Paul Kangas' Stocks in the News
Monday, April 16, 2007
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PAUL KANGAS: On Wall Street, buyers took command early on thanks to those better than expected retail sales and that big Sallie Mae acquisition. Bullish confidence also got a boost from a brokerage upgrade of Best Buy and a dividend hike by Procter & Gamble. At noon, the Dow was up 111 points and the NASDAQ rose 25. Earnings that beat the Street from Eli Lilly and Eaton Manufacturing helped the market go on to close at the day's best levels or very close to them. The Dow rose 108.33 points at 12,720.46. The NASDAQ Composite gained 26.39 ending at 2518.33 while the Standard & Poor's 500 Index advanced 15.62 to 1468.47. Over in the bond market, the 10-year note rose 6/32 to 99 4/32, putting the yield at 4.74 percent.
Topping the active list on the big board, trading 24.2 million shares, Sallie Mae SLM Corp (SLM) up $8.59 on that $60 a share buyout bid from private equity and two banks.
General Electric (GE) $0.02 loss.
Pfizer (PFE) moved up $0.27.
Citigroup (C) up $1.33. First quarter earnings excluding restructuring charged $1.18, $0.09 better than the Street was expecting.
Boston Scientific (BSX) up nearly $1. The FDA found the company's St. Paul, Minnesota heart rhythm device plant is now in compliance, lifted all restrictions from that plant.
First Marblehead (FMD) down $9.83. That's on that Sallie Mae acquisition partly by JP Morgan which happens to be its biggest customer. Morgan could take 26 percent of First Marble's loan volume over to Sallie Mae. Thomas Weisel (ph) brokerage said that that could cut earnings at First Marblehead by 27 percent, but the company doesn't agree with that.
EMC Corp (EMC) $0.16 gain.
ExxonMobil (XOM) up $0.76.
Kraft Foods (KFT) a $0.04 drop.
And Halliburton (HAL) was up $0.24 a share.
Procter & Gamble (PG) moved up $0.35. It's boosting its quarterly dividend by 13 percent from $0.31 to $0.35 per share.
Best Buy Co (BBY) moved up $1.35 after getting an upgrade from Goldman Sachs from "neutral" to "buy."
Eli Lilly (LLY) up $1.52. First quarter earnings excluding charges for the acquisition of Icos, $0.84 a share, a nickel above the Street estimate and sales were up 14 percent.
Eaton Corp (ETN) up $2.34. First quarter earnings $1.56, up from $1.36 a year ago, $0.15 above the Street consensus. The company boosted 2007 earnings estimates by $0.15 a share up to as high as $6.40.
Fremont General (FMT) gained $1.83 on news it'll sell $2.9 billion in sub-prime residential mortgages to an unnamed buyer and it may sell most of its other real estate business and assets to that same unnamed buyer.
Innkeepers USA Trust (KPA) up $1.51. Apollo Investment Group to acquire it for $17.75 a share.
Fannie Mae (FNM) up $2.98. Bank America upgraded it "neutral" to "buy" on the market share gains it's been making.
And then AK Steel Holding (AKS) up $2.24 on takeover speculation.
NASDAQ's most active, Google (GOOG) up nearly $8. Friday, the company said it plans to acquire Doubleclick for $3.1 billion.
Apple (AAPL) up $1.19.
Cisco Systems (CSCO) a $0.06 loss.
Intel (INTC) $0.23 gain.
Amgen (AMGN) was up $0.62 a share.
Microsoft (MSFT) $0.12 gainer there.
Research in Motion (RIMM) a $0.19 loss.
Medimmune (MEDI) gained $1.25.
Qualcomm (QCOM) up $0.84.
Peoples United Financial (PBCTO) showed no change. It's the first day of trading. It converted from a mutual holding company to a stock holding company as of today.
Aquantive (AQNT) I should say up $3.49. That's in sympathy with Google's buyout offer for Doubleclick and UBS issued a "buy" on Aquantive, $36 a share target.
And then finally Rural Cellular A (RCCC) stock up $3.98. Bear Stearns upgraded it from "peer perform" to "out perform" on the company's turnaround potential. Those are the stocks in the news tonight.
