Business Highlights

MENLO PARK — Wall Street values Hewlett-Packard Co. at $98 billion. Its rival, Sun Microsystems Inc., values Hewlett and Packard at a mere $6,000.

That’s how much Sun paid last week for a life-size painted cutout of HP co-founders Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard, one of five portraits of tech titans traveling thousands of miles in a zany, cross-country art project called "Pioneers Hitchhiking in the Valley of Heart’s Delight.”

The Hewlett and Packard painting — which depicts the Silicon Valley icons sitting atop the garage where they founded their company almost seven decades ago — spent the past week in cubicles and conference rooms on Sun’s grassy campus here.

Sun Chief Executive Jonathan Schwartz and rank-and-file engineers draped the wooden rendering in Sun T-shirts and posed with it for photographs as colleagues chuckled.

Schwartz said the stunt was an example of "good, cheap, drive-the-other-guys-up-a-wall fun.”

"Bill and Dave have both indicated a strong interest in learning more about Sun ... so stay tuned,” Schwartz wrote in his Web journal. "We’re putting together a global tour.”

The five cutouts, created by four San Francisco area artists as part of an electronic art expo in San Jose, were set loose with instructions inscribed on their backs about where in the Silicon Valley they are supposed to end up. Passers-by found the paintings at highway ramps, rest stops, rural routes and elsewhere, with the request to drive them as far west as they’re able.

During the journeys, each piece was tracked by Global Positioning System units and charted on a Web site. The artists requested digital photos and asked drivers to carve their e-mail addresses onto the cutouts. All participants share in the eventual sale price.

Williams-Sonoma profit up, but cuts view for year

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Williams-Sonoma Inc. Thursday said its second-quarter profit climbed with help from expense control and higher interest income.

But the San Francisco-based home furnishings retailer cut its full-year sales outlook for the second time in about six weeks. The company said softening consumer demand is hurting sales — especially at its top Pottery Barn brand — and will restrain earnings.

Shares of Williams-Sonoma slid $2.71, or 8.3 percent, to close at $29.89 on the New York Stock Exchange. Thursday’s weakest level of $29.27, on heavy volume, was a 52-week low surpassing the prior low of $31.10 on Aug. 1. There was a 52-week high of $45.14 on Jan. 11.

Williams-Sonoma said its net income rose to $35.6 million, or 30 cents a share, for the period ended July 30. That compares with $30.8 million, or 26 cents a share, in the prior second quarter.

Excluding several unusual items, earnings rose 11.5 percent to 29 cents a share. That’s well ahead of the average analyst estimate of 23 cents a share in a Thomson Financial survey.

TiVo to provide DVR software to Cox Communications

NEW YORK — TiVo Inc. Thursday said it had agreed to provide cable company Cox Communications with software for digital video recorders.

The deal with Cox comes on the heels of TiVo’s recent patent win against satellite-TV broadcaster EchoStar Communications Corp., and further strengthens TiVo’s hand against cable companies who provide their own DVRs to customers. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. Shares of Alviso-based TiVo rose 50 cents, or 7 percent, to close at $7.68 Thursday on the Nasdaq Stock Market.

The deal with Atlanta-based Cox is TiVo’s second agreement with a major cable operator. The company announced a similar deal with Comcast Corp., the country’s largest cable company, about a year ago. It also has a deal with satellite-TV provider DirecTV Group Inc.

As with the Comcast deal, TiVo’s agreement with Cox will allow customers to use TiVo’s DVR capabilities without swapping out boxes. Instead, TiVo will customize its software so it can be downloaded onto Cox’s existing DVR boxes.

The service is scheduled to become available in selected Cox markets during the first half of 2007, TiVo said.

A federal jury in April determined that EchoStar, the country’s second-largest satellite company with 12.5 million customers, willfully infringed on TiVo’s "time-warp” patent with its own DVRs. Then last week, a U.S. district judge ordered EchoStar to stop selling and turn off more than 3 million DVRs within 30 days.

EchoStar, Englewood, Colo., has been able to temporarily block the injunction by appealing to a higher court, thus winning some time to negotiate with TiVo. Industry observers noted that the recent course of events with EchoStar likely would pressure other cable companies such as Time Warner Inc.’s cable unit or Charter Communications Inc. into licensing deals with TiVo.

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