By Rex Crum, MarketWatch
SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- Tech stocks ended the week with
strong gains Friday, as bellwethers such as Apple Inc., Amazon.com
Inc. and EMC Corp. advanced and most of the sector joined in a
broad-market rally fueled by reaction to the latest U.S. employment
figures.
However, online professional-networking company LinkedIn Corp.
(LNKD) failed to join in the rally after it gave a disappointing
revenue forecast late Thursday. LinkedIn's shares gave up almost
13%, to fall to $175.59 after the company said it expects
second-quarter revenue in the range of between $342 million and
$347 million. Analysts surveyed by FactSet forecast LinkedIn to
report $360 million in sales.
Much of the rest of the tech sector, however, climbed after the
Labor Department said the U.S. economy added 165,000 jobs in April.
The U.S. unemployment rate also fell to 7.5%, its lowest level
since December 2008.
Among leading tech stocks, Apple (AAPL) shares rose 1%, to
$449.98, EMC (EMC) gained 2.2% to close at $23.38, Amazon (AMZN)
climbed more than 2% to $258.05 and Seagate Technology (STX) rose
4% to end the week at $41.23 a share.
Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (AMD) shares rose 5.6%, to close at
$3.60. AMD's gains were at least sparked in part by speculation
that the company's chips will play a bigger role in videogame
consoles such as the coming PlayStation 4 from Sony.
Cloud-based storage and backup technology company Carbonite Inc.
(CARB) gave up 2.3%, to fall to $10 a share after posting
better-than-expected quarterly results late Thursday.
Other decliners included Teradata Corp. (TDC), down by 4.5% to
close at $50.65 after the data-management company said late
Thursday that its first-quarter earnings fell by 35% from a year
ago.
Shares of Audience Inc. (ADNC) slumped more than 11% to close at
$13.88. The maker of audio chips for smartphones forecast
second-quarter earnings between 15 cents and 19 cents a share on
revenue in a range of $43 million to $46 million. The forecast
exceeded analysts estimates, but sales are also expected to be
lower than the $47.2 million Audience reported in its first
quarter.
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