Daily Tech Snippet: Friday, May 20

• Warren Buffett Stake Suggests Apple Is All Grown Up: With this week’s imprimatur from the legendary investor Warren Buffett, it should now be official: Apple, the world’s largest company by market capitalization and a symbol of American technological innovation, is a “value” stock. That may prove to be a decidedly mixed blessing. Mr. Buffett is the world’s most prominent and successful proponent of value investing — an approach that seeks stocks that are undervalued and sell for less than their “intrinsic value,” as Benjamin Graham put it his 1949 classic “The Intelligent Investor.” Mr. Buffett credits Mr. Graham with shaping his own approach to investing. So value investors took notice when Mr. Buffett’s holding company,Berkshire Hathaway, disclosed it had invested $1 billion in Apple stock during the last quarter. “We’ve just looked at it again,” said Bill Smead, who manages the Smead Value Fund, one of the most successful large-cap value mutual funds over the last five years, according to Morningstar. “Anybody that discounts the thinking at Berkshire Hathaway does so at their peril, in my opinion.” Value stocks are typically unpopular among many investors, their shares often battered by disappointing short-term revenue and earnings results. They usually trade at very low price-to-earnings ratios, a common valuation measure. Nonetheless, some academic studies have suggested that over time, they outperform other stocks, in part because expectations are so low. Today there are numerous value investors, value mutual funds and value exchange-traded funds that pursue variations of the strategy, many of them probably now considering adding Apple to their portfolios, if they haven’t already. Apple “is going to attract more value investors,” said Toni Sacconaghi, a senior analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein who covers Apple. “They’re looking for beaten-down stocks with negative sentiment. Apple has traded below a market multiple for years and sentiment has become increasingly pessimistic, especially over the past month.”

• Walmart Outperforms Estimates, but Online Retail Lags: Walmart reported on Thursday that its quarterly revenue had risen 0.9 percent, exceeding analysts’ forecasts and signaling that its strategies to combat a tough retail environment were working. The results were particularly striking after dismal earnings reports by several retail chains last week, and Walmart’s shares shot up nearly 10 percent.Amazon does much more business than Walmart.com, Mr. Saunders said, and yet it still reports double-digit growth. Amazon reported that net product sales rose 13 percent, to $79.3 billion in 2015, while Walmart reported that global annual e-commerce revenue had risen 12 percent to $13.7 billion in its latest fiscal year. In other areas, Walmart significantly outperformed its peers.Over all, Walmart reported that profit fell to $3.08 billion, or 98 cents a share, compared with $3.34 billion, or $1.03 a share, a year earlier. That beat expectations of 88 cents a share, according to analysts polled by Thomson Reuters. Revenue was $115.9 billion; analysts had expected $113.2 billion.“Walmart, especially with apparel, did better than other retailers for a really stressful period,” Mr. Sosnick said.

• Salesforce Surges as Big Money Deals Help Drive Sales Growth: Salesforce.com Inc. is targeting the biggest of customers to get big itself. The company, once known for selling business productivity software to small- and medium-sized clients, is getting more traction with large companies while drawing closer to an annual sales goal of $10 billion. Salesforce said Wednesday it landed the most large deals ever in a three-month period during the fiscal first quarter, including one worth at least $100 million. The company also forecast revenue in the current quarter that topped analysts’ estimates, sending shares up the most in almost three months Thursday. Chief Executive Officer Marc Benioff is benefiting from a multiyear effort to persuade corporations to adopt software delivered over the Internet, or the cloud. During a call with analysts, the company touted new deals with Samsung Electronics Co., Uber Technologies Inc. and Amazon.com Inc. that expanded on existing relationships. Salesforce jumped 4.1 percent to $81.09, at the close in New York, the biggest advance since Feb. 25. That brings the gains for the year to 3.4 percent. Sales will be $2.01 billion to $2.02 billion in the fiscal second quarter, the San Francisco-based company said in a statement. Analysts on average had estimated $1.98 billion, according to data complied by Bloomberg. Revenue increased 27 percent to $1.92 billion in the fiscal first quarter ended April 30, topping the average estimate of $1.89 billion.

• Samsung to partner with Alibaba on mobile payments in China: Samsung Electronics said it had struck a deal with a Alibaba Group Holding for owners of its phones to be able to more easily make payments with Alipay accounts - a move it hopes will boost sales in the world's biggest smartphone market. Users of Samsung Pay will also have the option of paying with their Alipay accounts without having separately access the Alipay application. Alipay, which is operated by Alibaba unit Ant Financial Services Group, has 450 million active registered users. Samsung, the world's top smartphone maker, launched its own mobile payment system, Samsung Pay, in China in March, about one month after Apple Inc launched Apple Pay.But Alipay's dominant position has meant that it will be difficult for any latecomers in mobile payments to gain significant ground just on their own. Samsung has been losing out to Chinese rivals Huawei and Xiaomi as well as Apple and no longer ranks among the top five smartphone brands in China, according to market researcher Strategy Analytics.