20:52 / 11.04.2005
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komentarz (2) | W ktora strone wieje wiatr pieniedzy
Taki bardzo ciekawy artykul ukazal sie w dzisiejszym Mercury News. Wielkie korporacje
odnotowaly bardzo duzy dochod w ciagu ostatnich paru lat ale... nic z tego nie wynika dla lokalnej gospodarki, bo nie inwestuja pieniedzy ino wsadzaja spowrotem do banku... Przytaczam wiekszy kawalek, bo warto przeczytac... przynajmniej tym, ktorzy w branzy komputerowej i pokrewnej robia.
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LITTLE TRICKLE-DOWN EFFECT FROM GUN-SHY TECH COMPANIES
By Chris O'Brien
Mercury News
In 2004, Silicon Valley's 150 largest companies made more money than
ever --
profits were up 169 percent from the year before.
So why didn't it feel like a boom year?
Because for the most part, companies aren't hiring locally. They're
simply
banking the cash.
During the dot-com bust, companies learned to sell more with fewer
people.
At the same time, demand for tech products has picked up, along with
revenue. The result: The 10 Silicon Valley companies with the most cash
on
hand increased their stashes from a total of billion in 1997 to
billion in 2005.
Many of these companies are building giant nest eggs as insurance
against an
uncertain future. When they open their checkbooks, it's often to buy
back
stock or acquire other companies. And if they do hire, it's usually
outside
Silicon Valley.
Consider Oracle of Redwood Shores. Revenue rose 11 percent last year,
and
profit 12 percent. The company finished the year by paying .6
billion in
cash for rival PeopleSoft. Then it started this year by cutting 5,000
jobs
from the combined companies.
Profits up 169%
Companies in the Silicon Valley 150 posted 6.3 billion in revenue
last
year, up 14 percent from 2003. Profits over that year went up 169
percent to
.4 billion.
However, hiring was mixed. This year's top companies increased their
payrolls by 3.6 percent or 29,175 jobs. But that's still 3,040 fewer
jobs
than last year's top companies had. And much of the hiring simply isn't
happening here.
Perhaps no company better epitomizes the priorities of this new era
than
Cisco Systems.
During the boom, the San Jose company hired trucks to drive around
towns
with its Web site on billboards, begging: ``Talk to us at Cisco.''
But with the bust, Cisco fired thousands of employees. Chief Executive
John
Chambers vowed not to hire until revenue per employee reached 0,000
again, a target Cisco missed by a hair last year.
As Cisco cut costs, the cash rolled in. The cash on its balance sheet
jumped
from .2 billion in 1997 to .3 billion in 2003. The company spent
.9
billion buying back its stock between 2001 and 2004. And it spent more
than
.2 billion acquiring 12 companies in three years.
Yet its workforce in Silicon Valley has remained flat the past two
years at
13,000, according to a Cisco spokeswoman. And Cisco's once-ambitious
plans
to build a campus in Coyote Valley and hire tens of thousands of new
employees remain on ice.
Edy Unthank, 55, of San Jose, is one of the employees laid off from
Cisco in
2002. Unthank, who worked in marketing, has been getting by on savings
and
contract work.
``For the first couple years, I figured it was slow and it'll turn
around,''
Unthank said. ``But I still see companies laying people off.''
But Cisco's investors are smiling.
``We really love what Cisco is doing,'' said Brad Slingerlend, head of
technology research for Janus, a mutual fund company.
Companies say they are obliged to do their best for shareholders and
use
their cash accordingly. And economists say the valley needs high
productivity to compete with low-cost places like India and China.
``In the long term, that's the only way we can remain competitive,''
said
Doug Henton, president of Collaborative Economics in Mountain View.
It's a different story for workers. Santa Clara County posted its third
straight year of job losses in 2004.
``They don't need more people to do the work,'' said John Challenger,
CEO of
job placement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas. ``Companies have found
that
they can fill their order flow with the people they have.''
Explosion of cash
Higher revenue and lower expenses have created an explosion of cash on
the
SV 150's balance sheets. From 1997 to 2005, cash at Hewlett-Packard
alone
jumped from .7 billion to .6 billion. Cash at Oracle jumped from
.2
billion to .4 billion.
``Companies have nowhere to put the money,'' said Howard Silverblatt, a
market equity analyst with Standard & Poor's.
In some cases, analysts believe companies won't spend because they
remain
shell-shocked from the downturn.
``A lot of them are taking that money and holding it as a rainy-day
fund,''
said Mark Kajita, vice president for investment management at Baker
Boyer
National Bank in Walla Walla, Wash. ``We have some of the most
efficient
corporations right now in the history of America.''
Investors have begun urging companies to figure out a way to use their
cash.
One favorite strategy is buying back stock. In 2004, 59 valley firms
announced buybacks, up from 32 in 2003.
While dividends remain rare in tech, they, too, are increasing. Nine
tech
companies in the S&P 500 have announced dividends.
``Investors are telling them if you don't have something to do with
that
money, then give it back to us,'' analyst Silverblatt said.
That sentiment took its most extreme form in recent years at a small
Santa
Clara semiconductor company called Celeritek.
Celeritek's cash on hand grew from million in 2002 to .9 million
in
2003.
That year, a group of shareholders seized control of the board through
a
proxy fight. The new board then issued two cash dividends in 2004
totaling
.50 a share.
Unfortunately, Silicon Valley workers barely feel the impact of
dividends or
buybacks.
``Neither one of those really help the local economy,'' said Steve
Cochrane
of Economy.com.
Mergers on rise
Companies are also using cash to buy other companies. Among the
valley's top
24 companies, the number of mergers and acquisitions rose from 38 worth
.7
billion in 2002 to 57 worth .4 billion in 2004, according to The 451
Group, a high-technology research firm. The number of those deals paid
for
in cash jumped from 64 percent to 81 percent.
Oracle is one company on a shopping spree.
Besides its recent acquisition of PeopleSoft, the company also won a
bidding
war for Retek by paying 9 million in cash.
But most of Oracle's expansion is overseas, where tech spending is
growing
faster than in the United States. From May 2003 to May 2004, Oracle
added
1,008 jobs in all, according to a securities filing. But it cut 1,309
jobs
in the United States and added 2,317 jobs overseas.
``The big companies are increasingly spreading their workforce around
the
country and around the world,'' Cochrane said. ``They may be growing,
but
the true impact may be felt in Portland or overseas.''
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