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Loral Space & Communications, a the commercial-satellite maker is giving its ownership of the business to the hedge funds that has paid pennies for the companies debts that would wipe out the equity of existing stockholders. The shareholders have thus waged a battle in bankruptcy court against the Loral Space & Communications.

The shares of Smith & Wesson and Sturm, Ruger could drop due to decreasing sales of assault rifles. Assault rifle sales increased after the 2008 US presidential election due to fears of a sales ban on these weapons.

The shares of solar panel manufacturers First Solar and Energy Conversion Devices appear vulnerable and may drop due to declining silicon prices. The gap between supply and demand of silicon could widen in 2010, reducing their per-watt advantage over their rivals.

The Thomson acquired Reuters Group Holdings for $18 billion cash and stock deal. The impact of the merger on the stock performance and revenues of Thomson-Reuter company are analyzed.

The fall in the sales of implantable cardioverter-defibrillators of Medtronic Inc. despite increase in the demand for defibrillators in the United States is discussed. The fall in the share prices of the company too is examined.

The expiry of the US patent on Merck's cholesterol-lowering pill Zocor is expected to have a huge economic impact on Pfizer's market-leading cholesterol drug, Lipitor. However, some analysts believe that even if US sales of Lipitor dropped to zero, Pfizer's balance sheet and the huge cash flow from its other products would support a value of US$25 a share, while Pfizer itself aims to increase sales by introducing an experimental drug that boosts blood levels of the body's 'good' cholesterol.

A report on performance on EMC shares, which did not halt even after the data-storage company reaffirmed its growth guidance, is presented. EMC has five new businesses in 2006 that should each reach $1 million in annual revenues within the next few years which are server virtualization, content management, data center management, storage virtualization and data security.

The cost for big pharmaceutical companies to license biotechnology products came up over a five-year period, from around US$85 million in 2000 to US$185 million in 2005. However, the drastic increase in prices slowed the pace of deals through 2005, according to one analyst.

Intel disclosed another stumble in October 2005, as it announced delays in its plans to deliver next-generation chips for the large data-center computers known as servers. Now it will be 2007 or later before Intel offers much competition at the high-end of the server market, where computers have four or more processors and where Advanced Micro enjoys a dominant share of high-margin chip sales.

The Premium-priced shares of Network Appliance, gained first week of August when the company warned that its sales had fallen short of expectations for its fiscal quarter that ended in July 2005. The shortfall resulted from NetApp's own disruptive technology such as a midrange offering introduced in May, called the FAS3000 series.

The restructuring proposal for Loral Space & Communications corporation is discussed, which was aimed at eliminating the equity holdings of investors, and put the satellite business into new corporation owned by the hedge-fund holders of Loral's old debt. The Loral's satellite manufacturing business seems to recover, and the unit reported about $100 million in revenue for the March 2005 quarter.

Apple Computer is anticipating a continued boom in iPod sales, a move that could boost revenue and earnings by 2007. However, with growing competition from 3G cellphone music services, the demand for the company's best-selling product is likely to decrease.

Garmin is an innovator and a nimble competitor in the market for navigation devices, which use the satellite-based Global Positioning System. In spite of competition from rivals such as TomTom, the NavMan division of Brunswick (BC) and the Magellan unit of Thales Group, the sales of Garmin rose to 33% and earnings to 26 % in the year 2004.

Intel trades its newly introduced dual-core chips at 23 in mid April, at 16 times expected 2006 earnings while at 14.60, Advanced Micro Devices trades at over 20 times. Technology flash chips producers like Lexar Media and its conflict with Samsung Electronics and Toshiba is detailed along with encountered loss and sale details.

Cisco Systems, the giant network-gear vendor on 10 January 2005 reported that its sales were up to 12% to $6.1billion, whereas the earnings rose to 20% to 21cents per share. Investors were indicated by the Cisco during its conference call that sales would grow only modestly in the current April quarter of year 2005.

Network Appliance plans to take its place alongside EMC to take up share from computer vendors like Hewlett-Packard and Sun Microsystems for its growth strategy. A sharp revenue ramp might normally give a company like NetApp the operating leverage to fatten its profit margins and grow into its high price-earnings multiple.

A recent favorable US tariff decision against its South Korean price rival Hynix, plus steady investment in modernized production lines, could spell the bottom of Micron's share price slide.

EMC (Hopkinton, MA) is fighting to regain data storage market share lost to Hitachi Data Systems, Seagate, and other competitors. The stock price prospects for each firm are also analyzed.

Pharmacy plans that focus on mail-order and generic drugs should prosper as health care spending continues its rise. Three stocks are analyzed: AdvancePCS, Caremark, and Express Scripts.

Exterran Holdings's share has risen to 25 from 13 but their surplus compressors have clobbered the company's manufacturing backlog. The company had $3.2 billion in revenue as of June 2009 but reported $1.6 billion in losses.

First Solar reported a rise in sales to $545 million for the quarter ended June 2009 due to a rise in accruals. The company reported $84 million in revenue coming from a reclassification of its investment in a solar energy project as debt, but its free cash flow is negative.

The shares of Green Mountain Coffee Roasters Inc. have hit an all-time high of $87 and its valuation of 60-times earnings forecast for the current fiscal year ending September 2009 warrants a closer look. Their earnings were boosted by an 85 percent jump in the royalties but a significant portion of those royalty-generating sales were to Green Mountain itself.

The upside in the shares of Intuitive Surgical has been reduced due to the robotic surgery company's lower sales growth. The shares, which are trading at $101.80 each, may rise to $122, lower than other price targets.

The shares of Shire Limited could fall by another 15 to 20 percent if they can't retain their market share in the market for attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder treatments (ADHD). The patent for Shire's ADHD treatment drug called Adderall XR is set to expire on April 1, 2009 which represents $1 billion of the company's $2.4 billion earnings in 2007.

The initial public offering (IPO) of Sprott Inc., a major shareholder of Timminco, was not received well, with its shares falling to 9.70 Canadian dollars from the IPO price of $10. Timminco, a smelter that produces silicon for solar cells, reported 35 million Canadian dollars in sales but zero profits, putting its one billion Canadian dollar profit forecast in doubt.

The shares of Canadian metal-smelting company Timminco are not supported by the company's fundamentals, which indicate slumping sales and increasing net losses. The company claims that it can produce silicon for solar cells for a lower cost than other companies, fueling the stock's appreciation.

Jos. A. Bank's inventory has increased sharply raising questions about the company's growth prospects. The company's shares have already dropped significantly from 46 to 23 and could still continue its slide. The company is also battling a class action suit where plaintiffs allege that the Bank inventories were bloated.

The shares of Cisco Systems are priced reasonably again after falling back to around $24. The company reported an increase of 16.5 percent in their revenues for the fiscal second quarter but the company expects only 10 percent for the April quarter.

LDK Solar shares dropped to $45 each after investors were dissatisfied with the company's lower gross margins, which were at 30.8% as of September 2007. The shares previously jumped to $75 a share on the back of a 60% rise in quarterly revenues.

Doubt over the merit of the forecast of Cepheid Inc. about its future sales and profits and huge market size for its products is discussed.

The plans of Medtronic Inc., the leading manufacturer of implantable defibrillators, to facilitate the use of wireless telemetry by physicians for treating heart patients, are described. The increase in the prices of the company's shares is discussed.

Impact of the growth of global positioning system devices on the revenue of SiRF Technology Holdings, a GPS chip maker, is discussed.

The shares of imaging chip maker OmniVision Technologies seem very cheap in terms of the huge demand for the image-sensor chips, but yet the share prices of OmniVision have slid many times since May 2006. Skeptics over the feasibility of the predicted gross earnings of the company and its unsatisfactory deals with several of its manufacturing partners and suppliers are undermining investor confidence.

Micron's growing revenues from sales of products like image sensors for cellphone cameras, and the flash-memory chips used in music player like the Apple nano iPod other than its tradition DRAMs is reported. Toward the end of 2006, Micron plans to enter the NAND flash business in a big way through a joint venture with Intel called IM Flash which would add nearly $1 billion in NAND revenue in the August 2007 fiscal year.

Sun Microsystem's sales of large server computers are affected due to the freely available software known as Linux. Brent Thill, Prudential Equity Group analyst predicts that within 3 to 5 years Linux would have most of the applications seen in the Microsoft, which would result in a dent in the Microsoft's pricing.

Quantum Fuel System Technologies Worldwide is a California-based company selling light weight fuel tanks and fuel lines for vehicles that burn natural gas or hydrogen with its oil prices sharply rising from just a few dollars to 8. However, Quantum was not able to reap net profits on its $19 million revenues for the nine months ended on January 2004 due to the expensive price of oil, used to make hydrogen, resulting in an increase in the price of hydrogen.

SanDisk company informed the investors that there are large growth opportunities for the firm's flash memory products despite its falling price of shares due to the arrival of multimedia cell phones, featuring high-resolution still cameras, video and MP3. If the company can leverage its operating profits on the strong growth of flash sales, it might grow dollar profits fast enough to reclaim investors' trust and a premium of earnings multiple.

Growing demand for Intel's market-leading Pentium microprocessors has moved the company to project an 11% increase for third-quarter sales. Investors welcomed the news by bidding Intel's share price up a dollar, or nearly 4%, to more than 27 per share.

The AMD Opteron is a 64-bit processor for large systems that does not require extensive software revision like Intel's Itanium. Opteron should stem AMD's sales slump and help its share price.

New Securities and Exchange Commission Regulation G sharply curbs the use of pro-forma earnings reports as mandated in the Sarbanes-Oxley corporate reform act. Full disclosure of pro-forma assumptions must be supplemented by a written comparison of such results with results obtained with mainstream GAAP accounting standards.

An investment analysts' conference at New York's Waldorf-Astoria focused on the video game sector, thriving amid a general technology downturn. Market share and pricing forecasts for industry leaders Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo are discussed. Accounting rules will likely shave the stock prices of computer services firms, such as Perot Systems. Positive third-quarter earnings boosted Verizon's share price 40%, to 38.