Arnie Berman Companies Quotations

Software companies have a nasty habit of doing so much of their business in the last moments of the quarter that they typically only confess once the quarter has come to a close.

IBM was one of many companies that were good at managing expectations in a period where investors were conditioned to expect earnings surprises.

IBM is one of these big bellwether companies where their business is so solid that in a year like 2001, where everybody was missing, IBM never missed a quarter.

If Oracle, when it came to crunch time in February, had a tough time getting new business, then companies whose crunch time is this week will have a tougher time still.

When stock prices are rising, companies have conviction about stability in the near-term and are more willing to take on the risk of acquiring something,

The outsize rally in the publicly traded debt for companies in this sector suggests that the bond market is sending a signal that the communications equipment sub-sector is particularly attractive at present relative to other technology sub-sectors,

This recent wave of merger news provides some of the strongest evidence yet that companies are willing to do some long-term planning. The kind of deals getting announced not just bolt-on acquisitions but transformational deals,

Consolidation activity is actually a signal that service providers are scared and will start spending money again. Equipment companies are long-term beneficiaries of this and frankly, I think that's what the bond market is smelling out,

Companies in the technology sector are clearly overcapitalized and they are going to be increasingly forced by investors to make decisions about their cash,

You've had a narrow group of tech companies that have been delivering positive and accelerating growth characteristics and money tends to get concentrated in those few companies that are doing that.

In the midst of the mania there were a whole lot of companies that went public that were just pure plays on the willingness of businesses to throw money at new projects, ... Now that a lot of these companies have had difficult times, it makes sense that there would be consolidation.

How these companies sound isn't a terribly good basis for investing right now, ... The fact is that in an incremental cyclical recovery, capital spending will recover at a brisker pace than the overall recovery, and technology spending will recover at a faster rate than capital spending.

The first focus for companies is reducing operating costs, squeezing the most out of your employees and restraining headcount.