Paul Kangas' Stocks in the News
Tuesday, January 09, 2007
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PAUL KANGAS: Early weakness in oil prices gave Wall Street an opening boost, as did a rally in the tech sector. An hour into trading, the Dow posted a 22-point gain, while the NASDAQ Composite was up six points. Weak oil stocks helped drag the blue chips to a 50-point mid-day loss, but a resilient tech sector and optimism about Alcoa's late day earnings helped the markets close narrowly mixed. The Dow Industrial Average lost just 6.89 at 12,416.60. The NASDAQ Composite gained 5.63 ending at 2,443.83, while the Standard & Poor's 500 Index was down .73 at 1,412.11. Over in the bond market, the 10-year note fell 1/32 to 99 23/32, putting the yield at 4.66 percent.
Big board volume leader on 53.7 million shares, Sprint Nextel (S) having a bad day, down $2.19. The company sees flat 2007 revenue with lower average revenue per subscriber. Deutsche Bank downgraded it from "hold" to "sell" and incidentally, the company's also cutting 5,000 jobs or 8 percent of its workforce. On top of the downgrade from Deutsche Bank, Credit Suisse downgraded it from "out perform" to just a "neutral" rating.
Boston Scientific (BSX) down $0.21. Boston plans to cut 500 to 600 jobs and Bear Stearns meanwhile is rather positive on the company's restructuring plan.
Motorola (MOT) down $0.34.
Ford Motor Co (F) edge up $0.06.
EMC Corp (EMC) $0.08 gain, fifth in big board volume.
ExxonMmobil (XOM) on the lower oil prices, down $0.56.
Corning (GLW) off $0.18. For the second time, Corning backed its fourth quarter earnings forecast of $0.26 to $0.29 a share. That would be up from $0.22 a year ago.
AT&T (T) up $0.13.
Pfizer (PFE) gained a penny.
General Electric (GE) was unchanged. GE plans to ask for bids on its plastics business, which has been valued at around $10 billion.
Alcoa (AA) closed up only $0.04 in regular trading, but after hours on those strong earnings, it was up another $1.38 from that price, so it did well after the market closed.
Nacional Telefonos/ Venezuela (VNT), this is a major Venezuelan telecomm company down on the news that President Chavez is going to nationalize its country's telecom and electric utilities. The whole group was rather weak on that news.
Stage Stores (SSI) department store, up $3.42. The company announced a three for two stock split. It's going to keep its $0.05 quarterly dividend on the split stock which in essence is like a $0.50 increase. It also plans to buy back up to $50 million of its own stock.
Volt Info Sciences (VOL) up $6.55. This is a employee staffing company. Fourth quarter earnings sharply higher, $0.86 versus $0.54 a year ago, $0.24 above the Street estimate. Sales up 3.4 percent.
Great Atlantic & Pacific (GAP) up $1.18. Third quarter earnings of $0.97 versus a loss of $1.74 last year, but those earnings do include tax benefits amounting to $1.07 a share.
The Mills Corp (MLS) self administers REIT, real estate investment trusts, plunging $4.12. The company completed its own accounting probe and it's going to restate its financials going back to 2001 through 2004 and the first three quarters of 2004 and also confirmed there is a risk of bankruptcy.
West Pharmaceutical Services (WST) off $4.03. Lehman Brothers downgraded it from "equal weight" to "under weight."
And Lazard Ltd (LAZ), the Bermuda-based asset management company, up $3.10 after Goldman Sachs upgraded it from "neutral" to "buy."
Apple Computer (AAPL) as you might expect, topped the NASDAQ actives, up $7.10 on that new product.
Research in Motion (RIMM), however, down $11.16, great concern that the Apple iPhone will represent some very tough competition.
Google (GOOG) up $1.92.
Cisco Systems (CSCO) down $0.16. Cisco owns the rights incidentally to the name iPhone, but it had sold the name to Apple for an undisclosed amount.
Microsoft (MSFT) a $0.03 gain. That was fifth in dollar volume.
Intel (INTC) a $0.02 gain there.
And Broadcom (BRCM) gained $1.31.
But Celgene (CELG) down $2.45. Celgene reported lower than expected 2000 revenues - 2006 revenues of $890 million. That was $1 million below the Street estimate. It also gave a disappointing outlook.
Yahoo! (YHOO) a $0.34 loss.
And Sandisk (SNDK), it was tenth in volume and down $0.19.
Those are the stocks in the news tonight.
