Paul Kangas' Stocks in the News
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
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PAUL KANGAS: Wall Street opened sharply higher in response to Warren Buffett's offer to reinsure municipal bonds, while the Treasury's mortgage rescue plan also helped the Dow soar 210 points by mid-day, with the NASDAQ Composite up 30 points. The rally was further fueled by better than expected results from General Motors, which we'll detail shortly. By mid- afternoon the gains however were too tempting to resist some profit-taking, so, while the market ended higher, it was well below the day's best level. The Dow Industrial Average closed up 133.40 at 12,373.41. NASDAQ ended down just .02 at 2,320.04. Standard & Poor's 500 Index rose 9.73 ending at 1,348.86. In the bond market, the 10-year note fell 11/32 to 98 21/32, putting the yield at 3.66 percent.
New York exchange volume leader on nearly 25 million shares, Citigroup (C) moving up $0.40. Followed by Ford Motor Co (F) a $0.07 gain.
Bank of America (BAC), which will soon be a Dow stock, a $0.68 rise there.
American Intl Group (AIG) rebounding $1.40 after dropping nearly $6 yesterday on fear that the derivatives the company owns could result in huge write offs, but today, the company calmed investors, saying the size of any write down was not expected to be material to the company.
Pfizer (PFE) $0.48 gain there.
Moving along in the active list, we see General Electric (GE) with a $0.36 advance.
Time Warner (TWX) rose $0.59.
Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) $0.25 gain.
JPMorgan Chase (JPM) down $0.04.
And then AT&T (T) closed with a $0.64 per share gain.
ExxonMobil (XOM) up $1.16. Analysts have been doubting whether Venezuela will cut oil shipments to the United States because it hurt more in Venezuela than it would here. But late today, Venezuela's state oil company suspended oil exports to ExxonMobil in retaliation for that company's freezing billions of Venezuela's assets in the United States in quite a legal fight that's going on.
Schering-Plough (SGP) was up $1.21. Fourth quarter earnings excluding one-time items, $0.27, up from $0.17 a year ago, $0.03 above the Street estimate. The company cited strong sales of its product called Zetia.
3M Co (MMM) down $0.18, even though it's boosting its quarterly dividend by 4.2 percent to $0.50 a share.
Monsanto (MON) up $1.02. The company boosted its 2008 earnings guidance from a high of $2.60 a share up to $2.80 a share at best.
Masco (MAG) down $2.39. The building products company had fourth quarter operating earnings drop to only $0.19 from $0.35 last year. That's $0.09 below the Street estimate. Sales fell almost 8 percent. Standard & Poor's 500, Standard & Poor's I should say, downgraded the stock from "buy" to an outright "sell."
And Dycom Industries (DY) plunging $8.01. After the close yesterday, the company said it sees second quarter earnings of only $0.03 to $0.04 a share and that's $0.11 to $0.12 below the company's guidance way back in November.
Berkshire "A" (BRKA), the expensive one, the A stock, down $250 a share to $139,700, negative reaction to Ambac's withdrawing or not interested in the help that they could get from Berkshire Hathaway.
MBIA (MBI) is down $2.08. The fact is that Warren Buffett's terms might be a little bit too tough and he'll do better than the bond insurers. Apparently that's the concern.
Moving along, we see Evercore Partners (EVR) up $1.60. The merger advisory firm had fourth quarter earnings of only $0.25, down from $0.69 a year ago, but that was $0.02 above the Street estimate.
Stifel Financial (SF) up $5.31. Fourth quarter adjusted earnings $1.14, well above the $0.83 Wall Street estimate.
And GMH Communities (GCI) a $3.08. America Campus Community will acquire the company in a two-part transaction worth $9.61 a share in cash and stock.
Volume leader on NASDAQ, Apple (AAPL) down $4.59.
Followed by Google (GOOG) down $3.07.
Baidu.com (BIDU) off $1.28.
Research in Motion (RIMM) down $2.97. The company's investigating the source of yesterday's Blackberry outage and it seems to be a routine upgrade of a data routing system is the cause.
Microsoft (MSFT) a $0.13 gain. That was fifth in NASDAQ volume.
First Solar (FSLR) down $14.08.
Cisco Systems (CSCO) $0.09 drop there.
$0.30 loss in Yahoo! (YHOO).
Intel (INTC) moved up $0.22.
And Qualcomm (QCOM) $0.92 loss, tenth in big board volume.
Electronic Arts (ERTS) up $2.50 a share. The company sees revenues by 2011 around the $6 billion annual mark.
And finally, shares in NxStage Medical (NXTM) plunged $4.26 after posting a wider than expected fourth quarter loss of $0.47 a share versus a loss of $0.37 per share a year ago.
