Earnings Preview: Symantec Corp.

Symantec Corp. (SYMC) is expected to report Q2 earnings after market close Wednesday, October 29, with a conference call scheduled for 5:00 pm.

Guidance

The consensus estimate is 35c for EPS and $1.54B for revenue, according to First Call. Last month the company's CEO reaffirmed the September quarter guidance provided on the last earnings call of 34c to 36c, and $1.52B to $1.565B in revenue.

Analyst Views

On October 20 shares of Symantec received a rating upgrade by both Raymond James and Oppenheimer on the attractive valuation of the shares. Oppenheimer also thought that Symantec will benefit as security and storage spending will continue to be defensible despite IT budget cuts at the enterprise level. Prior to these upgrades,

Friedman Billings upgraded Symantec on valuation as well, and after their checks showed that the company should meet Q2 expectations. Goldman says that Symantec's organic bookings growth will be key because they believe this has become an increasingly important metric for viewing the overall health of the business. Currency changes as well as a weakening spending environment has been pressuring organic bookings, and as a result Goldman recently trimmed their organic booking estimates for FY09, FY10 and FY11 to 8%, 5% and 6%, respectively.

Next event: Symantec will be presenting November 19 in Chicago at Wachovia's Midwest Technology & Services Investor Day.

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2008 Nov 11 01:35 PM