Stock watch: Adobe and earnings; Zynga and drawing, OMG; Cisco, HP and more
By Levi Sumagaysay	/ March 20, 2012 at 10:00 AM
• Adobe shares are getting clobbered Tuesday, a day after it reported first-quarter results that missed expectations. Although its profit met estimates, the San Jose software maker saw sales of its Creative Suite fall 4 percent from the year-ago period, as buyers likely delayed purchases because the company is rolling out a software-as-a-service model. (See Q&A with Adobe CTO Kevin Lynch, whose outlook is 'cloudy' but bright.)
"I think the stock goes sideways for another couple of quarters," Global Equities Research analyst Trip Chowdhry told Reuters, as the company makes the transition to the cloud.
After falling nearly 5 percent in after-hours trading Monday, Adobe Systems shares are down about 4.25 percent to $33.05 as of this post.
• Is something wrong with this picture? Zynga, which according to TechCrunch and GigaOm is considering buying "DrawSomething" maker OMGPOP, is seeing its shares fall more than 1.5 percent to right around $13 as of this post.
New York-based OMGPOP — OMG, don't you just love a company that spells its name in all-caps — which is partly backed by Silicon Valley investors such as Marc Andreessen and Y Combinator, has seen its online-drawing game explode in popularity recently. The Pictionary-like game has reportedly beat out "Words with Friends" as the most popular game played on Facebook Connect. GigaOm's Om Malik, citing unnamed sources, says San Francisco-based Zynga is considering offering $200 million for the company. Malik also says Zynga paid a little more than $50 million for "Words with Friends" maker New Toy in 2010.
• Cisco Systems' shares are up more than 1 percent to about $20.40 as of this post. Among the goings-on involving San Jose networking company: It is expanding its services to help secure the devices employees bring to work, according to Reuters. Last month, Steve Johnson of the Mercury News reported about the growing bring-your-own-device trend, to which employers have mixed reactions.
Cisco also could be seeing a halo effect from Apple's iPad. "The network is more relevant than ever before, and we're really looking at that change in devices and explosion in mobility as a huge opportunity for Cisco," Robert Lloyd, the networking giant's executive vice president of worldwide operations, told TheStreet earlier this month.
• PC shipments are expected to grow in the second half of the year, helped by the release of Microsoft's Windows 8, research firm IDC said Tuesday. Bloomberg reports, by the way, that Microsoft is expected to finish working on its new operating system this summer, and will launch Windows 8 in October.
IDC says global PC shipments will increase 5 percent in 2012, with much of that growth coming in the second half of the year. A look at the usual suspects' shares: Microsoft, HP and Dell are all down more than 1 percent amid a broader market sell-off, while Intel shares are up slightly as of this post.
Tags: adobe, Cisco, DrawSomething, Earnings, games, HP, Intel, Microsoft, OMGPOP, PC, shares, software, Windows 8, zynga
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