Markets and Industry Roundup - week ending April 24, 2009

Markets Roundup:

• Dow closed above 8,000 after starting the week off badly; NASDAQ ended positive
• Existing home sales for March fell 3.0% month-over-month to an annualized rate of 4.57 million as against an expectation of 4.65 million units
• New home sales for March came in at seasonally adjusted annual rate of 356,000, which was better than expected, but down 0.6% from an upwardly revised February data
• March durable goods orders and orders excluding transportation declined 0.8% and 0.6%, respectively; both not as bad as expected
• Government announced the details of its measures used for conducting a series of stress tests at 19 leading U.S. banks. Though actual results from the tests won't be available until May 4, the report acknowledged that most U.S. banking organizations currently have capital levels well in excess of the amounts required to be considered well capitalized. Meanwhile, Fed regulators generally assert that banks should be prepared for the worst.
• Treasury Secretary Geithner spoke before a congressional committee on Tuesday that there was still about $109.6 billion available from the $700 billion rescue package passed last year, and he expects to get at least an additional $25 billion back, bringing the total to $134.6 billion
• ECB President indicated that more rate cuts may be in order for the European economy, though such cuts would come in measures of 25 basis points

Industry Roundup:

• Tech services sector stocks were down 1% during the week
• IBM announced Q1 results – Revenue of $21.7 Bn down 11% from 1Q2008; Net income of $2.3 Bn, or $1.70 a share, compared to $2.32 Bn, or $1.64 a share in 1Q2008
• IBM and Equifax, a provider of information solutions, employment and income verification and human resources BPO services, announced that the companies have signed a contract amendment for IT services in the US, Canada, Spain and the UK. Under the agreement, IBM will provide data centre services including mainframe, midrange server, client service desk, network and business continuity and resiliency services for Equifax's operations
• IBM announced a new services contract to transform and operate Unilever's Human Resources (HR) processes across 19 Latin American countries
• HDFC Bank, one of the largest banks in India, announced an agreement with IBM to build a cost-effective IT framework that will support the bank's business growth. HDFC Bank is the first commercial bank in India to adopt the IBM mainframe & has joined the ranks of the world's top 50 banks that continue to run on System z technology.
• EDS, an HP company, announced a 5-year technology infrastructure outsourcing contract with Mazda Motor Europe. Under the agreement, EDS will consolidate technology from Mazda’s data centers in Willebroek, Belgium, and Leverkusen, Germany, to centralized services in EDS’ data center in Frankfurt, Germany.
• EDS, an HP company, announced a $245 million, 4.5-year agreement with the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, under which EDS will provide system integration & applications modernization services to help increase availability of accurate and complete information so employees can easily monitor the effectiveness of department programs. EDS will create & manage the image capture, database, information storage & server environment where offender information will reside.
• CSC announced the launch of its Federated Identity Management (FIM) offering, a solution designed to enable companies and organizations to establish trusted relationships with business partners & outside parties as part of its Trusted Identity Enterprise Suite, a portfolio of fully integrated, end-to-end identity management solutions.
• CSC announced that it is expanding its industry-leading default management software-as-a-service, EarlyResolution, to include mortgage insurance eligibility requirements from Radian Guaranty of Philadelphia, Penn
• TCS announced its Q4FY09 and full year FY09 results – Revenue of $1.4 Bn for the quarter, down 5.5% Y/Y & 3.4% Q/Q; Full year revenue at $6.02 Bn, up 6.8% Y/Y; EPS for the quarter of $0.27 compared to $0.32 in same quarter last year; Full year EPS at $1.15 compared to $1.28 in the previous year; Board recommend 1:1 bonus
• HCL Tech announced its Q3FY09 results – Revenue of $564.4 million, a growth of 18.2% y/y & 11.3% q/q; EPS at $0.26 compared to $0.50 in JFM’08, a decline of 48% y/y
• Wipro announced its Q4FY09 results – Revenue of $1.05 Bn for the quarter, down 4.9% Q/Q and up 1.4% Y/Y; Net income for the quarter was $201 million
• WNS announced that it made a voluntary prepayment of $5 million on its existing $200 million term loan facility in early April 2009 as permitted under the loan agreement
• Hexaware has formed a global partnership with Greenplum, a provider of database software for the next-generation of data warehousing and large scale analytic processing. While Greenplum will provide the database platform, Hexaware will enable the migration, implementation, upgrades and maintenance services on these platforms