Technology Sector at New Yearly Highs

Published on Wednesday, 08 February 2012 13:57 Written by Christopher Lynn

New York, February 8^th (TradersHuddle.com) – Technology stocks were climbing during the session, outperforming the broad market index and helping the tech heavy NASDAQ to edge higher.

The Technology SPDR ETF (NYSE: XLK) was climbing 0.43% to $27.92 after posting a 52-week high of $27.98. The sector was receiving a boost from better than expected earnings from Computer Sciences (NYSE: CSC) and as Apple logged a new all-time high nearly at $475.

Computer Sciences (NYSE: CSC), the IT consulting services provider, was surging to the top of the S&P 500, with shares rallying 18.32% to $31.33 after the company posted better than expected earnings and announced the appointment of a new CEO.

Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) was climbing 1% to $473.52 after the stock logged a new all-time high of $474.22. Chatter regarding the highly anticipated Apple TV set continued. Yesterday, Barclays said that its estimates that the iTV could add $5.40 per share to earnings in fiscal 2013. The stock was also climbing amid the news from Sprint Nextel (NYSE: S) in which the iPhone subsidies pressure results.

Sprint was adding 0.41% to $2.46, trading near the highs of the session after trading as low as $2.27. The company posted a loss of $0.43 per share, including items, $0.07 worse than consensus, on revenues that climbed 5.1% year over year to $8.72 billion, inline with expectations. Sprint said that it had 1.6 million subscription additions in the quarter, the best gain in six years, helped by the iPhone 4S popularity.

Also moving to the upside, NVIDIA (NASDAQ: NVDA), the world leader in visual computing technologies, was jumping 4.1% to $16.4 after the company signed a patent license deal with Rambus (NASDAQ: RMBS). Shares of Rambus were jumping more than 8% also on the news.

Also in the sector, Cisco Systems (NASDAQ: CSCO), the world’s largest networking equipment maker and Dow component, was trading flat in the session ahead of its quarterly results scheduled for after the closing bell. On average analysts expect a profit of $0.43 per share on revenues of $11.63 billion. Last quarter the company posted a 10.3% upside surprise, as it earned $0.43 per share. Previously, Credit Suisse reiterated its Outperform rating and target price of $26 per share, citing that gross and operating margins will likely improve with the company benefiting from cost cutting.