McClatchy (MNI) Another big newspaper company headed toward liquidation. Drops to $.83 from 52-week high of $13.31.
Markwest Energy (MWE) Downgraded by Morgan Keegan. Drops to $7.36 from 52-week high of $38.50.
ArthroCare (ARTC) May have to restate several years of financials. Sells off to $4.35 from 52-week high of $53.76.
TranSwitch (TXCC) No news, but big sell-off toward the close. Dips to $.22 from 52-week high of $1.15.
Douglas A. McIntyre
The board of AllianceBernstein (AB), controlled by majority shareholder AXA, dumped longtime CEO Lew Sanders. The stock has been way down recently. Over the last year it is off over 70%, but so are peers Legg Mason (LM) and Janus (JNS).
It is understandable that someone had to take the fall, but the man AB brought in does not appear to have a single important qualification for the job.
Sprint (S) is down sharply today, heading toward penny-stock land. Shares are at $1.70, off their 52-week high of $13.90.
Much of the drop is due to its falling cellular subscriber base which contrasts to gains at rivals Verizon Wireless (VOD)(VZ) and AT&T (T). Sprint’s newest trouble could be just as bad.
Henry Paulson has taken a lot of heat for putting TARP funds into big banks and ignoring the needs of homeowners struggle to pay their mortgages. Sheila Bair, head of the FDIC, says that the federal government has to get into the business of lowering interest rates and stretching out payment terms to cut foreclosure rates.
It turns out that Paulson may have the better approach.
J.P. Morgan, the investment banking arm of JPMorgan Chase & Company (NYSE:JPM), plans to acquire the Canadian energy operations and global agricultural business of UBS AG (NYSE:UBS) for an undisclosed amount. The Canadian firm will become an indirect wholly owned subsidiary of J.P. Morgan.
Platts is reporting this morning that the European Commission released its decision this morning regarding the buyout offer from Electricite de France (EDF) for British Energy Group plc, the UK’s largest nuclear generator of electricity. The offer, worth $23 billion when it was first announced in September, has been approved by the Commission provided that EDF meet certain conditions.
By John Tamny RealClearMarkets
When the U.S. Senate blocked Congress’s attempt to save the U.S. carmakers earlier this month, White House spokeswoman Dana Perino made the claim that if federal money wasn’t freed up soon, the United States would no longer have an auto industry.
Good political theater for sure, but even if bankruptcy for the Big Three were to mean that each would vanish, the U.S. would still have a vibrant auto sector–albeit one overseen by foreign carmakers. By Perino’s strict definition, the U.S. also lacks industries that produce televisions, watches and cameras, but near as this writer can tell, there’s been no discernible economic decline as a result.
The ever-weakening economy is driving consumers to lower and lower priced goods. It is called the "trade-down economy" where people buy cheaper goods rather than nothing at all. That is great for the dollar stores. But this morning there was a downgrade of Dollar Tree Inc. (NASDAQ: DLTR) by Goldman Sachs which might raise some eyebrows.
Last August, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) ruled that a proposed coal-fired power plant in Utah did not need to file for a clean-air permit because the emissions from the plant were not regulated pollutants under the Clean Air Act. Carbon dioxide, which all of us expel every time we exhale, is not a pollutant under the EPA regulations. Thus, if a power plant is going to emit carbon dioxide, it’s just breathing.
Palm, Inc. (NASDAQ: PALM) has managed to secure an additional investment from Elevation Partners for $100 million. It is easy to understand why Palm would want the investment, but we’d note that this is a doubling down from Elevation where good money is chasing bad money now that it already owns such a large interest of Palm.
On Friday, it become very apparent to us that the common equity in General Motors (NYSE: GM) will become worthless. We advised shareholders of GM that they have 60 days to sell at whatever price they can. Despite this warning and details from the Treasury’s term-sheet for GM, shares of GM closed up nearly 23%. Absolutely incredible!
Today, Credit Suisse is making a similar case. The firm downgraded GM from Neutral to Underperform and cut the price target to $1, saying the U.S. bailout will mean the complete or near-complete elimination of the existing GM equity. The firm cut their price target from $2 to $1.
SINA Corporation (NASDAQ: SINA) has agreed to buy Focus Media Holding Limited’s (NASDAQ: FMCN) digital out-of-home advertising networks. This will include a LCD display network, a poster frame network and its in-store network. Focus Media will retain its Internet advertising division, the movie theater advertising network portion of its commercial location network, and certain traditional billboards.
It is not a good sign when a company cuts interest rates five times in three months. The government may be sensing more trouble in China than it is letting on.
According to Bloomberg, "The one-year lending rate will drop by 0.27 percentage point to 5.31 percent and the deposit rate by the same amount to 2.25 percent from tomorrow, the People’s Bank of China said."
These are the top analyst upgrades we have seen this Monday morning ahead of the opening bell:
Jon C. Ogg
December 22, 2008
For years, e-commerce was the bright corner of the retail business. Easier to do comparison shopping. No crowds. Free shipping.
This year, online retail is looking a great deal like the mall. Comscore has already cataloged the flattening of e-commerce sales this year compared to last, but the trends of buying online are looking more like what people do when they walk though stores.
These are some of the top pre-market analyst downgrades we have seen early this Monday morning:
Jon C. Ogg
December 22, 2008
It used to be that a large cap stock was defined by S&P as having a market cap of $5 billion. Because of the market drop, they revised that to $4 billion in September and now the figure is going to $3 billion. At the current rate it could be $1 billion by the end of next year.
According to MarketWatch, "These moves reflect the move [in value] in the market," said David Blitzer, managing director and chairman of S&P’s Index Committee. "Had we left the $4 billion requirement for the S&P 500, some companies would’ve had to drop off."
Maybe they should and the S&P 500 could be become the S&P 357.
The number of bailouts is becoming so large that new ones are hardly worth mentioning, But, when the lead story in The Wall Street Journal covers an fresh angle, it is hard to ignore.
According to WSJ.com, "according to research firm Foresight Analytics LCC, $530 billion of commercial mortgages will be coming due for refinancing in the next three years — with about $160 billion maturing in the next year."
Cloud computing has started to pick up some fans. Google (GOOG) markets a lot of the stuff. It allows things like e-mail, documents, and spreadsheets to run on its servers. The PCs at companies don’t have to carry a load and eat up memory. Google’s own computing power handles that.
Other companies are moving into the business, hoping to take software sales away from Microsoft (MSFT) which sells most of its products to be installed on corporate owned and operated machines.
The corporate jet was always a sign that fat cat CEOs were getting special treatment. Some companies even let management fly to vacation spots. Others said their CEOs were at risk for being kidnapped or tarred and feathered. The private plane is a way to avoid that.
Ever since the chiefs of The Big Three flew to Washington, the image of company jets has gotten worse. Why waste shareholder money when executive can fly commercial?
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