Morning Edition 29.09.00

NEWS It's all about results this morning. The Times fears that technology stocks are in for a hammering for the second time in as many weeks after a severe profit warning from Apple. Apple said fourth-quarter profits will miss Wall Street estimates by a third, with earnings likely to be $110m, rather than the predicted $165m. In after-market trading, shares in Apple fell 31 per cent, wiping $5.4bn off its market value. For a company as prominent in the market as Apple - as seen with Intel last week - such a fall will have a knock-on effect for the sector as a whole, tarred with the tech-stock stigma, and we can expect jittery investors to start shedding shares in everything from ISPs to chip manufacturers - though Microsoft will probably be safe, if not a little smug... The second results story of the day, which was picked up by most of this morning's papers is the news that Freeserve, the UK's largest ISP, yesterday announced its losses for the quarter had doubled to £17.8m over the quarter ended 19 August 2000. Shares in the ISP have halved in price since the failed acquisition of T-Online earlier this year but matters were probably not helped by a sales and marketing spend reported in The Times to have been around the £14m mark - compared with turnover of £14.6m. Such news is unlikely to restore investor confidence... However, it wasn't all doom and gloom as the Guardian brings news of an upturn in results for Sir Alan Sugar's consumer electronics company Amstrad. The company yesterday reported an 85 per cent increase in pre-tax profits - a rise attributed largely to rocketing sales of set top boxes to fuel BskyB's digital television revolution. Amstrad's profits hit £15.4m with revenues up 34 per cent to £126m...