硅谷绩优股为何成了“绩忧股”？

    科技领域增长缓慢的另一个大背景，是许多领域正在经历一系列的颠覆性变革。比如云计算的兴起，促使甲骨文等企业软件巨头必须重新思考自己的发展道路。（甲骨文CEO拉里•埃里森多年以来一直抨击云计算，但他上周三也表示，自己正学着爱上它。）五月思科股票下跌固然有欧洲的因素，但还因为亚洲竞争对手（如华为）的兴起给它造成了不小的威胁。因此最近在甲骨文与投资者的收益电话会议上，CEO埃里森在谈及收益问题时显得非常保守。

    另外，近年来风生水起的移动计算也在日益蚕食戴尔和惠普靠PC撑起的企业市场。巴克莱资本（Barclays Capital）的一位分析师上周三表示，苹果（Apple）的iPad和iPhone可能会“用来执行更多原本由PC完成的任务，延长PC的购买周期，甚至彻底取代某些PC。”

    此外有些科技巨头尚在困境中挣扎自救。比如惠普大量裁员，戴尔试图从PC销售向IT服务方向转型，思科正在努力寻找第二个增长点。许多投资者没有耐心去等着一家大公司扭亏为赢，更不用说这家公司可能不断释放假信号，或者他们的衰退根本是无法避免的。

    因此尽管这些蓝筹股的市盈率很低——惠普明年的市盈率是6，戴尔是5，思科是8——但是投资者对这些大牌科技公司会扭亏为赢的美好愿景并不买账。科技板上有些一度最成功的股票，现在成了华尔街最难出手的股票，哪怕它们还能赚到钱，甚至还表现出稳健增长的趋势。

    在上个十年里，硅谷的蓝筹股时代已经成为历史了，从炙手可热变成了烫手山芋，使得“绩优股”一下子变成了“绩忧股”。

    本文作者Kevin Kelleher常驻旧金山湾区。

    译者：朴成奎

    That slower growth is coming at a time of disruptive change in many areas. Cloud computing is forcing enterprise-software giants like Oracle to rethink their old ways. (CEO Larry Ellison, after years of bashing the cloud, said Wednesday he's learning to love it.) Cisco's stock tumbled this month not just on concerns in Europe, but on the rise of Asian competitors like Huawei, which made its CEO sound rather defensive on its recent earnings call with investors.

    And mobile computing is eating away at the stronghold that PCs made by Dell and HP had in the corporate market for many years. A Barclays Capital analyst said Wednesday that Apple (AAPL) iPads and iPhones may be "used for more PC tasks, elongating buying cycles and replacing some PCs altogether."

    Then there are the turnarounds that some of these companies are stuck trying to pull off: HP's aggressive layoffs, Dell's push away from PC sales and into IT services, Cisco's effort to find a strong second act. Many investors lack the patience needed to stick with a big company's turnaround, and its inevitable setbacks and false signals.

    So despite the low PE's on blue-chip tech -- HP's is 6 for the next year, Dell's is 5, Cisco's is 8 -- investors just aren't buying the story that large-cap tech companies are turning themselves around. Some of the biggest success stories of the tech sector are now some of the hardest sells on Wall Street, even though they are profitable and showing modest if steady growth.

    The blue chips of Silicon Valley have gone, in the last decade, from the growth stocks everyone wanted to the value stocks few value investors would touch. And that makes these blue-chip stocks very blue indeed.

    Kevin Kelleher is a writer in the San Francisco Bay Area.