If you have used Twitter you either love it or can’t wait to get off it. Social networking meets micro-blogging.
The company just closed on another round of funding, although it basically swears it didn’t need it. Most reports put it at $35 million, and that is after $20 million raised already.
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The debt ratings agencies have been accused of being very late to the party on the financial crisis. But investors still watch the ratings changes from them, particularly when there is an upgrade in the challenging current climate. Today ,S&P raised the ratings of web retail behemoth Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) to “investment grade.”
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Tiffany & Co. (NYSE: TIF) scored the big fish. The luxury jewelry retailer issued notes to Warren Buffett’s via units of Berkshire Hathaway, Inc. (NYSE: BRK-A).
All told, the $789 billion economic stimulus bill contains about $50 billion for renewable energy projects, electric utilities, and other green companies. It’s possible to look at this sum in at least a couple of different ways.
First, the stimulus package is aimed at creating jobs. Some 3-4 million jobs according to President Obama.
There’s a fair amount of interest from green energy market watchers in the battery market. Many see this as the next big thing for energy investors. There are allowances for advanced battery technologies in the new stimulus package. Some of the companies involved in this are established players and some are very speculative.
Some of the companies we have looked at in this sector are Altair Nanotechnologies (NASDAQ:ALTI), privately held A123 Systems Inc., Active Power Inc. (NASDAQ:ACPW), Beacon Power Corporation (NASDAQ:BCON), Exide Technologies (NASDAQ:XIDE), EnerSys (NYSE:ENS), C&D Technologies Inc. (NYSE:CHP), and Axion Power International, Inc. (OTCBB:AXPW).
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Last September OGE Energy Corp. (NYSE:OGE) and Energy Transfer Partners, L.P. (NYSE:ETP) announced a joint venture to transport natural gas from Texas and Oklahoma to California and the northeastern US. It was an ambitious project and would have been a significant player in the gas transportation space.
Alas, the companies have announced that the deal is dead. OGE’s chairman, CEO, and president said that “conditions in the financial markets are such that any partnership completed in the near term would not likely be economically beneficial to OGE.” ETP’s chairman and CEO echoed that sentiment, “We regret that the capital markets have prevented us from accomplishing our plans to combine these businesses in a strategic joint venture.”
If two major energy companies can’t line up the financing they need to form a regulated return business, this is not good news for any company.
Paul Ausick
Tortoise Energy Capital Corp. (NYSE:TYY) has cut its first quarter 2009 distribution from $0.43/share to $0.40/share. For the full year, Tortoise expects to be able to pay investors at least $0.38/share quarterly.
Tortoise Energy Capital is one of four investment vehicles managed by Tortoise Capital Advisors LLC. Each of the others also announced distribution decreases. Tortoise Energy Infrastructure Corp. (NYSE:TYG) decreased distributions by $0.02 to $0.54, and expects at least $0.52 for the rest of 2009. Tortoise North American Energy Corp. (NYSE:TYN) reduced distributions by $0.05/share to $0.37 and expects a floor of $0.36 for the rest of the year. Tortoise Capital Resources Corp. (NYSE:TTO) dropped its distribution by $0.035.
Tortoise Energy Capital’s CEO put it this way, “While we expect the next year to be challenging for almost every industry, including the energy infrastructure sector, we continue to believe the flow of energy commodities remains critical to our economy and that the long term prospects for MLP investments are attractive.”
He’s probably right, but remember Keynes: “In the long term, we’re all dead.”
Paul Ausick
Itron Inc. (NASDAQ: ITRI) is supposed to be one of the winners in the stimulus package. The advanced metering company is known as the Smart Grid meter reader to many traders. The company is involved in metering, data collection and utility software solutions for electric, water, and gas utilities, and it claims nearly 8,000 utilities worldwide as its customer base. This is one of the companies deemed to be a winner under the Obama stimulus package. Where this gets interesting is that Digi International (NASDAQ: DGII), Comverge, Inc. (NASDAQ: COMV), EnerNOC Inc. (NASDAQ:ENOC), and Echelon Corporation (NASDAQ: ELON) are all other smart grid plays and not large caps that have had a rough week in stock prices.
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In this horrible market, dividends have been one of the few saviors for investors. But the latest trend of big-name companies slashing their dividend is concerning. Sadly, this trend will likely grow.
Today it was Dow Chemical (NYSE: DOW), Harley-Davidson, Inc. (NYSE: HOG) and Masco (NYSE: MAS) cutting their dividends. The cuts were likely much anticipated by the market, with dividend yields of 16%, 10% and 12% before the cuts. What is concerning though is that some of these companies were out defending their dividends not too long ago.
It is always heartening to hear the British describe a disaster. Their cool makes it seem as though almost nothing had happened.
In the UK, shares of Lloyds shed a third of their value after it said the financial firm, HBOS which it purchased last year, would lose 12.3 billion before taxes in 2008.
The head of Llyods commented “Whilst we recognize that the short term outlook is more challenging, Lloyds Banking Group has the largest U.K. financial services franchise, with excellent long-term earnings potential.”
It sounded as if the bank had made a record profit. Read More
These are some of the top pre-market analyst calls we have seen this Friday morning…. Friday the 13th:
Jon C. Ogg
February 13, 2009
Instead of keeping his opinions to himself, the head of the IMF decided to pass along depressing news as Europe released several pieces of downbeat data including poor results for EU Q4 GDP.
“The problem is that the effect on the real economy, for the most part, is still to come,” Strauss-Kahn told IMF Survey, an internal online publication, Reuters reports.
Douglas A. McIntyre
GM (GM) and Ford (F) each used to have remarkably profitable European operations. A large part of their annual net income came from the region.
Now, it looks like auto sales in the EU are getting as bad as they are in the US. According to the AP, “New car sales in Europe plummeted 27 percent in January from a year earlier, sinking to the lowest level in two decades.”
Douglas A. McIntyre
To cut down on the numbers of stores without Windows in the US, Microsoft (MSFT) is launching its own retail outlets. Given the size of its customer base, it would seem to be like going after an elephant with a BB gun.
At first glance, the shops would seem to be a good place to sell the Xbox Zune, and handsets that operate on the Windows mobile OS. Read More
It the race to give shareholders good returns and keep profits high, companies are often faced with whether or not to change the marketing and pricing of valuable brands. It creates a risk.
Mercedes started to make fairly inexpensive cars after its merger with Chrysler two decades ago. The quality of the luxury auto brand suffered and it took Mercedes years to recover from the decision. Read More
The quickest way to help the auto industry would be to make sure that no one in the US defaults on a car loan. Certainly the government could make sure that people who are employed and do not have a history of being deadbeats get a portion of their car loans paid. When cars are repossessed and go onto the market to be sold as “used” it drives down the entire market for similar vehicles. A surfeit of well-maintained cars available at prices well below new ones undermines the ability of Detroit to get its sales back up without having to offer incentives. Read More
Retail sales for January were better than expected, up 1%. Surprising news often leaves people addled. They look for some reason that the facts are different than were expected and often head off in the wrong direction. Retail sales did not fall because retailers are offering unprecedented discounts to keep people coming to their stores. The consumer may be at death’s door but he can still appreciate a bargain. Read More
According to Reuters, Obama is working on a program to help some homeowners pay their mortgages.
Reuters reports that Wall St’s appetite to slim down perks will begin to face tests.
Reuters reports that a reports shows that troubled US banks more require more capital than is widely believed. Read More
Markets in Asia were higher.
The Nikkei rose 1% to 7,779.
The Hang Seng was up 2.2% to 13,527.
The Shanghai Composite rose 3.2% to 2,321.
In Europe, at the open, the FTSE was up 1.1%. to 4,260. The Dax rose 1.2% to 4,460. The CAC 40 was up 1.5% to 3,010.
Douglas A. McIntyre
It makes some perverse sense. The New York Times (NYT) business section is running ads for “Signs of bipolar disorder” placed there through its text marketing relationship with Google (GOOG). The Times would be better off blocking the ads than taking the modest sum of money it is getting. Running the message is a sign that no appropriate marketer was willing to spend money on its Web site. Read More
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