Paul Kangas' Stocks in the News
Thursday, February 15, 2007
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PAUL KANGAS: Wall Street spent the morning modestly higher despite profit taking after two days of solid gains. Among the positives, Caterpillar's plan for a huge stock buyback and published reports Anheuser Busch had held merger talks. At 1:00 p.m. the Dow was up 23 points. NASDAQ posted a 4 point gain. That continuing favorable comment on the economy from Fed Chief Bernanke kept stocks higher this afternoon and the blue chips ended at record highs again. Dow Industrial Average closed up 23.15 at 12,765.01. That's its second straight record high. The NASDAQ Composite up 8.72 a 2497.10, while the Standard & Poor's 500 Index gained about 1.5 points to 1456.81. Over in the bond market, the 10-year note climbed 8/32 to 99 10/32, putting the yield at 4.71 percent.
Most active stock on the New York exchange, Motorola (MOT) trading 18.4 million shares edged up $0.03.
Followed by Baker Hughes (BH), the oil service company, plunging $6.75. Baker reported fourth quarter earnings sharply higher, $1.02 versus $0.75 last year, but that was $0.17 below the Wall Street estimate.
Pfizer (PFE) a nickel loss.
$0.23 drop in General Electric (GE).
ExxonMobil (XOM) fell $0.26, fifth in volume.
Then TimeWarner (TWX) moving up $0.17.
And a $0.09 gain for Ford Motor (F).
Texas Instruments (TXN) up $0.21.
AT&T (T) a $0.04 gain.
Tenth in volume, Qwest Communications (Q) rising $0.24.
There you see Caterpillar (CAT) with a nice gain of $1.46. The board has authorized the purchase of up to $7.5 billion of its own stock. That will be over the next five years, a nice reaction in the stock.
Then Archer-Daniels-Midland Co (ADM) up $0.80. The company will offer $1 billion in convertible senior notes and will use $400 million of the proceeds to buy back stock. Also the Gates Foundation disclosed that it's boosted its stake in Archer Daniels from 3.9 million shares up to 4.4 million.
Then Anheuser-Busch Cos (BUD) of Budweiser, up $1.52 and the company reportedly has held merger talks with InBev. That's a big Brazilian brewer. No comment from either company on that rumor today.
Molson Coors Brewing Co (TAP) another brewer active and up $4.56. Fourth quarter earnings excluding one time items, $1.24 well above $0.63 last year and $0.30 better than the Street consensus.
FTI Consulting (FCN) up $4.10. Fourth quarter earnings were lower, $0.42 versus $0.46 a year ago, but a nickel better than the Street thought and it sees 2000 earnings at $1.84. That's $0.10 above the Street estimate.
Guess? (GES) had a good day, jumping $9.05. Fourth quarter earnings jumped to $0.99 from $0.57 a year ago on a 25 percent boost in revenue. The company also declared a two for one stock split.
Armstrong World Industries (AWI) up $4.93. You can see by the chart they just came out of bankruptcy last October. The flooring products company has retained Lazard Freres to advise on strategic options. Sometimes that means the possible sale of the company.
And Granite Construction (GVA), the big construction contractor, had sharply lower fourth quarter earnings, $0.28, down from $0.86 a year ago, $0.19 below the Street estimate. The stock off over $5.
Google (GOOG) topped the active list on NASDAQ with a loss of $4.46.
Then a major loss in Baidu.com (BIDU) off $8.82. The company cut its first quarter revenue forecast. Citigroup made negative comments about Baidu, including a downgrade from "hold" to "sell."
Microsoft (MSFT) $0.06.
Qualcomm (QCOM) moved up $1.65. Oppenheimer and Company upgraded it from "hold" to "buy" on the belief the company will post better than expected earnings over the next few years.
Apple (AAPL) a $0.09 drop there, fifth in volume.
Cisco Systems (CSCO) was up a dime.
Intel (INTC) $0.17 gain.
Yahoo! (YHOO) up $0.59.
Amgen (AMGN) fell $0.52.
Research in Motion (RIMM) dropped $2.45.
NutriSystem (NTRI) up $5.91. Fourth quarter earnings soared to $0.53 from only $0.17 last year on a 92 percent jump in revenues and on top of that, the company plans to buy back up to $200 million of its own stock.
MedImmune (MEDI) up $1.91. Carl Icahn disclosed he owns 2.8 million MedImmune shares and in addition, late stage trials suggest the company's new FluMist is more effective than flu shots.
And those are the stocks in the news tonight.
