Gawker: valleywag, rbc capital

Telecom stocks downgraded by still-employed analysts

Paul Boutin — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 14:40:00 EDT

RBC Capital is a Canadian bank whose research analysts are still on the job, unlike half of Wall Street's. Too bad they're not able to crunch some happier numbers: RBC downgraded Alcatel-Lucent, Nortel, Garmin, Symmetricom, DSP Group and Ericsson this morning. Thirty-word version from analyst Mark Sue:

Companies with challenged industry structures, declining market share and deteriorating balance sheets may have additional difficulties, and the problems may be further accentuated by carrier customers who may now have decreased access to capital.

VMware shares down 15 percent, requiring their own bailout

Paul Boutin — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 14:40:00 EDT

Shares of VMW were off 15.4 percent Friday morning. RBC Capital had seriously downgraded VMware last week from Outperform to Sector Perform, blaming “a degrading environment for global IT spending.” VMware's virtualization software is the hottest product in a hot market — it reduces the number of physical servers companies need to buy by creating multiple "virtual servers" on the same box. Wall Street sees it pretty simply: No bailout bill = no sales.

Apple stock drops on lowered ratings

Paul Boutin — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 11:40:00 EDT

Time to swap your white plastic armor for some eco-friendly aluminum. Two important analysts, RBC Capital’s Mike Abramsky and Morgan Stanley’s Kathryn Huberty, lowered their ratings on Apple's stock this morning. Huberty: “PC unit growth is decelerating and the remaining source of growth is increasingly the sub-$1,000 market where AAPL does not play.” Abramsky: “a worsening consumer spending environment." Apple shares were down from $128 to $108 as of this post.