Tech Vendors Reach Dizzying Heights in Q1 On Wall Street

The Best (And Worst) Tech Stocks of Q1

If you invested in technology vendor stocks in the first quarter, congratulations are in order. Thirty-four of 35 companies tracked by CRN enjoyed share-price increases during that period and nearly half increased by more than 20 percent. By comparison, the Dow Jones increased 8.1 percent and Nasdaq increased 19.7 percent during the first quarter. Here's a look at the best and worst vendor stocks.

Hewlett-Packard

Mar. 30, 2012: $23.83
Dec. 31, 2011: $25.76
Change: -7.5%

HP has the dubious distinction of being the only vendor on this list to see its share price drop in the first quarter. The company had a rocky first full fiscal quarter under Meg Whitman, who outlined a slew of cost-cutting moves.

Lexmark International

Mar. 30, 2012: $33.24
Dec. 31, 2011: $33.07
Change: 0.5%

Lexmark shares traded above $37 for much of February, but slowly lost their value in March. On March 5, the company acquired data capture specialist Brainware.

Xerox

Mar. 30, 2012: $8.07
Dec. 31, 2011: $7.96
Change: 1.4%

Xerox crossed the $8 mark on Feb. 14 but didn't move much higher than that the rest of the quarter. The company offered a 4.3-cent dividend in late March and introduced new IaaS, cloud and backup disaster recovery services to VARs.

Quantum

Mar. 30, 2012: $2.62
Dec. 31, 2011: $2.40
Change: 9.2%

Quantum shares increased more than 10 percent on Feb. 15 to a quarter-high close of $2.78 after reporting strong earnings. They fell to $2.35 a couple weeks later before rebounding again by the end of the quarter. It's a marked improvement for the company compared to 2011, when Quantum shares lost more than a third of their value.

Motorola Solutions

Mar. 30, 2012: $50.83
Dec. 31, 2011: $46.29
Change: 9.8%

Motorola shares climbed past the $50 mark on March 13, a day the company also issued a 22-cent-per share dividend. Meanwhile, the company said last January it plans to get more granular with specialized partners and app developers.

Panasonic

Mar. 30, 2012: $9.25
Dec. 31, 2011: $8.39
Change: 10.3%

Panasonic shares enjoyed a slow, steady climb in the first quarter to close 10 percent higher since the end of 2011. Early in the quarter, the company took a jab at Apple, saying its Toughpads can go places the iPad cannot.

Brocade Communications

Mar. 30, 2012: $5.73
Dec. 31, 2011: $5.19
Change: 10.4%

Shares of Brocade traded between $5.50 and $6 for almost the whole first quarter. Meanwhile, the company said 2012 would be the "year of the channel" for the company in early March, when it announced new partner incentives .

Juniper Networks

Mar. 30, 2012: $22.88
Dec. 31, 2011: $20.41
Change: 12.1%

If the quarter ended in February, Juniper would have been much higher on this list. The company's shares closed at $23.74 Feb. 28, but fell almost $1 the next day and $2 more by mid-March before climbing back up the last two weeks of the quarter.

The networking giant acquired Mykonos in the quarter.

Websense

Mar. 30, 2012: $21.09
Dec. 31, 2011: $18.73
Change: 12.6%

Like many companies on this list, Websense's first-quarter performance more than offset its lousy performance on Wall Street in 2011.

Dell

Mar. 30, 2012: $16.60
Dec. 31, 2011: $14.63
Change: 13.5%

A graph of Dell shares in the first quarter would look like a bell curve. The stock traded as high as $18.32 on Feb. 15, while its quarter-end price was closer to its January value. Late in the quarter, Dell announced a new cloud services certification for partners.

IBM

Mar. 30, 2012: $208.65
Dec. 31, 2011: $183.88
Change: 13.5%

IBM shares crossed the $200 plateau in early March and continued to rise. Its $208.65 closing price on March 31 was an all-time high. Meanwhile, channel partner confidence also seems to be at a peak.

Oracle

Mar. 30, 2012: $29.16
Dec. 31, 2011: $25.65
Change: 13.7%

Oracle shares also enjoyed a slow, steady climb in the first quarter, which was punctuated by CEO Larry Ellison's promise that hardware sales would stabilize and grow in fiscal 2013.

Netgear

Mar. 30, 2012: $38.20
Dec. 31, 2011: $33.57
Change: 13.8%

Netgear began the year by announcingnew cloud products and adding services to its roster. Meanwhile, shares spiked to $43.18 on Feb. 3, amid speculation it would beat analysts' financial expectations. Shares quickly fell to $36.45 just 10 days later but regained some momentum toward the end of the quarter.

Intel

Mar. 30, 2012: $28.12
Dec. 31, 2011: $24.25
Change: 16.0%

Like several other companies on this list, Intel enjoyed a gradual stock increase throughout the quarter, crossing the $28 mark the last week of March. Also in late March, the company talked about making sure that partners can extend into new markets.

CommVault Systems

Mar. 30, 2012: $49.64
Dec. 31, 2011: $42.72
Change: 16.4%

CommVault shares jumped $4 per share on Feb. 1 after posting strong financials, and they increased almost another $3 per share over the next couple weeks before falling below the $50 plateau. In February, the company announced performance boosts and mobile capabilities to its Simpana data protection software.

Cisco Systems

Mar. 30, 2012: $21.07
Dec. 31, 2011: $18.08
Change: 16.5%

Cisco shares crossed the $21 mark on the last day of the quarter for the first time since October 2010. Meanwhile, the company said its restructuring paid off in the second fiscal quarter.

QLogic

Mar. 30, 2012: $17.76
Dec. 31, 2011: $15.00
Change: 18.4%

QLogic saw most of its share gain in January. The stock gained more than $2 by the end of that month, then remained in the $17-$18 range the rest of the quarter. The company was one of the stocks that got walloped on Wall Street last August, so investors must be happy with the turnaround.

Symantec

Mar. 30, 2012: $18.70
Dec. 31, 2011: $15.65
Change: 19.5%

Symantec saved its best for last in the first quarter. Its $18.70 closing price on March 30 was the highest close of the quarter. Also during the quarter, Symantec channel chief Randy Cochran suddenly resigned, leaving some partners to be cautious.

Check Point Software Technologies

Mar. 30, 2012: $63.84
Dec. 31, 2011: $52.54
Change: 21.5%

Check Point shares jumped almost $4 on Jan. 17, after reporting strong quarterly results, and then continued to rise the rest of the quarter.

NetApp

Mar. 30, 2012: $44.77
Dec. 31, 2011: $36.27
Change: 23.4%

NetApp had not one, but two spikes in the first quarter. Shares jumped almost $3 per share on Jan. 19 and then had a similar jump on Feb. 16. It gained almost another $3 in March. Meanwhile, NetApp laid out its view on converged storage-network-server infrastructure at an Avnet-Cisco Executive Summit.

NetSuite

Mar. 30, 2012: $50.29
Dec. 31, 2011: $40.55
Change: 24.0%

Like many tech companies in the first quarter, NetSuite's stock got a boost after it reported strong earnings. Shares increased more than $3 on Feb. 3. Also like other companies, NetSuite shares kept climbing through the quarter. The company also credited channel partners with its 2011 growth.

Microsoft

Mar. 30, 2012: $32.26
Dec. 31, 2011: $25.96
Change: 24.3%

Microsoft shares closed at $32.95 on March 16, its best close since early 2008. It was even good news for the company's flagship browser product, Internet Explorer, which saw market share gains.

Citrix Systems

Mar. 30, 2012: $78.91
Dec. 31, 2011: $60.72
Change: 30.0%

Citrix shares increased almost $8 in early March and an impressive 30 percent for the first quarter. That more than offset the decline the company's stock had in 2011.

SAP

Mar. 30, 2012: $69.82
Dec. 31, 2011: $52.95
Change: 31.9%

SAP launched the multi-tenant version of its Business One software for VARs in March. Meanwhile, the software giant's stock increased nearly $17 in the quarter, and briefly crossed the $70 plateau in late march.

Western Digital

Mar. 30, 2012: $41.39
Dec. 31, 2011: $30.95
Change: 33.7%

Western Digital rolled out its myWD partner program through distributors in March and saw shares increased by one-third during the first quarter.

CA Technologies

Mar. 30, 2012: $27.56
Dec. 31, 2011: $20.22
Change: 36.3%

As CA Technologies puts together its pieces of its cloud strategy, investors are busy buying CA stock. Shares jumped 10 percent on Jan. 19 after strong earnings and continued to swell through the first quarter.

Lenovo Group

Mar. 30, 2012: $17.98
Dec. 31, 2011: $13.15
Change: 36.7%

Lenovo shares increased nearly 37 percent in the quarter, a period in which the company laid out plans to educate solution providers on its tablet offerings.

VMware

Mar. 30, 2012: $114.71
Dec. 31, 2011: $83.19
Change: 37.9%

VMWare shares crossed the $100 mark for the first time since last July, but its high of $115.19 was the best mark since November 2007 for the company. In February, the company held its Partner Exchange conference .

EMC

Mar. 30, 2012: $29.88
Dec. 31, 2011: $21.54
Change: 38.7%

EMC's quarter-end closing price of $29.88 was its highest mark in years. Meanwhile, the company unveiled a new collaboration application, Chorus, for managing its Greenplum big data technology.

FalconStor

Mar. 30, 2012: $3.74
Dec. 31, 2011: $2.58
Change: 38.3%

FalconStor shares were still trading below $3 in early March, then jumped nearly 20 percent in two days in the middle of the month after announcing its earnings. This month, the disk-based protection vendor hired former CA veteran Gary Quinn as vice president of North American sales.

Red Hat

Mar. 30, 2012: $59.89
Dec. 31, 2011: $41.29
Change: 45.0%

Red Hat shares had already enjoyed a solid quarter when they jumped $10 per share on March 29 after it announced it beat fourth-quarter estimates and topped $1 billion in sales for the first time. Earlier in the quarter, Red Hat extended its cloud offerings for Amazon Web Services.

Apple

Mar. 30, 2012: $599.55
Dec. 31, 2011: $405.00
Change: 48.0%

Dizzying heights are nothing new to Apple's stock, but almost $200 in a quarter? The company's shares have even gained another $25 in the first week of April. Oh, yeah, Apple also introduced the latest version of its iPad tablet this quarter.

Advanced Micro Devices

Mar. 30, 2012: $8.02
Dec. 31, 2011: $5.40
Change: 48.5%

AMD had one of the worst vendor stocks in 2011, but rebounded in a big way in the first quarter of 2012, finishing with the third best performance of 35 companies tracked by CRN.

Meanwhile, the company announced a restructuring of its system on a chip roadmap in the first quarter.

Salesforce.com

Mar. 30, 2012: $154.51
Dec. 31, 2011: $101.46
Change: 52.3%

Salesforce.com's big jump came Feb. 24 when shares increased $12. Of course, when your stock goes up $53 in the quarter, you enjoy lots of little jumps along the way as well. The company recently expanded its social enterprise presence with Rypple, a social performance management program.

Seagate Technology

Mar. 30, 2012: $26.96
Dec. 31, 2011: $16.40
Change: 64.4%

Seagate earns the honor of top performing tech vendor stock for the first quarter, gaining a whopping 64.4 percent increase in value. Shares jumped more than $4 on Feb. 1 and had peaked at $28.07 in late March before coming down a bit. Seagate shares spiked even after it said hard drive shipments were down 4 percent in the fourth quarter. But Seagate's shortfall resulting from the Thailand floods was rather limited, as the company's relatively few assembly lines there were not as impacted.