Shares of Yelp (YELP) have been surging 9% in reaction to its earnings report. Yelp impressed investors even though it lost 8-cents a share; consensus was for minus 6-cents. Key here were better-than-expected revenues. They rose 68% from a year ago. Yelp is also improving its outlook for the year citing success with display ads on mobile phones-- something it seems to have in common with Facebook. Shares are now up more than 35% since the start of the year.
Next is Energizer (ENR), the parent company of Schick razors and related products. The stock has been trading lower despite beating estimates with its earnings, posting $1.35 a share on $1.1 billion in revenue. The problem here: the company claims its sales are hurting because rival Proctor and Gamble (PG) has been bombarding customers with promotions on its Gilette products. By the Church and Dwight (CHD), the maker of Arm and Hammer says PG has been pulling similar stunts in the laundry aisle. But Church and Dwight is out with earnings this morning and says profits climbed 15%.
Now we look at Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) which closed up 14% yesterday. The climb came after Barron's reignited speculation that Intel could buy the chip maker. The paper also said Microsoft may be using AMD processors for its latest X-box which is expected to be announced later this month. The rise put AMD shares at their highest point since October, though they're still worth less than half of what they were a year ago. And if you go all the way back to the internet bubble there were two periods when they topped $40 apiece.
Finally, we're sticking with computers, and looking at IBM (IBM). Big Blue's effort to sell part of its server business appears to have broken down. The company had been in talks with China's Lenovo, but sources say the sides couldn't come to terms on a price. Lenovo confirmed last month that it was in talks with IBM and an un-named third party. IBM took a bit of a dip in the past few weeks, but it still up slightly since the start of the year.
