Paul Kangas' Stocks in the News
Friday, January 19, 2007
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PAUL KANGAS: The flow of corporate earnings, good or bad, had little impact on Wall Street this morning as the market waffled about what direction to take. At the outset, the Dow fell 18 points, NASDAQ slid five, but by late morning they were up 11 points and seven points, respectively. A mid-day sell-off was mostly wiped out by a late rebound in the recently weak oil and tech stocks. So the Dow Industrial Average closed off just 2.40 at 12,565.53 today. In this four-day trading week, it rose once and fell three times, still had a net gain of 9.45 points. The NASDAQ Composite was up 8.10 today at 2,451.31. It also gained once and fell three times this week, but it lost 51.51 points overall. The Standard & Poor's 500 index rose 4.13 ending at 1,430.50 today. Over in the bond market, the 10-year note fell 8/32 to 98 25/32, putting the yield at 4.78 percent.
Most active New York exchange issue on 31 million shares was Motorola (MOT) moving up $0.56 a share. Fourth quarter earnings out today, $0.26 per share. That was a penny above the Street consensus. Motorola also said it plans on cutting 3500 jobs.
General Electric (GE) down $1.05 despite that higher earnings statement.
And then came Ford Motor Co (F) with a $0.12 gain. Followed by Pfizer (PFE) gaining a nickel.
IBM (IBM) a real drag on the Dow today. It cost the Dow Industrial Average 26 points with that loss of $3.25. IBM's earnings were sharply higher yesterday, but a lot of analysts are concerned over the company's hardware sales.
ExxonMobil (XOM) reacting to that rise in oil prices, up $1.57.
Then Sprint Nextel (S) edged up $0.02.
Citigroup (C) despite the lower earnings, up $0.11.
Time Warner (TWX) $0.34 drop.
And AT&T (T), tenth in volume, was up one nickel a share.
Alcoa (AA) a Dow stock, gaining $1.10. The company's board of directors has approved the buyback of up to 10 percent of the company's common stock. That would be about 87 million shares. Alcoa will also boost its annual dividend from $0.60 to $0.68 a share.
DaimlerChrysler AG (DCX) gained $1.68. Morgan Stanley upgraded it from "equal weight" to "over weight" on the promising growth prospects of the company's truck division.
Then the big oil service company, Schlumberger Ltd (SLB) up $3.10. Fourth quarter earnings out, $0.92, $0.07 above the Street estimate, well above last year's $0.54 and revenues jumped 33 percent. The company gave an upbeat outlook on this year and Standard & Poor's repeated a "strong buy," a lot of good news there.
Stanley Works (SWK) down $0.97, traded as low as $52.44. JPMorgan downgraded it from "neutral" to "under weight."
And the golf company, Callaway Golf (ELY) up $1.67. The company sees better than expected 2006 sales coming in around $1.02 billion and earnings will be around $0.50 to $0.52, well above the Street estimate of $0.39 a share.
Lamson & Session (LMS) gained $1.35. The company's largest shareholder wants the firm to hire an investment banker to explore the sale of its PVC pipe business or perhaps the entire company.
ITC Holdings (ITC) up $3.38. Positive reaction on the company's plan to buy the transmission assets of Interstate Energy. The price, $750 million in cash.
Apple (AAPL) topped the NASDAQ active list, losing $0.57.
Google (GOOG) up $1.92.
Microsoft (MSFT) $0.11 gain there.
Cisco Systems (CSCO) up $0.25.
Research in Motion (RIMM) bouncing back with a gain of $2.61.
Intel (INTC) $0.17 rise there.
And EBay (EBAY) rose $0.15.
Yahoo! (YHOO) $0.48 drop.
Qualcomm (QCOM) gained $0.38.
And Applied Materials (AMAT) down $0.04 a share.
Coldwater Creek (CWTR), the women's apparel retailer, cut its fourth quarter earnings guidance from $0.26 to $0.27, all the way down to $0.16 to $0.07 a share. The Street was looking for $0.28 a share.
And then JDS Uniphase (JDSU) up $1.53. The company boosted its second quarter sales guidance from a low of $332 million to as high as $365 million.
And Wittier Energy (WHIT) up $1.98. Sterling Energy PLC, a British firm, will acquire it for $11 a share in cash.
Those are the stocks in the news tonight.
