Before the bell: AAPL, MS, CSCO, RHT, JBL, MU, CPB ...

Posted Dec 21st 2007 8:35AM by Melly Alazraki
Filed under: Before the Bell, Earnings Reports, Analyst Reports, Deals, Microsoft (MSFT), Apple Inc (AAPL), Cisco Systems (CSCO), Dell (DELL), International Business Machines (IBM), Campbell Soup (CPB), Merrill Lynch (MER), Morgan Stanley (MS), Red Hat Inc (RHT), Bear Stearns Cos (BSC)

Before the bell: Futures up after RIM reports, Merrill news

With Macworld is a couple of weeks away, speculation grows as to what Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) CEO Steve Jobs could introduce this year, given his tradition of showcasing new products during the Expo. It seems the agreement among analysts and Apple enthusiast is on a slimmed-down laptop to capitalize on the MacBook success, as well as a higher-capacity model of the iPhone.

The Wall Street Journal has reported that "U.S. regulators, led by the Securities and Exchange Commission, are probing how financial firms priced mortgage securities on their books and whether they should have told investors earlier about the declining value of those securities." Among the companies the SEC is probing is UBS AG (NYSE: UBS) and Morgan Stanley (NYSE: MS). Merrill Lynch & Co Inc (NYSE: MER) and Bear Stearns Co Inc (NYSE: BSC) have already been reported to be under investigation.

Cisco Systems Inc. (NASDQ: CSCO) changed its management structure where a "development council" composed of several executives will replace Cisco Systems Inc. CEO heir-apparent Charles Giancarlo, who has resigned.

Micron Technology (NYSE: MU) is down 3.5% in premarket trading after it reported a quarterly loss of $262 million.
Red Hat (NYSE: RHT) is trading up 6.4% in premarket trading after reporting third-quarter net income rose 36% to $21.2 million, or 10 cents a share and naming new CEO.
Jabil Circuit Inc. (NYSE: JBL) is down nearly 9% in premarket trading after reporting a first-quarter profit of $62 million, or 30 cents a share, below analysts' expectation.

Campbell Soup (NYSE: CPB) is selling its Godiva Chocolatier unit to Turkey's Yildiz for $850 million.

Dell Inc. (NASDAQ: DELL) said Friday it has agreed to acquire privately held technology consulting company, Networked Storage Co. Terms were not disclosed.
IBM (NYSE: IBM) said Friday it will buy Solid Information Technology, a privately held data retrieval company to add real-time data access capability to its database and information management offerings. Terms were not disclosed.
Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ: MSFT) announced a regular quarterly dividend of 11 cents per share.

Tags: aapl, bsc, cpb, csco, dell, ibm, inthenews, jbl, mer, ms, msft, mu, rht, ubs