For Immediate Release
Chicago, IL – August 31, 2009 – Zacks.com announces the list of stocks featured in the Analyst Blog. Every day the Zacks Equity Research analysts discuss the latest news and events impacting stocks and the financial markets. Stocks recently featured in the blog include: Bebe Stores Inc. (BEBE), Salesforce.com (CRM), International Business Machines (IBM), Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) and Google Inc. (GOOG).
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Here are highlights from Friday’s Analyst Blog:
Bebe Beats Zacks Estimate
Women’s apparel and accessories retailer Bebe Stores Inc. (BEBE) recently reported fourth-quarter results and guided to a bleak first quarter amid a turbulent environment and slumping sales.
The company’s quarterly earnings excluding one-time items came in at 4 cents a share. While it comfortably surpassed the Zacks Consensus Estimate of one cent, earnings fell drastically from 18 cents reported in the prior-year quarter.
On a reported basis, Bebe delivered breakeven earnings, including employee acquisition and termination costs, asset write-downs and write-offs. Management expects earnings before write-offs to be between breakeven and a loss of 5 cents a share in the first quarter of fiscal 2010.
The slump in demand has prompted management to lower inventories, close stores and reduce wages to mitigate costs. Bebe closed eight stores in fiscal year 2009 and plans to close up to 13 more in fiscal year 2010.
CRM Opens Up Force.com
In an effort to expand the reach of Force.com, Salesforce.com (CRM) recently announced the new Force.com value-added reseller (VAR) program. As per this new program, the value-added resellers of Force.com will help their clients to develop and run applications on Force.com. Force.com basically enables companies to develop and run applications for public and private use, by taking help from Salesforce’s cloud computing platform.
We believe this is an additional sales channel that the company has created for their Force.com sites. VARs are reputed software consultants, who will act as channel partners and resell the application developed in Force.com to other companies. We believe that the technical knowledge and customer winning ability of the VARs will add value and generate additional business for Salesforce.
This apart, the most important factor in this case is pricing and Salesforce will charge VARs $7.50 per user per month. This gives the VARs enough scope to make profit, as they can determine their own pricing after having a mark up on cost. The company has determined this pricing strategy very smartly as it will get a fixed rent from the value-added resellers, although the VARs have to lure the customers by making the pricing attractive at the same time offering quality services to them.
This is an intelligent business decision by the company, which indicates that the company is in the process of expanding its cloud computing business and opening it to outside partners. This process will help the company increase its customer base, at the same time helping it to deal with competition from big players like International Business Machines (IBM), Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) and Google Inc. (GOOG).
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