market news and articles @ firstadopter.com

My updated VMW financial model: Link

NVDA – Nvidia’s Tegra roadmap. Link

Asustek to raise motherboard prices by 5-15% in 1H-2011 due to labor shortage in China and soaring copper prices. Link

More news on Steve Eisman and FrointPoint Partners. Link

MOT GOOG – Motorola’s XOOM Android tablet will launch on February 17th for $700. Link

AOL – It is estimated 75% of AOL’s 4 million subscribers don’t need the service. Link

Over 100 tablets were unveiled at CES 2011. Link

ERTS – Investors wary about EA’s Star Wars MMO. Link

Tiger Global is raising $1.25B for their sixth private equity fund. Link

Taco Bell meat is only 36% meat? Link

Salon article on World of Warcraft helping a woman through divorce. Link

SLE – Sara Lee gets a takeover bid from Apollo, Bain, and TPG that is over $18.70. Link

AMD – AMD fusion chips benchmarked. Link

AAPL – IDC saying 2048×1536 iPad screen will come in the 3rd version next year. Link

My updated TPX financial model: Link

My updated financial model on AMD: Link

My updated financial model on GOOG: Link

My updated financial model on ISRG: Link

AAPL – What the Tiger cub hedge-funds are doing with Apple now. Link

Facebook closed its $1.5 billion funding round. Link

GOOG – Google is going after the content farms and spammers. Link

RIMM – Eric Savitz likes the Playbook to his surprise. Link

MCP – Chinese government seizes control of 11 rare earth mining districts. Link

AIG – DealBook on the AIG warrant distribution. Link

ATVI – Activision pulls in Raven and Sledgehammer to help Infinity Ward on Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3. Link

Jobless claims 404K vs 425K est. Prior revised to 441K vs. 445K

AAPL – According to sources in Taiwan, iPad 2 will have resolution of 2048×1536. Link

NYPost says David Tepper is now “cautious” Link

MNKD – Adam Feuerstein on Mannkind Link

AIG – Former head of AIG government relations on the stock price action after ex-dividend of the $45 warrants today. Link

AMZN NFLX – Amazon buys the rest of Lovefilm, the Netflix of Europe. Link

-Revenue $268.9M vs. $270.3M est. EPS 88c vs. 83c est.

Q2 Guidance
-Revenue $275-280M vs. $280.7M est. EPS 84-86c vs. 85c est.

Conference Call
-Current pipeline is the strongest they have ever seen.
-Not as many large deals in the last quarter, but future big deal pipeline is good.
-No change in the competitive environment.
-”Saw some deals slip”
-The deal push-outs should close this quarter.

Take-aways
-After several quarters of crushing analyst estimates, F5 has now missed the revenue number tiny and guided down small vs. the Street. The momentum growth stock investors will puke tomorrow as this is a non-”beat and raise” quarter.
-Product revenue growth rate is slightly decelerating. Big deal slippage is also never a good sign.
-At $107.82 in after-hours trading, it is trading at 26.8Xs EPS power with a 41% growth rate. Not horribly expensive, but not cheap either.

Updated financial model Link

Subscribe to FA Alert – our email trade alerts Link

NFLX CMCSA – Senator Franken says Comcast will dump NBC programming deals with Netflix. Link

NOK – Nokia cancels AT&T launch of X7 smart-phone. Link

MarketFolly has 2010 performance returns for a number of large hedge-funds. Link

Tom Demark says market will drop at least 11% starting within 1-2 weeks. Link

HPQ – HP to ship 45-48M notebooks and WebOS tablets in 2011 according to Taiwan-based ODMs vs. 39M in 2010. Link

YHOO – Yahoo to allow user registration using Google and Facebook IDs. Link

AAPL – Barrons offers a good summary of the Apple earnings call. Link

AAPL – JP Morgan raises Apple price target from $420 to $450. Kaufman from $415 to $438. Oppenheimer from $395 to $425. Ticonderoga from $450 to $550. Jim Cramer from $325 to $400. Piper from $438 to $483. Goldman from $430 to $450. UBS from $415 to $465. RBC from $395 to $425.

ERTS – Playfish says 55M users play their games each month. Link

Bernanke quote on QE2: “Our policies have contributed to a stronger stock market, just as they did in March of 2009, when we did the last iteration (of quantitative easing). The S&P 500 is up about 20 percent plus and the Russell 2000 is up 30 pct plus.” Link

Great deal from LivingSocial. $20 Amazon.com gift card for $10. Link