Paul Kangas' Stocks In The News
Thursday, March 23, 2006
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PAUL KANGAS: An early rally attempt on Wall Street was quashed by that unexpected jump in existing home sales which sent interest rates higher. Another negative was a surge in oil futures on supply disruption worries in Nigeria. The Dow was off 55 points by late morning and the NASDAQ Composite was off 14. The market continued to be plagued for the rest of the day by the negatives that drove it lower early on, so it did close broadly lower. The Dow Industrial Average ended off 47.14 points at 11,270.29. NASDAQ Composite down 3.20 at 2300.15. Standard & Poor`s 500 was off 3.37 points ending at 1301.67. In the bond market, the 10-year note was down 9/32 to 98 4/32, putting the yield at 4.74 percent.
Most active issue on the big board today on 15 1/2 million shares, Lucent Technology (LU) no change there.
AT&T (T) moved up $0.08.
General Electric (GE) down $0.41.
Time Warner (TWX) a $0.03 loss.
And Pfizer (PFE) fifth in volume was down $0.25.
EMC (EMC) fell $0.13. JPMorgan downgraded EMC from "over weight" to "neutral."
Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) up $0.38.
And Carnival (CCL) down $2.54. First Carnival reported lower first quarter earnings, $0.34 down from $0.42 a year ago. That`s $0.02 below the Street estimate and despite a 2.7 percent rise in revenues. And the worst news from Carnival is a cabin fire on one of its ships in the Caribbean killed one person early today.
ExxonMobil (XOM) up $0.20.
And Motorola (MOT) $0.22 gain, tenth in volume.
KB Home (KBH) up $3.23. That 5 percent jump in existing home sales showed there`s still a lot of action in the housing market. KB`s first quarter earnings jumped to $2.02 up from $1.41 last year, although its new orders have fallen 12 percent.
Let`s look at some other of the home builder stocks today though, doing very well, Beazer BZH) up over $3.
Nice gains in Horton (DHI), Pulte Homes (PHM) and Toll Brothers (TOL), very strong group except for Levitt (LEV). This is one home builder that had lower earnings for the fourth quarter, $0.42, down from last year`s $0.85 and revenues fell 30 percent.
Schering AG (SHR), this is the German Schering, up $6.90. Bayer AG has offered about $104 a share on a take over and that beats Merck of German`s bid of around $93 for Schering.
Jabil Circuit (JBL) up $4.51. After the close yesterday, second quarter earnings $0.32, well above last year`s $0.22. Revenues jumped 35 percent. The company sees third quarter earnings around $0.43, much higher.
Newfield Exploration (NFX) up $3.28. The company updated the successes it`s had in its Woodford shale operations in the state of Oklahoma. Investors liked what they heard.
ConocoPhillips (COP) up $0.64. Prudential upgraded it from "neutral" to "over weight," citing the stock`s low price earnings ratio of only six times earnings projected.
King Pharmaceuticals (KG) down $1.67. The company will privately place $400 million of convertible notes. That`s potential dilution of earnings there and that`s what hurt the stock.
Mills Corp (MLS) continues to fall, down another $1.57. After weeks of informal investigation into the company`s accounting practices, the SEC has begun a formal investigation. Meanwhile, Bank America repeated a "sell" recommendation on concern the company may cut its dividend.
Apple Computer (AAPL) topped the active list on NASDAQ, down $1.51.
Then Google (GOOG) closed at $341.89 and then after the close, came word from Standard & Poor`s Google will become a member of the Standard & Poor`s 500 index. The stock jumped $30 from the price you see here.
Microsoft (MSFT) $0.30 drop.
Intel (INTC) off $0.28.
Yahoo! (YHOO) was up $1.08. UBS Financial upgraded it from "neutral" to a "buy."
Cisco Systems (CSCO) a penny loss.
Oracle (ORCL) down $0.19.
And then Adobe Systems (ADBE) off $0.29.
YRC Worldwide (YRCW) the trucking company down $6.73. The company cut its first quarter earnings guidance from $1.05 a share all the way down to $0.65 to $0.70 on lower than expected volume and the cost overruns.
Broadcom (BRCM) was up $0.20, that was tenth in volume.
Scholastic (SCHL) down $3.38. Company in with a big third quarter loss of $0.37 a share, much bigger than last year`s $0.02 per share loss and the company also cut its 2006 outlook.
And those are the stocks in the news tonight.
