Paul Kangas' Stocks In The News
Thursday, August 17, 2006
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PAUL KANGAS: Continuing weakness in oil prices helped stocks to stand up to profit taking today after three days of big gains. Giving the tech sector a lift, Hewlett-Packard`s solid earnings after the bell yesterday and an upgrade on Advanced Micro Devices today. Just before noon, the Dow was up 32 points; NASDAQ up 12. Then a pickup in profit taking and caution ahead of those Dell results trimmed the market`s closing gains. The Dow Industrial Average ended up only 7.84 points at 11,334.96. The NASDAQ Composite rose 8.07, ending at 2157.61. Standard & Poor`s 500 up 2.05 at 1297.48. In the bond market, the 10-year note fell 1/32 to 92 11/32, putting the yield at 4.87 percent.
The most active New York exchange issue on 28.4 million shares was Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) closing up $0.72, traded as high as $36.70. After the close yesterday as we reported, third quarter earnings of $0.52 were $0.04 better than the Street estimate and the company plans to buy back up to $6 billion of its own stock and today, Citigroup upgraded it from "hold" to a "buy."
Merck (MRK) and Company down $2.35. You heard about those setbacks in court today.
Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) moved up $1.63. Citigroup upgraded it from "hold" to a "buy."
Ford Motor Co (F) down $0.09 after a couple days of gains.
Sprint Nextel (S) down $0.07, fifth in volume.
Time Warner (TWX) rose $0.29. The "New York Times" today reported Carl Icahn plans to increase its stake in the company and influence it through a new fund he`s developing. The company said that they will restate earnings as far back as the year 2000 based on findings of an independent examiner.
ExxonMobil (XOM) up $0.51.
Pfizer (PFE) $0.25 gain.
Motorola (MOT) down $0.09.
EMC Corp (EMC), tenth in volume, up $0.16.
General Motors (GM)
lost $0.43. JPMorgan downgraded it from "overweight" to "neutral" on a valuation basis. Keep in mind, GM stock is up almost 60 percent this year, the best gainer in the Dow 30 so far.
Salesforce.com (CRM) which is involved in sales software, had second quarter earnings excluding one time items, $0.06 a share, $0.02 above the Street and revenue soared 64 percent. The company sees fiscal 2007 earnings at $0.19 to $0.21 on better than expected revenues of $488 million.
Mens Wearhouse (MW), the clothier, up $3.21. Second quarter earnings $0.65, well above $0.43 last year. Same store sales up a respectable 3.7 percent. Longs Drug Stores (LDG) up $4 even. Second quarter earnings, $0.50, up from $0.43 a year ago. Same store sales were up 2.6 percent and the company boosted its fiscal 2007 earnings guidance.
Barnes & Noble (BKS), the book seller, $1.91 gain there. Second quarter earnings rose to $0.24 from $0.18 a year ago and that was despite a drop of 2.6 percent in same store sales.
Stage Stores (SSI), the specialty store, department store, is going to delay second quarter results pending completion of an internal review of its inventory valuation.
And Buckle (BKE), this is the casual apparel retailer, second quarter earnings dropped to $0.33 from $0.38 a year ago and same store sales down 5.7 percent.
Google (GOOG) topped the NASDAQ`s most active list, down $1.92. The company plans to provide search engine technology to china.com.
Apple Computer (AAPL) $0.39 loss.
Sears Holdings (SHLD) down $8.71, better than expected earnings in the second quarter, but same store sales were disappointingly down 6 percent. That hurt the stock.
Intel (INTC) a $0.05 drop there.
Microsoft (MSFT) showed no change.
Then EBay (EBAY) up $1.85.
Cisco Systems (CSCO) $0.25 loss.
Dell (DELL) closed down only $0.07 and then fell another $1.25 after the disappointing earnings.
Research in Motion (RIMM) up $2.09.
And then Oracle (ORCL) up $0.27.
Aeroflex (ARXX) down $1.20. The company in with $0.09 in fourth quarter earnings, triple last year, but it sees first quarter earnings falling to only $0.08. Those are the stocks in the news tonight.
