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[marketmaven]

Bear Stearns Now Bearish on IT Hardware

Bear Stearns & Co.
383 Madison Ave.
New York, NY 10179
(Tel) [phone]

APRIL 15 -- Given clear signs of weakness in enterprise spending for information technology (IT) hardware along with deterioration in leading indicators for the group, we are lowering our sector rating to Market Underweight from Market Weight and lowering estimates and price targets/fair values for the companies we follow.

These include: International Business Machines, EMC, Dell, Network Appliance, Lexmark International, Hewlett-Packard, QLogic, Seagate Technology, Sun Microsystems, and Research In Motion Limited.

With the reduction in price targets, we are also lowering our rating on Network Appliance to Peer Perform from Outperform.

As we noted recently, we have seen weakness in the five component leading indicators, owing to weaker consumer confidence along with higher oil prices and interest rates.

-- Andrew J. Neff