By Rex Crum, MarketWatch Apple, Amazon in the red as holiday
retail sales disappoint
SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- Tech stocks were mostly in the
red on Cyber Monday, joining the broader market in a retreat that
appeared to be fueled by reports of negative retail sales following
the Thanksgiving holiday in the U.S.
A report from the National Retail Foundation said total retail
spending between Thanksgiving and Sunday fell 11% from a year ago,
to $50.9 billion, with shoppers spending an average of $380.95 each
during the post-holiday weekend.
Internet-retailing giant Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN) saw its shares
decline by 1.2%, to $334.20 Monday. The company didn't give any
exact sales figures for the weekend, saying only in a press release
that "Black Friday sales of Kindle e-readers and Fire tablets on
Amazon.com have grown significantly year over year."
Amazon also cut the price of its Fire TV set-top box to $69 from
$99 in a one-day Cyber Monday deal.
Among other notable Internet and e-commerce companies, losses
came from eBay Inc. (EBAY), Google Inc. (GOOGL), Netflix Inc.
(NFLX) and Chinese Internet giant Alibaba Group (BABA).
Groupon Inc. (GRPN), which had been up by as much as 4%, was
clinging to a gain of just 3 cents a share at $7.56. Before the
market opened, Bank of America/Merrill Lynch analyst Paul Bieber
raised his rating on the online retailer to buy from neutral, and
lifted his price target on the stock to $9.50 a share from $8.
Bieber cited factors such as a large and growing customer base and
diminishing e-mail headwinds among the reasons for his upgrade.
Apple Inc. (AAPL) was also a notable decliner, falling almost 3%
to $115.63 a share. Morgan Stanley said Monday it is cutting its
holdings in Apple by 1%, and downgraded the entire tech sector to
market weight from overweight. Morgan Stanley said it has been
"extremely difficult" to implement an investment discipline in the
tech sector of late.
The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite Index (RIXF) fell by 62 points,
or 1.3%, to 4,730 and the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index (SOX)
was off by 1.5%.
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