[Deborah Marchini, Cnn Anchor:] Well, as you can see from the futures market, the prospects are for a rally on Wall Street at today's open, especially at the Nasdaq market, where we saw big gains yesterday.
[David Haffenreffer, Cnn Anchor:] And our Fred Katayama is standing by there now with a preview. Hi, Fred.
[Fred Katayama, Cnn Correspondent:] Hi there, David. Hi there, Debbie. Indeed, the Nasdaq 100 futures are trading sharply higher and a lot of that is due to Microsoft, which came in with its profits after the closing bell. Well, Microsoft topped Wall Street's reduced estimates by a nickel, coming in with profits of 46 cents a share, those profits amounted to $2.2 billion. The real story here was revenues, revenues grew $150 million more than expected to $5.8 billion. Now, all that excited investors and sent Microsoft shares as high as $55 in after-hours trading. Now, the reason why analysts became bullish was because of Microsoft's forecast. Microsoft said it is not lowering its expectations for the following quarter and that had some analysts forecasting revenues growth of 12 to 13 percent for the December quarter. Microsoft also said it could boost its profit estimates for the fiscal year 2001 by a few cents. Now, driving Microsoft's sales was sales of its new operating system software, Windows 2000. Well, that came sort of as a surprise to analysts, who thought that Windows 2000 wasn't faring as well. Quite a different story, however, at Microsoft's one-time nemesis, the PC-maker Apple Computer. Apple disappointed Wall Street. Its earnings came in one penny shy of Wall Street's already reduced estimates at 30 cents a share. Now, keep in mind, that analysts' previous prior to Apple's warning had expected Apple to report profits of 45 cents a share. Profits for Apple rose 35 percent to $170 million, but the problem is: Apple warned that the next quarter would disappoint, saying that it is lowering its revenues expectations and it is cutting its profits forecast for the fiscal year to $1.10 down from $1.25, and it cut its sales forecast down to $7.5 billion. Now, the problem here at Apple are slowing sales. Slowing sales for its brand-new G4 Cube computers, those are those stylish computers in clear plastic, those are slower than expected. Also there is slowness in Apple's stronghold, its education market. Apple said it sold fewer computers to schools. As a result of this, Apple said it would take action next spring, it plans to put out introduce a cheaper G4 Cube and introduce the next generation Mac OSX operating system next year. David and Debbie, back to you.
[Marchini:] All right, Fred, thanks a lot.