WebProNews

Tag: Stock

  • Facebook Stock Prices Expected to Increase

    Facebook Stock Prices Expected to Increase

    Facebook stock, which is expected to go on sale this Friday, will be a little pricier than some may have anticipated. Although the company planned to sell shares between $29 and $34, the buzz generated during Zuckerberg’s IPO roadshow has caused the price to jump to between $34 and $38. Facebook filed an amendment to their IPO registration with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Tuesday to reflect the changes.

    “The roadshow was certainly effective with the general public, mostly through coverage in the general media. I can’t really assess what it did with investment professionals. But there is widespread interest,” said Technology Business Research analyst Ezra Gottheil.

    The increase comes in the wake of Zuckerberg’s decision to wear a hoodie to meetings with investors, which some claimed showed “immaturity” and a lack of seriousness about the company. However, with a recent poll showing that most people consider Facebook to be a passing fad, things could get complicated for the company down the road. To make matters worse, GM just pulled their ads from the website, claiming that their Facebook campaign wasn’t working. Clearly, this sort of news couldn’t have arrived at more inopportune moment.

    Zuckerberg has also assured investors that he plans to address the company’s problems monetizing its mobile applications. According to reports, the company is making next to nothing in the market, though Facebook claims that it’s working on ways to generate revenue from those who use the site in a nontraditional manner.

    If Facebook officially sets the price between $34 and $38, the company’s valuation could jump to an astronomical $100 billion. That is a lot of zeroes.

  • Groupon Stock: Earnings Better Than Analysts Predicted

    Groupon stock shot up almost 18 percent during after hours trading on Monday when first quarter earnings turned out to be much better than analysts had originally predicted. Thanks to increased demand from consumers, the company posted a smaller net loss than those on Wall Street had originally anticipated. This, of course, is very good news for the people over at Groupon.

    According to the Associated Press, the company’s revenue has jumped nearly 89 percent, which brought them a very cool $559.3 million. In fact, the news prompted analysts to upgrade the stock from “Neutral” to “Buy”. The Chicago-based coupon peddler just went public last November, though its shares have yet to return to the original IPO price.

    Shares of Groupon were $13.70 during the morning trade, though it closed at $11.74 on Monday. The company had been on a steady decline since February.

    During the fourth quarter of 2011, Groupon reported profits of $15 million, though this was later changed to a $15 million loss after it failed to accurately predict how many individuals would refund their purchases. Since then, the company has brought in board members with stronger accounting skills in order to prevent the same thing from happening all over again at a later date.

  • Netflix Stock Drops, Subscription Growth Projected to Slow

    Netflix Stock Drops, Subscription Growth Projected to Slow

    Netflix stock has been up and down lately, and it’s easy to understand why. Before the infamous summer of 2011, people always spoke very highly about Netflix, its ability to maintain steady growth, and the company’s desire to expand its streaming service into international markets. After a series of serious and unfortunate missteps — including the short-lived decision to split its DVD and streaming services into two separate entities — the company can’t seem to catch a break. Even with a strong ending to the first quarter, stocks still dropped during after-hours trading on Monday.

    Investors seem a little concerned about a forecast that suggests subscription growth will slow during the second quarter, despite the fact that Netflix added nearly 1.7 million members since the beginning of the year. Traditionally, April through June has been a particularly slow time for the company in terms of drawing new subscribers into its fold. Analysts projects that Netflix will only add a paltry 200,000 new users during the 2Q, a fact which may have caused the company’s stocks to take an estimated 16 drop yesterday.

    First quarter revenue, however, was up 21% from last year.

    CEO Reed Hastings is hoping to combat the subscription issue by focusing on original content, a strategy which includes bringing the cult television series “Arrested Development” back for another full season. Unfortunately, this particular show doesn’t start production until sometime this summer, which means that Hastings and company will have to wait until sometime next year to see if their pricy gamble will pay off.

    The company’s recent problems haven’t stopped Hastings from taking home an incredible amount of money as compensation for hurting the company’s reputation. Between his stock options and his regular salary, Hastings will reportedly bring home nearly $9.3 million. Not bad for a guy who alienated his subscribers by increasing their monthly rates and confusing the bejesus out of everyone by attempting to split the company into two entities.

    All of this bad news is going down right as other companies are looking to take a section of the market away from Netflix. Amazon, Wal-Mart, and Comcast are offering streaming services, though none of them has the selection that Netflix currently offers.

    For the time being, anyway.

  • Mark Cuban Becomes Largest Holder of Vringo Stock and Shares Triple

    Mark Cuban purchased Vringo stock shortly after pushing Lamar Odom out of his life. Vringo is a Delaware corporation that was founded in 2006 by entrepreneur and venture capitalist Jonathan Medved and mobile software specialist David Goldfarb. The company provides software platforms for mobile social and mobile video services.

    According to data from FactSet Research Cuban now owns more than 1.03 million shares of stock making him the largest holder.

    Within hours of making the big deal, shares of the stock increased in value by 16% to $3.53. By the time the market closed “the stock had more than tripled since the start of the year.”

    His investment comes as a surprise because he told Business Insider in December of 2011 that, “Wall Street used to be a place where you can raise capital to grow businesses. That’s not the case anymore. Wall Street has become a platform for hackers.”

    Cuban went on to explain that algorithmic trading and high frequency trading has led investing in Wall Street to lose its purpose. He went on to say that, “Unless you are buying stock that pays you dividends — or it pays you some return in some way or another — it’s no different than buying a baseball card.”

  • Groupon Stock Hits All-Time Low

    Groupon Stock Hits All-Time Low

    Less than five months after its initial public offering, Groupon stock is trading for less than half of what it once was. The company’s shares fell another 3.2%, or 48 cents, and closed at $14.54 a piece. At its highest point, Groupon shares were going for $31.14, soon after going public in early November.

    While the stock just hit new lows, similar prices were seen toward the end of last November as well. Groupon just revised its Q4 results Friday with higher than anticipated return rates from the holiday season, and its stock has yet to recover. It was also announced yesterday that multiple class-action lawsuits have been filed against the Chicago-based company concerning the stock price losses, though there is no lead plaintiff to represent those who’d suffered financial losses after the company’s IPO. The claimants assert that particular Groupon officers issued misleading statements concerning the company’s financial results.

    With its announcement on Friday, Groupon reasserted its guidance for the first quarter and still expects revenue of up to $550 million and net income from operations of up to $35 million. As a part of its press release, Groupon stated it will post its Q1 results on May 14:

    Groupon to Webcast First Quarter Financial Results Conference Call on May 14, 2012

    The Company also announced today that it intends to hold a conference call to discuss its first quarter 2012 financial results on Monday, May 14th, 2012, at 5:00 p.m. EDT. The webcast can be accessed live at http://investor.groupon.com.

  • Apple Stock Infographic

    Statista, the leading German statistics company on the web, has just posted an infographic on Apple’s stock performance as it correlates with major product announcements:

    apple chart

    The chart shows that while Apple stocks received a significant bump upon the announcement of the original iPhone, this was not the case regarding the iPhone 3G, 3GS and 4 models – though interestingly, stocks rose after the announcement of the iPhone 4S.

    Investors seemed to be a bit skeptical upon the announcement of the first iPad, but seemed more confident when Apple unveiled the iPad 2. Data appears to show that stocks might have been losing a bit of steam upon the announcement of the New iPad.

    Apple stocks rose sharply upon the announcement of the unibody MacBook Pro in 2008, and likewise fell a bit at the unveiling of the first MacBook Air.

    As a whole, Apple stocks see a spike at the days of all major product announcements.

    Hat tip to Statista.

  • Are You High on Yelp?

    On Friday, popular online review site Yelp began trading on the New York Stock Exchange. The company had a successful first day with shares jumping from $15 per share initial pricing to nearly $25 per share, making early investors very happy.

    While the shares dipped 14 percent yesterday in the company’s second day of trading, some fluctuation is to be expected in the early days of trading. However, one can’t help but wonder if the high about Yelp will continue or diminish.

    Can Yelp meet investor and consumer expectations going forward? Let us know what you think in the comments.

    While Yelp has experienced significant growth since its launch in 2004, the company has also experienced its share of criticism, which is the reason people are questioning its future. Most people associate Yelp with restaurant and other business reviews, but it is actually an Internet advertising company. In other words, it competes with the likes of Google and Facebook.

    As we know, this marketplace is very competitive and is growing. Foursquare is even breaking into the review space by allowing users to offer local recommendations and tips after they check in to places of business.

    For Yelp, this means that it has to defend its position. The company has had a rough road in this sense as it has been accused of ripping off the small businesses that advertise through it. Rocky Agrawal on VentureBeat wrote:

    “At a time when much online advertising is being sold for 60 cents per thousand impressions (CPMs), Yelp is charging some local advertisers $600 per 1,000 impressions.

    That’s not a typo. Yelp is charging small businesses 1,000-times the standard online CPM rates for local ads that appear on Yelp. Even when compared to its own ads for national advertisers, the company is charging a 100x premium.”

    Unfortunately, for Yelp, many of its users feel that Agrawal presented an accurate portrayal of how Yelp’s advertising model works. In a follow up article written by WebProNews CEO Rich Ord that focused on “defending online advertising,” we received numerous comments similar to this one from AJ:

    Is Yelp misleading its advertisers? If so, how? Please share you experience with us.

    Francis Gaskins, President of IPODesktop In addition to these ongoing advertising concerns, there are also other issues regarding its advertisers and the economy. Francis Gaskins, the President of IPODesktop, told WebProNews:

    “In this flat-lined economy, customers that Yelp deals with are not experiencing a lot of growth, so they have to claw and fight for every ad dollar that they get.”

    This information raises some big red flags for investors in terms of long-term profitability, which is another questionable area of the company. Yelp has always struggled with making money, and the following chart shows that the company is actually losing money.

    An even greater red flag for analysts and investors, however, is the fact that Yelp relies on its competitor Google for traffic, which, of course, ultimately means that it depends on it for revenue as well. According to Yelp’s S-1 filing, the company revealed just how dominant of a role Google plays in its business:

    “Google in particular is the most significant source of traffic to our website accounting for more than half of the visits to our website from Internet searches during the year ended December 31, 2011.”

    Incidentally, Yelp has taken a particularly outspoken stance against Google claiming that it shows favoritism toward its own products in search results. The filing also stated:

    “Google has removed links to our website from portions of its web search product, and has promoted its own competing products, including Google’s local products.”

    Yelp’s stand against Google is similar to that of FairSearch.org, which is an organization made up of various companies that believe Google has monopoly power. The group and Yelp are working to encourage policymakers to take action against the search giant in order to, based on information from FairSearch’s site, “protect competition, transparency and innovation in online search.” Yelp has even testified toward this effort, but at this point, the government has not acted.

    When WebProNews spoke to Gaskins about these issues, he equated it to Demand Media/Google situation. If you remember, the companies had a deal where Google directed searches to Demand Media’s eHow platform. In Google’s infamous Panda algorithm update, this all changed.

    “I don’t know whether the people buying the stock… at $25 or $24 realize that Google can turn off half their revenue faucet by changing the algorithms and putting their own searches up there,” said Gaskins.

    He went on to say Google could easily do this since it is a private enterprise that controls its own products. As he explained, Google doesn’t need to worry about what could happen to Yelp.

    However, it is these concerns that have Gaskins and other analysts qualifying Yelp as a risky investment. Rick Summer, an senior stock analyst, recently wrote why his firm Morningstar wasn’t applying for Yelp’s IPO:

    “Unfortunately, the company faces challenges translating the small advertising budgets of local businesses into profitability, as about 70% of ad revenue is eaten up by sales and marketing expenses. Although we ultimately expect operating leverage and resulting profitability, success is far from certain.”

    It’s clear that Yelp has several challenges to overcome, but only time will tell if it can prove its naysayers wrong. Do you think it can? We’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments.

  • No Twitter IPO For A Couple Years Says CEO

    Now that Facebook has taken the plunge and filed their S-1 documents, much of the attention has been redirected to Twitter. It’s not like discussion about a possible Twitter IPO is anything new, it just seems to have intensified since the Facebook IPO filing.

    Apparently, all of that buzz is for naught – at least if you ask Twitter’s CEO.

    In emails obtained by CNN, Twitter CEO Dick Costolo had this to say about a possible IPO:

    We don’t want to be public until we have very predictable quarterly earnings growth. We’re not ready to be a public company for a couple years.

    This email correspondence comes in the form of a message to all Twitter staff regarding a limit imposed on the sharing of company shares. Apparently, a rule has existed for about a year that says nobody that holds Twitter stock can sell more than 20% of their shares.

    Costolo wrote that Twitter has to “artificially limit the supply of stock being sold,” Costolo said, “There is one reasonable way to do this: Let everybody with vested common stock sell only some fraction of their shares.”

    Twitter can avoid disclosing their financials if they keep it under 500 shareholders owning one class of equity shares. Once they hit that threshold, they don’t necessarily have to go public – but the majority do.

    Now, it’s important to note that said email correspondence is from August 2011. Things can change in a matter of months. But Costolo’s private comments here seem to mirror his public comments about an IPO made only a few weeks ago at the All Things D “Dive Into Media” conference. There, Costolo refused to directly address the issue of a future IPO, but did say that Twitter’s “going to be really patient about the way [they] build the business,” adding that they “are trying to build a decades-long, lasting business.”

  • Fake Facebook Stock Sold By Oshkosh Woman, Amidst IPO Filing

    An Oshkosh Wisconsin woman is in some scalding hot water recently for taking advantage of Facebook’s recent public stock offering.

    Marianne Oleson has been charged with 33 felony charges in the Winnebago County Court. The prosecutors say the woman claimed to own shares of Facebook stock and swindled at least 4 people in to buying the fake stock. One complaint states that one man gave Oleson 28,000 dollars in cash money in exchange for “legitimate looking” documents.

    Officials say Oleson acquired the documents from a Florida company that owns private stock of the social network giant by telling the company she was interested in buying 1 million dollars worth of shares.

    Oleson has many aliases including the last names of Jansen, Milock and Maloney. Randy Stafford, the aforementioned man that was swindled says he was indeed “swindled”. Stafford performed construction on Oleson’s home and after she couldn’t afford to pay him, she offered him the stock in exchange; Stafford said:

    “I think it’s a great opportunity, it’s a growing business so on and so forth.”

    Reportedly, 18,00 dollars was in payment for work he did on the home and stafford payed an additional 10,000 dollars for the stocks themselves. Stafford went on to say:

    “I’m interested in my options and investments so you don’t have to work as hard and make it a lot easier money for my kids and family.”

    Stafford went on to say that “something didn’t feel right”; seems his instincts were correct; according to the victim, Oleson had bought up to 1 million dollars worth of the faux stock.

    Police officials say that stafford wasn’t the only one duped. Jeff Bellin of the Winnebago County Sheriff’s office says:

    “There were other victims initially identified and from there, it just grew.”

    A criminal complaint lists 5 victims including Stafford that purchased or had the fake stock given to them as a gift. Bellin feels that there may be more victims out there too. To add insult to injury, Oleson is facing marijuana possession charges on top of her previous charges.

  • Spark Capital Makes a Substantial Investment in Foursquare, Purchases $50 Million in Stock

    Spark Capital is providing its employees with more liquid assets by purchasing fifty million dollars worth of Foursquare’s company stock. Foursquare has 15 million registered users who have collectively checked in 1.5 billion times and has generated information about some 750,000 restaurants and other venues. Spark Capital had already been investing in Foursquare and based their decision to up the ante on the location company’s recent revenues upwards of $600 million.

    What makes this even more interesting is the fact that Foursquare has been more concerned with product development than raking in the dough. Well, I am sure that those extra millions will help them hire top notch innovators and designers in an effort accomplish their overarching goals.

    Foursquare’s new “Explore” feature is a mobile app that operates as a local recommendations guide and allows users to “discover nearby restaurants, bars, coffee shops, nightlife spots, and other venues, either by category, name, or even something more specific, like “sushi” or “hamburgers.” While many GPS systems have this feature I have noticed that they are not nearly as comprehensive as this app. If I am looking for the new Ethiopian restaurant across town I would use Explore because I do not update my Garmin that often.

    Explore also “taps into Foursquare’s own social graph in order to recommend places your friends have visited and liked, while also providing tips and comments from Foursquare’s wider network;” hopefully this feature will prevent me from driving forty minutes to some sketchy taco stand and will guide me on my quest to find the perfect spicy tuna rolls within a ten mile radius.

    Recent updates to Explore have further equipped me to find “recommended places anywhere in the world either by moving the map around on the screen or by typing in an exact location” so when I finally get to go to New Zealand and want to try sawfish, I will know where to go before I even book my flight.

    Foursquare has also proven to be valuable in the business world in that it “can break down visitor demographics for individual stores, letting them better tailor their wares to their customers.” The company has also been busy “running its coupons via its American Express deal from last year.” And it has also assisted developers by “providing data via its API, which is already used by popular mobile applications like Instagram and Path.”

  • Apple Fighting For Largest Company In The World Status

    Apple’s huge earnings yesterday has just shot them through the roof as they battle for the status of largest company in the world with Exxon Mobil.

    Apple’s stock rose nearly six percent in midday trading according to the Mercury News. This put their individual stock price at $445.29 which put their market cap at $415 billion. Exxon’s share price was down one percet at $86.52 per share with a market cap of $414 billion.

    The two companies have been battling all day back and forth for the top spot in market value. There has only been $1 billion standing between them for most of the day.

    This new momentum for Apple has some shareholders hoping that Apple will use it massive reserves of cash to pay investors back in the form of a dividend. Reuters reports that Apple, which last paid a dividend in 1995, is “actively discussing” the cash balance but didn’t have anything to announce.

    “We do believe the company should examine a meaningful dividend closely and are intrigued by the possibilities around any sizeable acquisitions that could improve its wireless and online services,” Barclays Capital wrote in a note to clients, according to Reuters.

    Apple’s success has also improved the outlook for the company’s suppliers, Broadcom and TriQuint, according to Fox Business.

    As of right now, Apple’s stocks are selling for $447.45 per share and Exxon’s are selling for $86.54 per share. Apple’s market value is staying steady at $415 billion and Exxon’s is staying at $414 billion.

    The prices can and will fluctuate over the day, but we can call it as of now that Apple is once again the number one most valuable company in the world.

  • Groupon IPO Raises $700 Million, Priced At $20 A Share

    Daily deals powerhouse Groupon has priced its Initial Public Offering at $20 a share, a move that will raise $700 million for the barely 3-year-old startup.

    This IPO values the company at around $12.8 billion.

    The oversubscribed company added five million shares to its offering, upping the figure from 30 million shares sold to 35 million shares sold. This still only amounts to 5.5% of the company.

    The $20 a share pricing is slightly higher than what was expected. The price range that was originally discussed was between $16 and $18 a share.

    It looks like most of the trepidation surrounding Groupon’s IPO went by the wayside as people rushed to buy a piece of the company. On the bumpy road to an IPO, Groupon had been hit with executive troubles, and criticism of accounting practices.

    This IPO is the second largest by an internet-based company – all time. Of course, the biggest IPO crown belongs to Google in 2004. Groupon will begin trading Friday under the symbol “GRPN.”

    Here’s some of the chatter surrounding the huge IPO:

    @utgjames
    James Shotwell    People have A LOT of faith in Groupon as a sustainable company, but I still don’t see it. $700 million IPO pretty much speaks for itself 13 minutes ago via RockMelt · powered by @socialditto

    @acfou
    Augustine Fou    I am confident in the wisdom of markets (eventually) — re: Groupon IPO Day Today 16 minutes ago via Ping.fm · powered by @socialditto

    @Jaysie514
    Jayson Derrick    #Groupon IPO today… checking for IPO coupons, maybe at 50% off I’ll buy.. Going to pass on this one. Love the company though. 17 minutes ago via web · powered by @socialditto

    Rocky Agrawal at VentureBeat says that he still believes that Groupon is a “terrible company for investors, small businesses and ultimately for consumers.” But he’s buying shares –

    All of that said, I’ve put in my request with my broker for shares in the IPO because Groupon has scientifically engineered its IPO to inflate share prices. Its float is one of the tiniest in the last decade. Most likely this thing will have a nice pop.

    What do you think of Groupon’s IPO? Let us know in the comments.

  • LinkedIn IPO Reactions From The Twitter World

    LinkedIn has sent the tech world in a flurry since their initial public offering yesterday blew all expectations out of the water.

    LinkedIn announced its pricing at $5 per share, but by the end of trading yesterday it had reached a high of $107 per share. Shares are currently hovering around $101 to $103.

    Initial reporting valued the social network at around $4 billion. Some are now indicating that LinkedIn could be worth more than $9 billion dollars, an absolutely astounding figure.

    So the tech world sounded off on Twitter as LinkedIn’s valuation continued to climb. Many talked about the infamous “tech bubble,” which others pointed to LinkedIn’s IPO success as a sign of future social networks’ success in public offerings. Others from inside the social media field simply congratulated the people at LinkedIn on their big day.

    First, that bubble talk:

    @dhh
    DHH    LinkedIn made $15 million last year. It’s now worth $8,000 million. That’s a P/E of 500+. How can anyone claim we’re not in a bubble? 23 hours ago via Tweetie for Mac · powered by @socialditto

    @peteryared
    Peter Yared    New post: LinkedIn IPO: You know it’s a bubble when Grandma can buy in http://bit.ly/kaXpbO 14 hours ago via web · powered by @socialditto

    @rk
    Ryan King    I think we’re in a “calling it a bubble” bubble. 21 hours ago via YoruFukurou · powered by @socialditto

    The staffs of other social networks Twitter and Facebook also talked about the IPO:

    @sandofsky
    Ben Sandofsky    I bet LinkedIn employees are getting Invitations to Connect to estranged relatives. 17 hours ago via Twitter for Mac · powered by @socialditto

    @frost
    Frost Li    #linkedInIPO shows how people believe in social network and what its impact will be! 18 hours ago via web · powered by @socialditto

    @dougw
    Doug Williams    Impressive IPO for our friends and partners at LinkedIn. Congrats @skottr @lizreaveswalker @allenb et. al. 23 hours ago via Twitter for iPhone · powered by @socialditto

    @brandee
    Brandee Barker    Yay LNKD! So good for the industry! 1 day ago via Twitter for iPhone · powered by @socialditto

    @matthicks
    matthicks    Congrats, LinkedIn: $100 a share and rising. I remember joining 6 years ago when Friendster, Tribe and Orkut were… http://fb.me/znQYn3pV 22 hours ago via Facebook · powered by @socialditto

    Here are some more reactions from the blogging and tech writing world:

    @Lessien
    Lessien    If $AAPL traded at 45x (like $LNKD) its FY 2010 revenues, its market cap would be almost $3 trillion dollars. 22 hours ago via Twitter for Mac · powered by @socialditto

    @SameerPatel
    Sameer Patel    #Linkedin stock price is not a function of it’s revenue. It’s a function of the markets 5+ yr pent up demand to get in on social networking. 22 hours ago via Echofon · powered by @socialditto

    @stevecheney
    Steve Cheney    RT @albertwenger: LinkedIn is Netscape of this decade. IPO window blown wide open. 22 hours ago via Twitter for iPhone · powered by @socialditto

    @danprimack
    danprimack    There is a rumor floating around that shares of LinkedIn can be used as survival rafts for the upcoming apocalypse. Buy, buy, buy! 22 hours ago via web · powered by @socialditto

    @pkedrosky
    Paul Kedrosky    Anyone who natters today about how much $$ LinkedIn left on the table should be ignored for keeps. Cluelessness^3. 21 hours ago via Echofon · powered by @socialditto

  • HP Looking To Cloud For The Future

    If you’re a new CEO and are looking to put your own stamp on a company upon starting, look to HP’s Leo Apotheker for inspiration. On Monday, Apotheker outlined his vision for the company and many came away impressed with his words. Citing cloud services, connectivity, and webOS, Apotheker has laid the foundation for the future of the company. Now, it’s time to see if something can be built on it.

    Opening on Tuesday, HP’s stock took a hit and is currently trading at $40.72/share. A $0.75 decrease from yesterday. This can be attributed to talks of “new directions” and “long-term strategy“, as such terms can lessen the confidence of investors.

    Apotheker mentioned cloud services as a market HP plans to invest heavily in moving forward. He even promised to deliver a cloud infrastructure in 2011. Services HP will offer include an app store, along with other programs for enterprises.

    To coincide with their cloud services, HP will move forward with their expansive plans for WebOS. Last year, HP purchased Palm and looked to their WebOS platform as an investment opportunity. Last month, HP laid out their list of devices which will utilize WebOS: HP TouchPad, Veer and Pre3. Of their plans for the mobile space, Apotheker believes there could be 100 million devices a year running the WebOS platform.

    Bill Shope, an analyst at Goldman Sachs, had mixed feelings towards the CEO’s plans, “We were impressed with the new CEO’s long-term vision, and agree with his view on the areas where HP needs to focus in coming years” he continues, “Nevertheless, we still believe the company is underestimating the costs of its current transformation and the resulting risks to medium-term margin stability.”

    The obvious problems ahead for HP come from staunch competition they’ll be facing in the new markets they plan to dive into. On the cloud side of things, Oracle and Cisco are established companies with renowned products. Their mobile plans will be going up against the two-headed monster of Android, and iOS.

    While HP has a tough journey ahead, sometimes it’s bold words and plans that are needed to come up from a rut. Ever since the abrupt exit of ex-CEO, Mark Hurd, the company has been sliding backwards. Their stock has been down 20% the past year.

    Apotheker has laid out the plan, now it’s time to see how HP handles the follow through.