Rockwell Automation (ROK) reported a 9% gain in sales and earnings that beat expectations. It’s guidance was slightly on the light side for both sales (up 7-8% next year) and earnings ($3.70-$3.90 vs. consensus at $3.82.) The thing is, having seen leading tech companies post sales gains of 2% (Xerox) to 4% (Keane and CDW) or 5% (IBM) that 7-8% starts to look to us like ROK is on a roll.

As we noted when we first wrote about the company, Rockwell Automation sells factory automation equipment. If ever there was an industry poised to do well in today’s economic environment, Rockwell is in it.

After reviewing the earnings release, about the only blemish we found was a decline in cash flow from operations due to higher funding requirements for the company’s pension plans. Since they aren’t the only ones in that boat (or its sister ship - the options backdating scandal) we don’t worry too much about it as long as their growth rate is so much better than those other firms mentioned. While they may not be setting the world on fire (especially after selling their stake in Rockwell Scientific, which was in the nuclear bomb design business) they are doing as best as we expect most firms to do in the current economy - and after all, one has to invest somewhere.

Indian software firms remain on a tear. Wipro (WIT) reported 48% profit growth on 41% sales growth.  The company hired 5,328 new employees in the last three months alone, bringing its total to more than 61,000. We would have been impressed if it’s similarly-sized peer Infosys (INFY) hadn’t hired nearly twice as many.

DELL (DELL) continues to lose ground to Hewlett Packard (HPQ - Annual Report). Gartner Inc. said Hewlett-Packard moved into the No. 1 position for the first time since the fourth quarter of 2003 with a lead of 110,000 units over Dell, while IDC put the lead at 28,000 units, which it considered a statistical tie at 17.2 percent of the world market. Still, Apple (AAPL) is doing even better.
Price wars don’t help anybody. At least not Intel (INTC - Annual Report) or AMD (AMD - Annual Report).

Keane (KEA) isn’t getting IT done any better than IBM (IBM - Annual Report) or CDW (CDWC). From the conference call: “On a year-to-date basis, Keane’s revenues are up 4%, excluding the IBM staffing business, which we divested last year.” That is more or less in line with the industry, which shouldn’t get many investors excited.