Paul Kangas' Stocks in the News
Tuesday, June 05, 2007
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PAUL KANGAS: Wall Street this morning chose to focus on the negatives in the Bernanke speech, especially his comment that core inflation may not recede for some time. That was enough to send a market overdue for a correction, down 109 Dow points by mid-day with the NASDAQ Index off 21 points. Stocks remained under pressure after a strong May services sector report pushed interest rates higher, but some late bargain hunting trimmed the market's closing losses. The Dow Industrial Average still ended down 80.86 points at 13,595.46. The NASDAQ Composite lost 7.06 ending at 2611.23. Standard & Poor's 500 Index down 8.23 at 1530.95. Over in the bond market, the 10-year note fell 17/32 to 96 5/32, lifting the yield to 5 percent.
Most active New York exchange issue on 20.2 million shares, Pfizer (PFE) moving down $0.24.
Then Solectron (GLR) a $0.14 loss. Solectron is being acquired by Flextronics for $3.89 a share in cash or about a third of a share of Flextronics, which today would be worth $3.75. General Electric (GE) in there with a $0.41 loss.
Then came Avaya (AV) up $0.31. DBG (ph) Capital and Silverlake Partners, private equity firms, will acquire Avaya for $17.50 a share in cash.
Wal-Mart Stores (WMT) was down $0.69.
ExxonMobil (XOM) a $0.04.
Anheuser Busch (BUD) rose $.51. The "New York Post" reported Pershing Square capital has raised $2 billion for targeting a shareholder activism assault to get the company to enhance shareholder value through a shake up of several divisions, possibly the sale of one.
Micron Tech (MU) down $0.12.
Ford Motor Co (F) edged $0.04 higher.
And then came Time Warner (TWX) with a $0.13 loss.
Dow Chemical (DOW) edged up $0.63. Lehman Brothers upgraded the stock from "neutral" to "over weight" and boosted its price target from $40 to $55 a share.
Hasbro (HAS) down $0.80, traded as low as $31.38 after JPMorgan today downgraded it from "neutral" to "under weight" in the belief the stock is expensive on the basis of near-term fundamentals.
Financial Federal (FIF) a gain of $1.26. Third quarter earnings rose to $0.48 from $0.42 a year ago and the company also plans to buy back $50 million of its own stock.
Brown Forman "A" (BFA), this is the liquor distiller, up $2.90. Fourth quarter earnings $0.56, down from $0.61 a year ago, but $0.06 above the Street consensus and the company's forecasting a better than expected 2008 result.
Air France-KLM (AKH) down $1.79. European airlines were generally weak today after a discount carrier, Ryan Air, warned that its profit growth is slowing down.
Briggs & Stratton (BGG) fell $1.04. Raymond James financial brokerage downgraded it to just a "market performer."
And then General Mills (GIS) off $2.07. Bear Stearns downgraded it to "peer perform" from "out perform" on valuation. Incidentally, General Mills plans to boost cereal prices single digits right across the board.
Google (GOOG) topped the NASDAQ active list with a gain of $11.77 to a new record closing high.
Apple (AAPL) up $1.34.
Amazon.com (AMZN) gained $3.23. CEO Jeff Bezos told reporters than Amazon is going to boost its competitive efforts in China, which is its fastest growing market.
Cisco Systems (CSCO) in their with a $0.19 gain.
Followed by Microsoft (MSFT) which lost $0.14.
Then Intel (INTC) $0.20 loss.
Sun Micro (SUNW) a $0.04 drop.
Qualcomm (QCOM) up $0.31.
Research in Motion (RIMM) gained $0.45.
And Amgen (AMGN) was up $0.70 a share.
Bed Bath & Beyond (BBBY) losing $2.20. The company said it will have a shortfall in first quarter earnings and it'll be around $0.36 to $0.38. Wall Street estimate has been $0.39 a share and Goldman Sachs downgraded it from "buy" to "neutral."
Openwave Systems (OPWV) off $1.65. The company rejected a 40 million share tender offer from Harbinger Capital Fund.
Over on the American Exchange, Graham Corp (GHM) up $5.03. The heat transfer equipment manufacturer had fourth quarter earnings that jumped to $0.86 versus $0.25 a year ago and sales were up a hefty 31 percent.
And finally, shares in Inovio (INO) tumbled $1.23 after the company halted further patient enrollments in phase three studies for its head and neck cancer treatment on a recommendation from the trial's monitoring committee.
