It was just yesterday that demand for notebooks was shown to be higher in 2012 versus 2011 from DRAMeXchange, but now some new data is out from J.P. Morgan that may be a concern to Dell Inc. (NASDAQ: DELL), Hewlett-Packard Co. (NYSE: HPQ), Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ: MSFT) and Intel Corporation (NASDAQ: INTC).
Mark Moskowitz of J.P. Morgan has lowered his PC forecasts significantly, due mostly to the hard disk drive supply interruptions that stem from the flooding in Thailand. Western Digital Corporation (NYSE: WDC) has paid a big price for this already, and both Dell and H-P have chimed in that this is impacting the market.
Moskowitz noted, “We believe that a recovery in the HDD supply will take longer than expected due to components availability issues. As a result, our analysis of the derivative impact on PCs results in our 2012 PC unit growth estimate falling to -1.5%, versus 6.5% previously. This 700 bps negative swing is bigger than what most investors expect and departs from the view of our Asia Technology research colleagues as well. Our revised 4Q11 unit growth is now -5.4% YoY, versus 4.3% previously.”
Most of these stocks were higher yesterday and this is on the heels of S&P’s downgrade of H-P. Dell is down 0.5% and HP is actually up 0.25%. This may sound significant based upon the wording, but maybe it isn’t really as bad as some might have been expecting after all of the negative news from around the world has come out.
JON C. OGG
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