Fannie Mae (NYSE:FNM) recorded a net loss of $18.9 billion for the third quarter of 2009. Including $883 million in dividends on the senior preferred stock, the net loss attributable to common stockholders was $19.8 billion, or $3.47 per diluted share.
For the third quarter of 2008, the net loss was $29.0 billion, and the net loss attributable to common stockholders was $29.4 billion, or $13.00 per diluted share. Read More
Starbucks (NASDAQ:SBUX) posted good earnings . Revenue for the quarter ending September 28, 2009 was $2.4 billion compared to $2.5 billion in the same quarter. For the period, EPS was $.20 compared to $.01 last year.
The news that heartened investors was that Starbucks CFO said “we are increasing our non-GAAP EPS outlook for fiscal year 2010 to a range of 15% to 20% growth over fiscal 2009.” Read More
CareFusion Corp. (NYSE: CFN) rose over 6% to a yearly hight of $24.34 after reporting first quarter earnings of 39 cents per share, beating analyst estimates. The company also increased its earnings forecast for next year.
Viacom Inc. (NYSE: VIA) rose close to 4% to a yearly high of $31.63, continuing its rise following its earnings release. The company posted a 15% increase in profits, to 76 cents per share.
Garrett W. McIntyre
The government’s many programs to keep the number of mortgage defaults from growing has grown by one. The new Dead for Lease program will allow some homeowners who face foreclosure to turn their homes over to Fannie Mae (NYSE:FNM) then rent them for a year with month-to-month extensions. It is not predictable what the level of fraud in a program of this kind will be, but it is likely to be high. Fannie Mae could end up with a number of houses with no tenants or sub-tenants which have been surreptitiously been moved in Read More
i2 Technologies Inc. (NASDAQ: ITWO) is a supply chain management company which has been a takeout stock before. Turns out that is again. In a complicated transaction, JDA Software Group Inc. (NASDAQ: JDAS) will pay some $34 million all said and done in a deal that values the company at $18.00. This was also an unlikely transportation stock, despite it being a software play, which we picked earlier as one which could double. It has doubled and then some.
GM has decided to keep its European operations, Opel and Vauxhall. Now, it has to figure out how to pay for them.
Opel owes the German government over $1.3 billion in bridge financing. It may have that on its balance sheet. What it does not have is the capital needed to restructure operations and carry the operation through a recession in the auto industry that is likely to last at least another year.
Of course, the US taxpayers could be a source of Opel bailout money, and probably will be. Read More
Trusting analyst estimates on penny stocks and cult stocks is a tricky business. But SIRIUS XM Radio Inc.(NASDAQ: SIRI) is trading up on heavy volume after its earnings this morning. The satellite radio monopoly had a 27% revenue gain to $618.7 million, which included some of the XM Radio gains from the merger. Earnings were a net loss of $149.2 million or -$0.04 EPS, but this included a charge of $138 million. If you back out the charges and items, SIRIUS managed a non-GAAP $106 million profit vs a non-GAAP loss of $37 million a year ago. On an EPS basis, that would break-even. The estimates from Thomson Reuters were -$0.02 non-GAAP EPS and $608.7 million in revenue.
Read More
Updated throughout the day.
The New York Yankee victory in the World Series could help stock prices (various)
Oracle (NASDAQ:ORCL) could drop its deal to buy Sun (NASDAQ:JAVA) in the face of opposition to the deal from the EU. (Forbes)
Bank of America (NYSE:BAC) may look outside the banking sector for a new CEO. (The Street.com)
Dell (NASDAQ:DELL) may have taken billions of dollars in marketing payments from Intel (NASDAQ:INTC) (BusinessWeek)
Congress may force ISPs to block fraud sites (CNET)
Seven more Wall St. brokers will be charged with insider trading today according to FBI and SEC sources (WNBC)
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Douglas A. McIntyre
We have just seen the weekly jobless claims data, and it gets scary when you consider the readings seen from workforce productivity and unit labor costs. It seems as though employers are driving up output and slashing wages or slashing the overall cost associated with labor.
The Labor Department has just released its weekly jobless claims and that was a drop of some 20,000 to 512,000. This is a head in the right direction if it can continue, but this 500,000 barrier is still just like the sound barrier for the first test pilots after World War II. Bloomberg had consensus economist predictions right at 523,000. Last week’s unrevised data was put at 530,000 and that was revised to 532,000. The army of unemployed measured by the continuing jobless claims dropped again to 5.749 million. The wild card in the continuing claims will be over efforts and approvals made of late to extend the terms of unemployment benefits.
But elsewhere it seems that employers are able to take more blood from the same stones. Q3 worker productivity rose by +9.5%, but the unit labor costs fell by -5.2%. It seems that the companies are able to have the whip-masters patrolling the workplace floors. The question comes down to whether you believe the productivity and costs figures. Either way, that direction cannot continue indefinitely.
JON C. OGG
These are this mornings top analyst upgrades, downgrades, and initiations seen early this Thursday from Wall Street research calls:
Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (BRK-A) was put on CreditWach (negative) on Wednesday afternoon, which would take the AAA away to match where Moody’s already is.
Comcast (CMCSA) Cut to Hold at Collins Stewart.
Medtronic (MDT) Raised to Outperform at Credit Suisse.
Molson Coors (TAP) Cut to Neutral at Goldman Sachs.
NovaVax (NVAX) Started as Buy at Merriman Curhan.
SourceForge (LNUX) Cut to Neutral at Merriman.
THQ Inc. (THQI) Cut to Hold at Deutsche Bank.
YM BioSciences (YMI) Started as Buy at Merriman Curhan.
You can join our open email distribution list to get updates on top analyst upgrades and downgrades, top day trader alerts, IPO’s, secondary offerings, Warren Buffett and other guru activity, M&A and more.
JON C. OGG
Angelo Mozilo, the former CEO of Countrywide Financial which was bought by Bank of America (NYSE:BAC), tried to get out of facing government fraud charges, US District Judge John Walter told Mozilo that he will indeed stand trial despite his efforts to get the case dismissed.
The SEC case against Mozilo seems simple. He knew that his company was in financial trouble but sold stock in Countrywide and made $140 million. Those charges may be hard to prove. Read More
Almost no one expected any of the world’s largest car companies to make money this year. Sales around the globe are simply down too much and efforts to cut costs have not been enough to match the drop-off in revenue.
Ford (NYSE:F) shocked Wall St. by making almost $1 billion in the third quarter. Even more of a surprise, it made money in its flagging North American operations.
A second surprise profit was posted today, by the world’s largest car company, Toyota (NYSE:TM) Read More
There has been plenty of evidence that firms like Goldman Sachs (NYSE:GS) have had such huge profits that their bonus payouts may be at all-time highs.
The federal government has systematically begun to control bank pay packages. The Treasury “pay czar” is effectively controlling compensation at companies which still owe TARP money. The Fed is pressuring other large financial firms to tie pay to risk.
None of those efforts seems to be working well because bankers are ignoring the signals from Washington. Read More
The private equity business has been unkind to the firms that have done the largest LBO deals of the last year. That only makes sense. Leverage has been beaten down by the recession. PE firms assumed that large debt loads would be paid down from cash flow at the companies that they bought. Those assumptions did not forecast the worst recession in seven decades.
New Moody’s data shows that the ten largest private equity deals of all time are performing worse than comparable companies that were not bought out. Read More
It is only natural to think that the rising number of people who are on cellphones and the internet for hours a day would be less likely to interact with the people around them. Focusing on web surfing would seem to pull people away from their immediate surrounding.
The case for the internet as a method of social isolation had a hole poked in it by the esteemed Pew research organization. In a new survey, it found that “Some have worried that internet use limits people’s participation in their local communities, but we find that most internet activities have little or a positive relationship to local activity.” That may be counterintuitive, but it makes an odd sort of sense. Read More
Reuters: Toyota (NYSE:TM) returned to a profit.
Reuters: The Fed will keep rates near zero for an extended period.
Reuters: Cisco (NASDAQ:CSCO) beat forecasts.
Reuters: Gold is near $1,100. Read More
Markets in Asia were mixed.
The Nikkei fell 1.3% to 9,747. Sony (NYSE:SNE) fell.
The Hang Seng was down .6% to 21,479.
The Shanghai Composite rose .7% to 3,156.
At the open in Europe, the FTSE was down .9% to 5,059. The Dax dropped 1.2% to 5,381. Deutsche Telekom (NYSE:DT) rose. The CAC 40 was off 1.1% to 3,631. BNP Paribas (NYSE:BNP) was up.
Data from Reuters and MarketWatch.
Douglas A. McIntyre
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