Unlike other Chinese Internet portals, SINA Corporation (SINA) can demonstrate that its success is not only represented by excellent user engagement metrics, but also by its stock price performance. It's up 9.6% this month, quite below Nasdaq 100 but well above Baidu (BIDU), Renren (RENN), and Youku.com (YOKU), whose performance in the past year was actually negative.

There is something special about SINA. Unlike Renren, its monthly average users database looks very attractive not only in the long run, but also in the short term as there are fewer students and more middle-class urban residents employed. But it also owns Weibo, China's version of Twitter, which is on its way to being used by almost everybody in China who has an Internet connection -- from students to housewives. Unlike Youku.com, it is not that into the business of online video platforms, which is already very competitive (Renren's 56.com and Baidu's

Intel Corporation (INTC)

Annual Shareholder Meeting Conference Call

May 16, 2013 11:30 am ET

Executives

Andy D. Bryant – Chairman of the Board

Cary I. Klafter, Vice President Director, Corporate Legal and Corporate Secretary

Paul Otellini – President and Chief Executive Officer

Brian M. Krzanich – Chief Executive Officer

Renée James – President

David Yoffie – Professor at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Business Administration

Analyst

Jeff Linroth – Leaving It Better, LLC

Presentation

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Chairman of the Board of Directors, Andy Bryant; and Vice President and Corporate Secretary, Cary Klafter.

Andy D. Bryant

Good morning. I would now like to please hold the meeting to order. I’m Andy Bryant, Chairman of the Board. It’s a pleasure to welcome you to the 2013 Annual Stockholder Meeting. In addition to being in Santa Clara, the meeting is also being conducted by the Internet through our Investor

The share price of Verizon Communications (VZ) has appreciated by 29% over the past six months. At $53.20, the stock is trading near its 52-week high and offers a 3.8% dividend yield. At the current price level, I believe investors should refrain from buying additional shares given the investment's unfavorable risk-reward profile. My view is supported by the following reasons:

1. Verizon appears to be pricey relative to AT&T (T). According to the chart shown below, Verizon's consensus revenue, EBITDA, and EPS growth estimates are generally better than those of AT&T. On the profit side, most of Verizon's profitability margins are slightly better than AT&T's, but the company's capital returns, especially ROE, are considerably superior. In terms of leverage and liquidity, Verizon carries a relatively lower debt load, but the firm also has a lower free cash flow margin. Due to the stronger margin performance, Verizon is able

Quick Take

• Baidu’s operating margin dropped dramatically in Q1 2013 on account of investments in infrastructure, marketing and R&D as well as the consolidation of its online video platform.
• This trend is expected to continue in 2013 as the company invests in R&D and marketing to enhance its market share in the mobile search. Currently, Baidu’s market share on mobile devices is less than half its share on desktops.
• While the decline in margins seems disappointing, we believe it is necessary for Baidu to invest in long-term growth opportunities.
• The Chinese Internet market is undergoing a transition with increasing usage of mobile devices for accessing the Internet. Hence, the success on mobile platform is critical for Chinese Internet companies to achieve strong long-term growth.

Baidu (BIDU) is the leading online search provider in China. While its top-line continues to grow at a healthy rate, the company’s profitability has suffered in

Western Digital (WDC), one of the leading manufacturers of hard disk drives, has collaborated with SanDisk (SNDK), a flash memory or NAND market leader, to launch its first hybrid disk drive (SSHD). ^[1] The move comes as the storage device maker catches up with its largest competitor Seagate (STX) to tap the expected surge in demand of SSHDs. Below we discuss how the deal could benefit Western Digital going forward.

We have a $64 price estimate for Western Digital, a slight premium to the current market price. Western Digital’s stock has risen over 30% this year.

Demand For Hybrid Drives Are Expected To Surge

SSDs have a few advantages over conventional HDDs as these drives allow for faster data access and are very thin compared to HDDs. However, SSDs are currently much more expensive per GB than HDDs, leading to slow adoption of SSDs as

Strange as it may be for me to write this, but AOL (AOL) may be ready to break out.

The company fell a bit on its latest quarterly earnings report, a 3 cent/share miss. The "tell" on the turn, however, comes in the form of a lay-off notice.

Specifically, according to AllThingsD, the company's Patch unit is laying off 3% of its staff and consolidating operations into fewer regional centers. The site got a copy of a memo CEO Tim Armstrong sent to the staff. The memo predicts that Patch will turn a profit this year with the changes.

That would actually put Patch on something like a schedule. Most traditional publishing ventures worked off a five year plan, with break-even scheduled for year three. This is Armstrong's fourth year in charge of the whole company, and figuring it took him a year to get control of it,

Having released its new BB10 platform with high-end handsets earlier this year, BlackBerry (Nasdaq:BBRY) is now targeting the emerging markets with low-end smartphones. At the BlackBerry Keynote address held on May 14, the handset maker took the wraps off the Q5 – its long awaited QWERTY replacement for the earlier generation low-end Curve handsets that were a rage in the emerging markets.

While BlackBerry will look to improve margins and return to full-year profitability with the help of high-end smartphones, the low-end models will be used primarily to stem the subscriber loss it has been suffering for push email and BBM services in the recent quarters. With the handset division in the doldrums, BlackBerry’s services have grown in importance to contribute the most value to its stock – almost 30% by our estimates. The success of the low-end BB10 models is therefore very important if the company has to stay

The worm turns....

Research outfit Raymond James says that the debut of BlackBerry’s (BBRY) new BlackBerry 10 operating system and the two handsets on which it runs have gone a long way toward repairing the home turf market share erosion the company has suffered over the past few years. In the fourth quarter of 2012, BlackBerry’s share of the Canadian market topped out at a dismal 6%. But by the first quarter of 2013 it had more than doubled, rising to 13.5%.

13.5%, a clean double in one quarter?

Did I read that right? And by the way, the Z-10 was only on the market in Canada for less than half of that quarter.

Now to be fair, I own a Z-10. I came from Android as a guy who has ported Android (twice) because I didn't like the versions that shipped with the hardware I owned and have

Tableau (DATA), which sells a data visualization platform, and Marketo (MKTO), a provider of marketing automation software, priced their IPOs last night, pushing total IPO pricings in May to 22. That's the most since November 2007, when 26 deals were completed. Earlier, May saw the first 10-IPO week since 2010 and only the second since 2007. With eight companies still on the calendar for May, there is a possibility this month could be the first since May 2007

I have been bullish on Cisco Systems (CSCO) for a while, so yesterday's 12.5% increase in its share price was gratifying for me to see. CSCO's big surge came on the heels of better-than-expected quarterly earnings. Even with the surge in its stock price yesterday, however, CSCO is still very undervalued due to GAAP earnings that understate the true profitability of the company.

My analysis of the financial footnotes to CSCO's Form 10-K for 2012 revealed that CSCO's GAAP net income actually understated its profitability and growth. A variety of unusual expenses hidden in operating items totaling $530 million (over 5% of net income after tax) caused CSCO's GAAP net income to be $8 billion, while its true net operating profit after tax (NOPAT) was over $8.5 billion. In addition, CSCO's true economic earnings per share grew by 58% in 2012, more than double

Q1 2013 Earnings Conference Call

May 17, 2013 8:00 am ET

Executives

Victor Kuo – Investor Relations, Christensen

Tianwen Liu – Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

Xiaosong Zhang – Chief Financial Officer

Analysts

Amit Singh – Jefferies LLC

Presentation

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by and welcome to the iSoftStone Q1 2013 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. There will be a presentation followed by a question-and-answer session. (Operator Instructions) I must advise you that this conference is being recorded today, Friday 17 of May 2013.

I would now like to turn the time over to your first speaker for today, Mr. Victor Kuo. Thank you, sir. Please go ahead.

Victor Kuo

Thank you. Our team today includes TW Liu, Chairman and CEO and Jonathan Zhang, Chief Financial Officer. First, I will remind you about forward-looking

Good news for Microsoft (MSFT) continues to come, strengthening the bull case for the stock. According to the latest IDC report for Q1 2013 Windows Phone surpassed BlackBerry (BBRY) in sales and climbed to third place in the smartphone market.

Windows Phone shipments more than doubled in relation to Q1 2012 and are more than 16% higher from the last quarter of 2012. It is clear now that Windows Phone is rapidly gaining momentum and continues to gain market share.

(click to enlarge) (Source: allthingsd.com)

One of the major factors for building momentum for Windows Phone adoption continues to be Nokia (NOK), which has created some excellent products with its Lumia series and continues to market heavily all around the world.

Another piece of good news is coming from the Windows 8 front in the PC and tablet world. Microsoft announced that the preview of the

In response to growing dissatisfaction from major networks ABC (DIS), CBS (CBS), Fox (NWSA) and NBC (CMCSA), as well as smaller content providers, Nielsen Holdings NV (NLSN) has started to track Internet audiences, which use a variety of devices to consume media.

When considering the unenviable task, almost immediately challenges are encountered, as Facebook Inc. (FB) and Google (GOOG) use metrics which don't work for television. That means YouTube and Facebook won't be able to be counted by Nielsen at this time. The new streaming initiative from Amazon.com (AMZN) is another factor in the mix.

When two of the most-visited web properties can't be measured, it reveals the daunting challenge faced by Nielsen. Add to that the fact children 12 and under aren't supposed to sign up for Facebook, and it leaves out important data for network and cable television serving that market. It really is a mess. It does