countries for 2009 to a negligible 0.2%, predicts that the percentage of jobless in those 15 countries will jump above 8%. Worst hit will be Spain, where it predicts unemployment will be close...
Figuring out exactly what's happening and then reacting accordingly falls to the European Central Bank and its president, Jean-Claude Trichet. The bank has been nervous about inflation all year, but earlier this month it slashed its lending rates by 0.5% to 3.75% as part of a coordinated rate cut by the world's biggest central banks. Riches-Flores expects the bank to cut rates further in the near future as the economy slows. At the weekend, the E.U.'s Commissioner for Economic and Monetary Affairs, Joaquín Almunia, even called for monetary easing "in the near term...
What we didn't see was the rumored $800 Apple laptop; Apple kept its price points high, with the high-end MacBook Pro starting at $1,999, and the consumer-friendly MacBook starting at $1,299. That could be a risk in these consumer-cautious times, but the rate of Mac sales has exceeded the growth rate of PC sales for the past four years, despite Apple's higher prices. And by commanding (and getting) that higher price, its revenue has soared. According to Tim Cook, Apple's chief operating officer, "one out of every three dollars spent in retail...