No real surprises in yesterday’s crop of quarterly earnings reports – see Company Results – and Lotus Development Corp’s figures were every bit as bad as expected while the world waits with increasing impatience for 1-2-3 Release 3. Most striking perhaps is Apple Computer Inc, showing that while its over stocking of overpriced memory chips hurt margins badly, its miscalculation in the configurations of the Macintosh it put out did nothing to dampen its soaraway sales – at this rate it will be close to a $6,000m company in the year to September 30 – and its fiscal second quarter is usually the weakest in its year. Seagate Technology Inc is laboriously crawling back to profitability after its inventory embarrassment, and Chips & Technologies Inc, on its way to sales of $250m or so for the year, shows that there is big money to be made these days in the business of making things easy for manufacturers wanting to clone IBM’s personal computer line. At 11.45 yesterday morning, Wall Street was up 27 points, and the technology sector was bubbling with Apple up $1 at $40.25 on those figures, Lotus up $1 at $22.25 with relief the figures weren’t worse, Microsoft $1.25 at $52.75 in sympathy, Chips & Tech 25 cents up at $17.5, and IBM up $1.125 at $112.50.
