Paul Kangas' Stocks In The News
Wednesday, December 06, 2006
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PAUL KANGAS: Wall Street opened lower on some profit taking after two days of gains, with the Dow dipping 26 points at the outset of trading, while the NASDAQ fell 12 points. Stocks showed a little improvement during midday, but buyers were cautious ahead of Friday's employment report for November. At 1:00 p.m., the Dow was down 7 points; NASDAQ off 2. That tepid recovery and lower bond prices led to renewed weakness this afternoon, so the Dow Industrial Average closed off 22.35 points at 12309.25. The NASDAQ Composite down 6.52, ending at 2445.86. Standard & Poor's 500 Index fell 1.86, ending at 1412.90. Over in the bond market, the 10-year note fell 12/32 to 101 2/32, lifting the yield to 4.49 percent. Topping the active list on the big board on a hefty 83.1 million shares, Ford Motor Co (F) down another $0.32. The company plans to boost its borrowing plan now from $18 billion to $22 to $23 billion and it's boosting its senior convertible note offering it announced yesterday from $3 billion to $4.5 billion. More earnings dilution potential there.
Pfizer (PFE) down $0.02.
Then ExxonMobil (XOM) losing $1.75, some pretty good profit taking there.
Motorola (MOT) $0.04 loss.
And General Electric (GE) fifth in volume, was down $0.16.
$0.13 loss in EMC Corp (EMC).
AT&T (T) moved up a dime. UBS financial believes the FCC is likely to approve the company's acquisition of BellSouth at its next meeting on December 20th.
Boston Scientific (BSX) up $0.43.
Qwest Comm (Q) $0.23 loss.
Tenth in volume, Home Depot (HD) moving up $0.55. The company said results from its own probe into stock option practices discovered $200 million in unrecorded expenses over the past 26 years. The retailer doesn't expect the errors to have a material impact on financial results however. Then we see Fannie Mae (FNM) a $0.57 closing gain. After the market closed, Fannie announced plans to restate results for 2001 through 2004, June of 2004 by $6.3 billion and that's about $4 billion less than originally thought. Deere & Co (DE) up $2.69. The CEO acknowledged the company has been approached by a private equity group about a buyout, but he dismissed it as unrealistic.
Book seller Barnes & Noble (BKS) up $1.83. Credit Suisse upgraded it from "under perform" to "out perform," citing the possibility of a leveraged buyout for that one.
And interestingly, Credit Suisse downgraded another book seller, Borders Group (BGP) which lost $0.48. The company downgraded it from "out perform" to "neutral" on caution about the success of its turnaround plan.
Then Gallaher Group (GLH) up $13.89. The British tobacco firm says it has a potential suitor, but did not mention who it might be.
Biovail (BVF) up $1.82. The company's boosting its annual dividend to $1.50 a share from the current $0.50 and it's also going to pay a $0.50 per share special dividend.
Korn/Ferry Intl (KFY), the staffing firm, down $1.14. Second quarter earnings were higher, $0.31 versus $0.25 a year ago and revenues up a very respectable 24 percent. But UBS financial is cautious about the company's outlook for the third quarter.
And then Blyth (BTH) down $2.86. Third quarter earnings dropped to only $0.13 from $0.27 a year ago and revenues fell 9 percent.
Google (GOOG) topped the NASDAQ active list with a gain of $1.71.
Followed by Apple Computer (AAPL) down $1.44.
$0.98 drop in Oracle (ORCL) and incidentally, Lehman Brothers issued a "sell" on Oracle, citing concern that the company may not meet its sales targets when it reports on December 18th.
Microsoft (MSFT) $0.14 loss.
Intel (INTC) $0.22 drop there.
Then Baidu.com (BIDU) up another $3.85 on the company's expansion plans into Japan.
Yahoo! (YHOO) $0.57 loss.
Cisco Systems (CSCO) gained a nickel.
Qualcomm (QCOM) $0.44 rise.
And Amgen (AMGN), tenth in volume, up $0.83.
Goamerica (GOAM) up $2.13, a gain of over 37 percent. The company's in the communications services business for the deaf and it launched a promising new video service for the hard of hearing, very positive reaction there.
And Docucorp Intl (DOCC) up $2.26, that's a 30 percent gain. A company called Skywire Software will acquire Docucorp for a price of $10 per share.
And over on the American, finally we see Halozyme Therapeutics (HTI) jumping $1.60 on news the company received a $20 million upfront payment to apply its enhanze (ph) technology to Roche's biological therapeutic compounds. The deal could bring up to $580 million in payments long term.
