Paul Kangas' Stocks In The News
Wednesday, November 01, 2006
|
|
|
|
PAUL KANGAS: Wall Street opened with modest gains on strong earnings report from Cigna and Mastercard, but stocks faded after new of a slowdown in October manufacturing and a 0.3 percent drop in September construction spending. At midday, the Dow was off 36 points, NASDAQ off 11. Stocks extended their losses on concern that the slowing economy could end in a hard landing, so the market ended near its worst level of the day. The Dow Industrial Average of 49.71 at 12,031.02. NASDAQ Composite fell 32 1/3 points to 2334.35. Standard & Poor's 500 down 10.13 at 1367.81. In the bond market, the 10-year note fell 2/32 to 102 12/32, putting the yield at 4.57 percent. The most active big board issue on 28.7 million shares was CVS Corp (CVS) down $2.35. As you heard, it's going to acquire Caremark for stock worth about $48.50 per Caremark. Incidentally, after the close, CVS reported third quarter earnings, $0.33, up from $0.30 a year ago, a penny above the Street estimate.
Time Warner (TWX) in there, you heard about the earnings, down $0.24.
And Caremark Rx (CMX) up $1.06, pretty close to the value of that takeover by CVS.
Pfizer (PFE) $0.11 loss there.
AT&T (T) down $0.49. That was fifth in volume.
Then we see General Electric (GE) a $0.21 loss.
ExxonMobil (XOM) dropping $0.36.
Lucent tech (LU) a $0.02 drop.
Ford Motor Co (F) moved up $0.24.
And tenth in volume, Citigroup (C) down $0.07 a share.
Cigna (CI), the big insurance company, up nearly $2. Third quarter earnings jumped to $2.75 from only $2 a year ago. Revenues up nearly 3 percent. Standard & Poor's repeated a "buy" on the stock.
Then we see Mastercard (MA) up nearly $11 a share. Third quarter earnings came in at $1.42, $0.35 above the Street estimate, way up from $0.79 a year ago. Revenues up a very respectable 14 percent.
Administaff (ASF) up 44.95. Third quarter earnings $0.43, $0.04 above the Street estimate and up from $0.26 a year ago. Revenues rose 19 percent.
Then BCE Inc (BCE) a Canadian firm, down $3.46. The story here, the company had lower third quarter earnings of $0.43 versus $0.45 a year ago, but the stock was really undermined by Canada's plan to start taxing income trusts more like corporations. BCE was going to convert into a trust.
And let's have a look at some of the other stocks that might be affected by this proposed tax change up in Canada, all multiple point losers. Telus (TU), Baytex Energy Trust (BTE), Canetic Resources Trust (CNE) and Enerplus Resources Fund (ERF) and Precision Drilling Trust (PDS) major losers on the day on that tax proposal.
Banta (BN), the big printing company, up $7.87. RR Donnelly, another company in the printing business, it will acquire it for $36.50 a share, but that's after a $16 a share special dividend was already declared by Banta. So you total those two up and you come up with just about where Banta closed today at $52 plus.
CEC Entertainment (CEC) up $3.41. Third quarter earnings jumped to $0.54 from $0.41 a year ago. Revenues up 8.4 percent. Those earnings $0.09 better than expected.
And Burger King (BKC) up $1.12. First quarter earnings $0.30 versus $0.19 last year. The company says it's on target for a 6 to 7 percent growth rate in revenues next year.
Google (GOOG) topped the active list on NASDAQ, down $8.89.
Microsoft (MSFT) bucked the trend up a dime.
Apple Computer (AAPL) down $1.92.
$0.32 loss in Intel (INTC).
Garmin Ltd (GRMN) plunging $8.43. The company makes navigational devices. Third quarter earnings $0.50, up from $0.33. That was just in line with street estimates, but sales were lower than expected and that apparently hurt the stock.
$0.03 drop in Cisco Systems (CSCO).
Dell (DELL) down $0.31.
And Express Scripts (ESRX) a $3.73 loss.
Baidu.com (BIDU) off $2.42.
Tenth in volume was Yahoo! (YHOO) with a $0.35 loss.
Nvidia (NVDA) fell $2.69 on news it will restate financials from 2004 through the first quarter of next year to correct errors in accounting for stock options.
