Jeff Henley, the former CFO of software giant Oracle and now the chairman of its board is making a big $50 million gift to the University of California at Santa Barbara’s Institute for Energy Efficiency. The institute is studying ways to make things like light bulbs that are 20 times more efficient than the ones we use now, and also ways to make computers, which are pretty good at hogging power, more efficient and fast. They’re working with nanomaterials to make batteries better, pushing the edges on research into fuel cells. Of the $50 million full gift, $30 million will pay for a building to be called Henley Hall, which the university is describing as its base of operations, and faculty recruitment. The rest will go directly to the College of Engineering to support its priorities. The Institute for Energy Efficiency was created two years ago and already has 50 faculty, five of them Nobel Prize Winners, and 120 graduate and postdoc students collaborating on energy-efficient technologies. Henley was CFO at Oracle from 1991 until 2004 at which point we was elected chairman of the board. He graduated from UC Santa Barbara with an engineering degree in 1966. He’s also giving this year’s commencement address at the school.
Read MoreToday’s results from Cisco Systems came in almost exactly on target with the consensus of Wall Street analysts, which, given how bad things were one and two years ago, amounts to progress. But after a major company-wide restructuring and the divestiture of several non-core businesses, CEO John Chambers (pictured here at D5) is finding that turning the massive Cisco ship around — something he seemed to have started two quarters ago, and which continued last quarter, isn’t coming easy. There’s the global economy to worry about. All that messy complicated news coming out of Europe about sovereign debt and cuts in government spending around the world has a way of eating into technology budgets both at Cisco’s government customers and at its large enterprise customers. Cisco’s guidance for the quarter ending in July was especially worrisome for investors, who promptly sent Cisco’s share price plummeting by more than 8 percent in after-hours trading. Cisco called for revenue to grow between 2 percent and 5 percent, which works out to sales in the range of $11.4 billion to $11.8 billion, well off the consensus forecast of $12 billion. Guidance on earnings was equally disappointing. At 44 cents to 46 cents a share, the midpoint lags the consensus by two cents. So what’s going on? I asked Chambers about it in a phone interview with AllThingD held after the conclusion of Cisco’s conference call with analysts. AllThingsD: John, the markets clearly don’t like very much what they saw today. So, from a high level, what happened — good, bad and indifferent — with this quarter? Chambers: The first thing from a high level is that we’re executing pretty well on our vision and strategy, and we did exactly what we said we would do. We guided for growth of 5 percent to 7 percent for the year and for the first nine months we’re at 7.5 percent [revenue].
Read MoreNetworking giant Cisco systems will report quarterly earnings today after the markets close in New York, and the pressure will be on CEO John Chambers to show that the changes made as a result of the company-wide restructuring he led last year — the one that made Cisco look like it was fitting back in its skinny jeans — are taking permanent hold. The question is whether or not it can start delivering some fatter profits. The consensus of Wall Street analysts has Cisco reporting sales of $11.6 billion in sales and reporting 47 cents per share of earnings. The big question, writes analyst Sanjiv Wadwani of Stifel Nicolaus in a note to clients on May 7, will be around margins. Last quarter, Cisco gave guidance for gross margins — a key measure of profitability — with a narrow range of 61.5 to 62 percent, while operating margins were guided to the range of 27-28 percent. Wadwani thinks that guidance may stand up as pressure on Cisco’s supply chain from the Thailand flooding, favorable pricing on switching products and a less-aggressive posture from Hewlett-Packard’s networking arm, are all providing a little breeze at Cisco’s back. Yet one product in Cisco’s stable may, in success me hurting margins overall: Cisco’s Unified Computing and Servers line (UCS) tends carry a lower gross margin, Wadwani writes, and so may eat into its overall gross margin. The product line — which combines computing, storage and networking into a single product offered to the corporate and service provide data centers — had 10,000 customers worldwide last quarter , and was showing “positive momentum” in Wadwani’s checks. “Overall, we believe that there is intense focus on margins internally, which should allow the company to report an in line margin quarter,” Wadwani wrote. Cisco has been operating “with more confidence and aggressiveness with its refreshed product line, making it tougher for competitors,” writes Shaw Wu of Sterne Agee in a note to clients issued May 7, and has been a lot of reason that Juniper and Alcatel-Lucent have missed expectations recently. He expects Cisco to give guidance for the quarter ending in July that’s more or less in line with consensus expectations. He also sees Cisco benefiting from Apple’s next iPhone: “We believe this could mark the fourth quarter in a row where Cisco does not guide down expectations further building investor confidence. We see Cisco benefiting in the second half of 2012 from the continued build-out of 4G LTE wireless infrastructure ahead of the iPhone 5 refresh likely in the September-October time frame.” I’ll be covering Cisco’s earnings announcement later today. Having dedicated songs to CEO John Chambers two quarters in a row now, I’m going to have to scramble to see what song fits today’s results, because I just know he’s going to ask.
Read MoreComcast revealed last week that its NBCUniversal group, which owns broadcasters including NBC and Telemundo and cable networks from USA to Bravo, would sell off its 15.8 percent stake in A+E Networks , a cable network company that brings in some $3.1 billion annually from holdings including History and A&E. Industry sources said that the eventual sale, revealed in an SEC filing, would bring NBCU some ready cash, making it a good asset to liquidate. NBCU's stake in the property could come to $2 billion, money that could be used to offset NBCU's substantial debt. NBCU was required to contribute some $9.1 billion toward Comcast's purchase of a controlling interest in NBCU. A controlling interest is all Comcast has, though. For Comcast to wholly own NBCU, NBCU would first have to pay off its debts, which include some $5.1 billion in debt sold to raise money for the sale to Comcast. On March 26, NBCU exercised an option in its contract with A+E that requires A+E Networks to redeem a substantial portion of NBCU’s equity interest in A+E. The transaction is scheduled to close during the second half of 2012, when the parties involved will have negotiated the value of the stake. Hearst and Disney are the other two partners in the split, and both have 42.1 percent stakes in the enterprise, giving either the ability to overrule NBCU when it comes to running the joint venture.
Read MoreLast August, Sandra Kurtzig — one of Silicon Valley’s first female chief executives and the first one to take a technology company public — emerged from retirement with $10.5 million in funding and a new start-up: Kenandy, a company based in Redwood City, Calif., whose software is designed to manage manufacturing processes from the cloud. Less than nine months later, she’s expanding, VentureWire has learned, adding financials and order management to Kenandy’s core software, changing the software’s name to Social ERP (for Enterprise Resource Planning) and targeting customers that make products. Read the rest of this post on the original site »
Read MoreChipmaker Intel finally has a win to call its own in the smartphone market. Earlier this week, it entered into a partnership with the Indian handset maker Lava to supply chips for the Xolo handset. And, naturally, Intel CEO Paul Otellini had one to show off during an appearance on CNBC yesterday. He calls it “the highest-performing handset on the market, as far as we can tell.” It has taken a few years to get to this point, but there’s a two-billion-unit addressable market to be carved out. In the video below, Otellini also talks about the competitive threat — though he seems not to consider it much of a threat at all — coming from Microsoft’s Windows 8 and its variant that will support chips running the ARM architecture. How much market share does he expect to lose? None. Intel’s chips can offer the same performance and power efficiency that ARM chips do, while being 100 percent compatible with existing PC software. See the full interview below:
Read MoreInternational Business Machines Corp.’s board approved a 13 percent dividend increase and authorized an additional $7 billion to buy back shares as the company looks to return more of its rising cash levels to shareholders. The quarterly dividend increase, to 85 cents a share from 75 cents, marks the 17th year in a row that IBM has increased its payout. It will cost the company roughly $117.4 million more per quarter and gives IBM a dividend yield of 1.7 percent, based on current stock prices. Read the rest of this post on the original site »
Read MoreARM Holdings on Tuesday posted a strong increase in first-quarter revenue and profit, driven by demand for its microchip designs, and said annual revenue will be in line with market expectations. ARM produces microchip blueprints found in most mobile phones, including Apple Inc.’s iPhone, as well as tablets, computers, household goods and even cars. Read the rest of this post on the original site »
Read MoreAdvanced Micro Devices Inc. swung to a first-quarter loss as the chip maker continued to bear costs related to its spun-off foundry business, though its core earnings improved. The company has weathered a series of problems lately, particularly chip shortages stemming from manufacturing problems at Globalfoundries, the company formed by the spinoff of AMD’s manufacturing operations. AMD last month restructured its relationship with Globalfoundries, triggering a $703 million charge for AMD but giving it more freedom to make some of its products elsewhere. AMD also agreed to give up its remaining 8.8 percent stake in the manufacturer. Read the rest of this post on the original site »
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