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From Briefing.com: 4:25 pm : Broad-based buying on the back of a strong quarterly report from Cisco and a couple of pleasing economic reports helped stocks net robust gains ahead of tomorrow's potentially pivotal nonfarm payrolls report.

Cisco (CSCO 23.93, +0.64) won support for itself and other large-cap tech issues by posting better-than-expected top and bottom line results for its latest quarter and announcing that it has authorized an additional $10 billion to add to its share repurchase plan, which now stands at roughly $13 billion. Cisco went one step further and issued a solid outlook during its conference call.

Strength among large-cap tech issues helped hand the Nasdaq its best single-session percentage advance since July. Meanwhile, all 30 Dow components advanced and helped the blue chip index close above 10,000 for the first time in two weeks.

The positive tone among this session's participants was also helped by news that third quarter nonfarm productivity surged 9.5% in its preliminary report. That is considerably better than the 6.5% increase that had been widely expected. The surge marked the largest gain in productivity since 2003. It was fueled by the sharp increase in third quarter output and the considerable drop in hours worked. With job conditions still weak, unit labor costs dropped 5.2% in the third quarter. They were expected to fall 4.2%.

The latest initial jobless claims total came in 512,000, down 20,000 from the previous week and not as bad as the 522,000 initial claims that had been widely expected. Continuing claims came in at 5.75 million, which is in stride with what had been forecast and down from 5.82 million in the previous week. That decline, though, is primarily rooted in the trend that unemployed workers are losing their benefits, not finding jobs.

That trend has many market watchers looking ahead to the government's official nonfarm jobs report, which will be released before the opening bell Friday morning. The consensus forecast is that the October unemployment will hit 9.9%, which would be the highest level since 1982.

Despite concerns for that matter, all 10 major sectors finished the session with a gain. Only consumer staples failed to gain more than 1%. Disappointment over the pharmacy benefit management business at CVS Caremark (CVS 28.87, -7.28) overshadowed the company's better-than-expected earnings and additional share repurchase authorization, and caused the stock to drag on the consumer staples sector. Consumer staples, as a group, settled with a relatively modest gain of 0.6%.

Insurers also lagged as participants shunned Allstate (ALL 29.05, -0.57) and Prudential Financial (PRU 44.64, -1.92). Allstate missed the consensus earnings estimate, but Prudential actually posted a positive earnings surprise. Despite their weakness, financials still advanced 2.5%.

Only the consumer discretionary sector had a better gain. It advanced 2.6% in the face of mixed monthly same-store sales results from retailers.

Advancing Sectors: Consumer Discretionary (+2.6%), Financials (+2.5%), Industrials (+2.5%), Materials (+2.4%), Tech (+2.2%), Utilities (+1.7%), Health Care (+1.6%), Energy (+1.6%), Telecom (+1.2%), Consumer Staples (+0.6%)
Declining Sectors: (None)DJ30 +203.82 NASDAQ +49.80 NQ100 +2.4% R2K +3.2% SP400 +2.4% SP500 +20.13 NASDAQ Adv/Vol/Dec 2125/2.23 bln/579 NYSE Adv/Vol/Dec 2495/1.30 bln/542

4:38PM Action Semi promotes Niccolo Chen to Chief Executive Officer (ACTS) 2.50 +0.03 : Co announces that Niccolo Chen, Chief Strategy Officer and General Manager, has been promoted to the position of Chief Executive Officer as Nan-Horng Yeh steps down from this position to pursue personal interests. Mr. Yeh will remain a board member. Additionally, the Board appointed Robin Pan as an independent director.

4:32PM Skyworks beats by $0.02, beats on revs; guides Q1 EPS above consensus, revs above consensus (SWKS) 10.97 +0.64 : Reports Q4 (Sep) earnings of $0.24 per share, excluding non-recurring items, $0.02 better than the First Call consensus of $0.22; revenues fell 1.9% year/year to $228.1 mln vs the $222.3 mln consensus. Co issues upside guidance for Q1, sees EPS of $0.25, excluding non-recurring items, vs. $0.22 consensus; sees Q1 revs of $238-242 mln vs. $230.77 mln consensus. "Skyworks' improving financial performance reflects the growing momentum of the mobile internet and increasing demand for always-on connectivity, particularly given the ubiquity of social networking applications and the proliferation of smart phones, notebooks, netbooks and embedded wireless devices. At a higher level, we believe we are at the beginning of three powerful, multi-year waves including broadband access growth, infrastructure capacity expansion and smart grid implementations. Skyworks is leading the way through analog semiconductor innovation, enabling better battery performance, signal quality and network coverage. As a result, we are entering a new and exciting growth phase which is positioning Skyworks to further differentiate, demonstrate even greater operating leverage, and most importantly, create shareholder value."

4:29PM NVIDIA beats by $0.09, beats on revs; guides Q4 revs above consensus (NVDA) 12.27 +0.29 : Reports Q3 (Oct) earnings of $0.19 per share, excluding non-recurring items, $0.09 better than the First Call consensus of $0.10; revenues rose 0.6% year/year to $903.2 mln vs the $838.1 mln consensus. NVIDIA prelim reports gross margin 41% vs 37.3% consensus. Co issues upside guidance for Q4, sees Q4 revs expected to be up slightly, approximately 2 percent, from the third quarter, equates to $921 mln vs. $868.11 mln consensus. "Revenue was up from a year ago, with improvement in each of our PC, professional solutions and consumer businesses. It's great to see us shipping orders with our Tegra mobile-computing solution, and growing enthusiasm for our Tesla platform for parallel computing in the server and cloud-computing markets."

4:27PM Univ Elec beats by $0.01, beats on revs; guides Q4 EPS below consensus, revs in-line (UEIC) 21.17 +1.10 : Reports Q3 (Sep) earnings of $0.30 per share, $0.01 better than the First Call consensus of $0.29; revenues rose 8.8% year/year to $83.2 mln vs the $80 mln consensus. Co issues guidance for Q4, sees EPS of $0.38-0.42 vs. $0.47 consensus; sees Q4 revs of $81-84 mln vs. $83.57 mln consensus.

4:18PM Atmel misses by $0.02, beats on revs; guides Q4 revs above consensus (ATML) 3.91 +0.12 : Reports Q3 (Sep) loss of $0.04 per share, $0.02 worse than the First Call consensus of ($0.02); revenues rose 11.7% year/year to $317.7 mln vs the $303.6 mln consensus. ATML sees Q4 revs up 3-7% QoQ vs the 4.4% consensus. Co issues upside guidance for Q4, sees Q4 revs of $327.2-340 mln vs. $317.01 mln consensus.

4:14PM Coherent beats by $0.05, beats on revs; guides FY10 revs above consensus (COHR) 26.17 +1.33 : Reports Q4 (Sep) loss of $0.04 per share, $0.05 better than the First Call consensus of ($0.09); revenues fell 24.2% year/year to $107.6 mln vs the $96.5 mln consensus. Co issues upside guidance for FY10, sees FY10 revs of $475-500 mln vs. $456.47 mln consensus. "The fourth quarter lived up to our expectations as a turning point for bookings with double-digit, sequential growth in all four end markets. Microelectronics was particularly robust as service orders responded to higher fab utilization rates, capacity expanded for OLEDs and mobile touch screen displays and additional design wins were secured. The scientific research market was also very active with record total bookings and record unit volumes for our Chameleon(TM) and amplifier product lines due to the strength of the products as well as benefits from U.S. stimulus funds. Finally, a number of our instrumentation and medical OEM customers reverted to annual buying patterns, which signals confidence in their end markets."

4:09PM JDS Uniphase beats by $0.02, beats on revs; guides Q2 revs above consensus (JDSU) 6.07 +0.29 : Reports Q1 (Sep) earnings of $0.04 per share, excluding non-recurring items, $0.02 better than the First Call consensus of $0.02; revenues fell 21.0% year/year to $297.8 mln vs the $291.8 mln consensus. Co issues upside guidance for Q2, sees Q2 revs of $320-345 mln vs. $306.14 mln consensus.

8:48AM SIA forecast 2009 - 2011: moderate growth returning to key segments : The SIA released its annual forecast of global semiconductor sales projecting worldwide sales of $219.7 billion for 2009, a decline of 11.6 percent from the $248.6 billion reported in 2008. The forecast projects that sales will grow by 10.2 percent to $242.1 billion in 2010 and by 8.4 percent to $262.3 billion in 2011. "The new forecast is brighter than our earlier projections, reflecting an improving global economy," said SIA President George Scalise. "Unit sales of key demand drivers - including PCs and cell phones, which together account for about 60 percent of semiconductor demand - have been stronger than previously predicted. We remain cautiously optimistic for the longer term. The current forecast is closely tied to projections of continuing improvement in the worldwide economy."

6:09AM Research In Motion announces its Board has authorized a buyback of up to $ 1.2 bln, or approx 21 mln common shares based on current trading prices (RIMM) 57.61 :

09:32 am EMC Corp: Wedbush discusses VMware-Cisco-EMC Joint Venture: . Wedbush notes EMC, Cisco (CSCO) and VMware (VMW) announced a partnership called the Virtual Computing Environment (VCE) coalition to accelerate and simplify the move towards virtualized cloud based infrastructures. The concept of a tested and qualified solution combined with management commitment to simplify the combined sales, integration and customer support processes should appeal to IT managers, but firm believes that it will not add materially to EMC's top line in CY 2010. Wedbush thinks that the partnership will increase the attach rate of EMC storage to Cisco servers and switches, but will not add significantly to EMC's top line for the next calendar year given that Cisco is new to the server market. Firm does not anticipate material changes to VMware's top line as a result of the partnership.

09:51 am Qualcomm (QCOM)

Qualcomm (QCOM 43.31, +1.71) issued a fourth quarter report that featured lower profit and revenue from the prior year and issued downside guidance for fiscal 2010, but shares of the company are more than 4% higher in the first few minutes of Thursday's trade.

Qualcomm reported fiscal fourth quarter earnings of $0.48 per share. The results include a number of items and may not be comparable to the First Call consensus of $0.52. GAAP net income of $803 million was down 9% year-over-year and up 9% sequentially.

Revenues fell 19.6% year-over-year to $2.68 billion; the consensus expected $2.72 billion.

Qualcomm issued mixed guidance for its fiscal first quarter, saying it sees earnings between $0.54 and $0.58 per share; the consensus stands at $0.56. The company projects revenues between $2.55 billion and $2.75 billion, shy of the current consensus of $2.84 billion.

For fiscal 2010, Qualcomm said it sees earnings of $2.10 to $2.30 per share, below the current consensus of $2.32. Qualcomm's revenue expectations are also a bit short of the consensus, as the company expects $10.5 billion to $11.3 billion while the consensus estimate currently stands at $11.61 billion.

08:32 am Cisco Systems (CSCO)

Cisco Systems (CSCO 23.29) reported fiscal first quarter earnings and revenue that fell from last year, but the results topped Wall Street expectations.

Cisco reported fiscal first quarter earnings of $0.36 per share, $0.05 better than the First Call consensus of $0.31. Non-GAAP net income of $2.1 billion was down 15.3% year-over-year.

Revenues fell 12.6% year-over-year to $9 billion, topping the $8.74 billion consensus estimate.

Gross margins of 65% came in ahead of the 64.3% Street estimate and the company's guidance of 64%.

"Building off what we saw as a clear tipping point in Q4, our Q1 results continued to reflect strong sequential growth trends that meet or exceed expectations during normal economic times," said CEO John Chambers.

Cisco said that its board authorized up to $10 billion in additional purchases of its stock. Including the new authorization, Cisco has approximately $13.1 billion authorized for share buybacks.

Shares of CSCO are about 3.5% higher about an hour ahead of Thursday's opening bell.