A new study by CoreBrand sets values on  the relationships between brand equity and market cap among large American companies and the research points to two conclusions. The first is that iconic brands are critical to the stock market value of the firms that own them. Hershey (NYSE:HSY) ranked first in the CoreBrands study followed by Coca-Cola (NYSE:KO) and Campbell Soup (NYSE:CPB) have spent billions of dollars to build brands which are universally recognized. The second is that weak companies with low market caps may find that their tattered brands make up an especially large part of their fallen share prices. This is probably because their companies are worth so little. Blockbuster (NYSE:BBI) and Harley-Davidson (NYSE:HOG) fall into this category.

The list:

We have covered these with an outlook for what lies ahead for each these companies in their dividend rates and as a starting point for other big companies we think will hike their dividends.

Archer Daniels Midland Company (NYSE: ADM) continued with its policy of an annual dividend hike.  The new dividend of $0.15 is up from $0.14 per quarter.  We went back to see its policy of dividend hikes, and this has gone on for years.  The yield based on Friday’s price is 1.96%, which some sites are rounding up to 2.00%.  There is more than enough dividend coverage, and as far as whether the dividend hikes will continue… let’s just say that ADM could probably double its dividend in the coming years.  At $30.61, its 52-week trading range is $23.13 to $33.00.

Boardwalk Pipeline Partners, LP (NYSE: BWP) is another recent distribution increase from late last week.  As a reminder and as with the field of LPs in oil and gas, this is a distribution rather than just an outright dividend.  It may seem odd that a natural gas interstate pipeline sees enough clarity to hike a distribution after the volatility we have seen in the Nat-Gas markets, but this actually just brings the dividend closer to the distribution yields of many oil and gas pipeline LP peers.  This bump from $0.48 to $0.50 per quarter gives an implied yield of 6.9%.  At $28.99, its 52-week range is $19.15 to $31.44.

Colgate-Palmolive Co. (NYSE: CL) is an easy dividend hike because its consumer products make it close to recession-proof.  The surprise wasn’t that a dividend hike came, it was by how much.  The bump was 20% to $0.53 per quarter.  We have over a decade of dividend hikes here and this is actually not the highest payout raise.  Also announced was a 40 million share buyback plan, which comes to about 8% of the outstanding shares.  The new yield is 2.67% and at $79.26 it has a 52-week trading range of $54.51 to $87.39.

Hasbro Inc. (NYSE: HAS) has decided that the toy business is likely to hold its own, and that the company can hold its own in a competitive field.  It raised its dividend by a surprising 25% to $0.25 per quarter.  The new effective yield is now 3.25% At $30.80, its 52-week trading range is $21.14 to $32.75.  The company still has more than ample dividend coverage, and this may put pressure on Mattel to bump its annual dividend later this year.

Hershey Co. (NYSE: HSY) may have been an obvious dividend hike.  After all the noise that was made over whether it would or could participate in a Cadbury-Kraft deal and after being classified as a dead money stock for years this just made sense. This brings up the issue that the company might not be about to pounce on another opportunity despite the company’s intention to look formergers.  Its quarterly dividend will now be $0.32 per quarter for a 3.45% (3.427% actually).  It had paid $0.298 per quarter over the last ten quarters.  At $37.35, its 52-week trading range is $30.27 to $42.25.  Five years ago this was a $60 stock.

L-3 Communications Holdings Inc. (NYSE: LLL) is not a usual stock to visit for dividend hikes in the minds of most investors, at least not on the surface. The defense sector company is into surveillance and reconnaissance systems.  The amount the dividend was raised also seems high as it was a 14% payout boost to $0.40 per quarter from $0.35.  The company has actually been raising its dividend by a handy amount for what is effectively each of the last six years.  After looking at an $8.15 expected earnings per share figure for 2010, there is no reason to believe that the payout growth is going to slow down.  There is also still much room to catch up to some aerospace/defense sector peers.  The new yield is 1.9% based on an $84.24 share price, and the 52-week trading range is $57.12 to $90.36.

Time Warner Inc. (NYSE: TWX) may be in a nomans land when it comes to analyzing dividends now that it has spun AOL out of its operations.  But the media giant hiked its dividend by about 13% to $0.2125 per quarter for an annual $0.85 payout.  At $27.03, the yield here is now 3.1%.  We also have an adjusted 52-week trading range of $17.81 to $32.85.  We’ll have to double-check this, but that 3.1% looks like a sector high for dividend yields.

The obvious notion here is that many companies are hiking their payoutd.  This might not be a return to the gold boom days, but companies are lifting their payouts now.  Stay tuned Monday for our new list of large companies we expect to making big dividend hikes this year.  You can also join our free email distribution list that goes out each morning with key analyst calls, day trader alerts, dividend changes, IPOs and secondary offering, Buffett and other guru news, and more.

JON C. OGG

Alcoa, Inc. (NYSE: AA) Raised to Market Perform from Underperform at BMO Capital.
American Express (NYSE: AXP) Raised to Neutral from Sell at Ladenberg Thalmann.
Amylin Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: AMLN) Raised to Buy at Citigroup.
Applied Materials (NASDAQ: AMAT) Raised to Outperform at Oppenheimer.
Blue Nile (NASDAQ: NILE) Started as Hold at Benchmark.
Cisco Systems (NASDAQ: CSCO) Reiterated Hold at Auriga.
Eaton Corp. (NYSE: ETN) Raised to Buy at KeyBanc.
Huntington Bancshares (NASDAQ: HBAN) Raised to Outperform at Oppenheimer.
Hershey Co. (NYSE: HSY) Reinstated as Conviction Sell at Goldman Sachs.
Johnson Controls (NYSE: JCI) Cut to Neutral at UBS.
Juniper Networks (NASDAQ: JNPR) Reiterated Sell at Auriga.
KeyCorp (NYSE: KEY) Raised to Outperform at Oppenheimer.
Lexmark International (NYSE: LXK) Raised to Overweight at Barclays.
Limited Brands (NYSE: LTD) Raised to Outperform at BMO Capital.
PNC Financial (NYSE: PNC) Raised to Outperform at Oppenheimer.
Texas Instruments (NYSE: TXN) Reiterated Sell at Auriga; yet Maintained Buy at Broadpoint AmTech.

You are invited to join our free daily email distribution list to hear about top analyst upgrades and downgrades, IPOs and secondary offerings, ongoing day trader and options trader alerts, stock and market rumors, Buffett and guru investor news, M&A and more.

JON C. OGG

Reuters:   Under the new Obama proposal, banks may drop private equity assets.

Reuters:   Hershey (NYSE:HSY) will not make a counter bid for Cadbury (NYSE:CBY)

Reuters:   Toyota (NYSE:TM) upped its recall to 2.3 vehicles.

Reuters:   Google’s (NYSE:GOOG) profits rose, but revenue missed some forecasts.

Reuters:   American Express (NYSE:AXP) beat forecasts as did AMD (NYSE:AMD).

WSJ:   NBC (NYSE:GE) is moving quickly to rework its prime time line up.

WSJ:   Bernanke faces a Senate vote for confirmation which may be tight.

WSJ:   Target (NYSE:TGT) will cut new store expansion.

WSJ:   Losses from Fannie Mae (NYSE:FNM) and Freddie Mac (NYSE:FRE) could hit the US deficit.

WSJ:   Nokia (NYSE:NOK) will offer free GPS on many models.

WSJ:   GE (NYSE:GE) is struggling as its status drops from admired conglomerate to a cause for concern on Wall St.

NYT:   The Treasury may try to improve a program that fights foreclosures.

FT:   Obama declared war on Wall St.

FT:   Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) will try to stay in China.

Bloomberg:   The Obama banking legislation proposals might force Goldman Sachs (NYSE:GS) and JPMorgan (NYSE:JPM) to close their buyout operations.

Douglas A. McIntyre

Reuters:   Republican Scott Brown won the Senate race in Massachusetts putting the Obama healthcare proposal at risk.

Reuters:   The government made banks pay more than the face value for warrants which it received as part of the TARP funding.

Reuters:   China is putting a brake on bank lending.

Reuters:   Unemployment will be high in many cities through 2013.

Reuters:   The Fed defended its actions in the AIG (NYSE:AIG) rescue and said it welcomes an inquiry.

Reuters:   IBM (NYSE:IBM) raised guidance but investors remained concerned.

Reuters:   Schwab (NASDAQ:SCHW) and TD Ameritrade (NASDAQ:AMTD) posted low earnings and asked investors to be patient as interest rates rise and traders come back into the market.

WSJ:   AIG (NYSE:AIG) is close to selling one of its units to MetLife (NYSE:MET) for $14 billion to $15 billion, which would give the New York Fed $9 billion to pay back loans.

WSJ:   Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) delayed the launch of its handsets in China.

WSJ:   Toyota (NYSE:TM) is seeking lithium to supply its electric engines.

WSJ:   Chevron (NYSE:CVX) will cut refining jobs.

WSJ:   Baidu (NASDAQ:BIDU) faulted Register.com for some of the hacking of the Chinese company’s systems

WSJ:   Chinese homegrown movies are starting to win away consumers of Western films.

WSJ:   Homebuilders say they expect a building recovery this year.

WSJ:   Hershey (NYSE:HSY) has limited options to operate on its own.

WSJ:   Omega 3 fatty acids have been linked to longevity.

WSJ:   Banks are being forced to put more money into faltering real estate projects or shut them down.

NYT:   When children are awake, they are usually online.

NYT:   Sony (NYSE:SNE) delayed the launch of its motion controller until fall.

NYT:   The Senate is considering dropping the consumer protection agency.

NYT:   CEO Pandit is running out of time to clean up Citigroup (NYSE:C)

NYT:   The FHA will raise standard  for mortgage insurance.

NYT:   The IMF sees global growth above 3% this year.

NYT:   There is evidence that the cyber attack on Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) was based on technical data from China.

FT:   Some analysts say that the Fed made a “killing” on AIG (NYSE:AIG) CDO contracts.

Douglas A. McIntyre

It was never about the strategic fit that Cadbury’s board flaunted as a reason to stay independent. It was never about Cadbury’s rosy forecasts or Kraft’s less robust picture of the future. It was never about a white knight bid from Hershey (NYSE:HSY) or about Kraft heeding the wishes of one of its largest shareholder, Warren Buffett, not to pay a huge premium for the UK company.

The deal came just ahead of a deadline set by the UK government for Kraft to make its final offer and just as Hershey was prepared to make an offer of its own.

Part of what pushed Kraft to a higher offer was news interviews with several of Cadbury’s largest shareholders. They “set the price” in public by making it plain at what amount they would sell their stock.

The success of the deal is based on what most deals are–synergy. Kraft CEO Irene Rosenfeld had better watch her step. Many deals that have started with synergy as their presiding purpose ended up in tangles of political infighting and layoffs that kill morale in the wrong part of the new company. One has to only look at Alcatel-Lucent and Time Warner-AOL to see how deeply flawed mergers based on synergy can be.

Kraft assumes that access to Cadbury’s overseas markets will help it improve its revenue abroad. That is based on the belief, of course, that people in India and China will like Kraft products. They may not like them at all.

The cash part of the Cadbury buyout is 500 pence of the total 840 pence per share offer. That loads enough debt on the new company to cause a great deal of stress if the global recovery does not continue at a healthy pace.

Kraft got the prize but will rue what it paid.

Douglas A. McIntyre

There are far more issues to consider for the week, but this is a start.  We’ll be doing more detailed earnings previews in groups during the week.

Acorda Therapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ: ACOR) has an FDA deadline of January 22 for an FDA decision of the drug Famipridine-SR developed along with Biogen Idec (NASDAQ: BIIB).  This is the MS drug aimed at helping MS patients in their walking.  Acorda received a delay on this event before in October until the Jan. 22 date, which temporarily caused a large and fast dip in the stock that shares have since recovered from.  For whatever this is worth, Acorda’s active FEB10 options have an open interest of more than 7,400 contracts in the CALLS and an open interest right at 20,000 contracts in the PUTS; and the short interest has come down a bit to just over 3 million shares if the preliminary January data has remained steady.

Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) is not on the earnings deck this week, but there are more rumors out there regarding this week’s data showing more of the Mac tablet.  Macrumors.com even noted a touchscreen Mac with an 18″ screen coming later in the year.  Frankly, we are getting tired and tired of hearing about this tablet.  It is obvious as hell that the company is going to launch one, but if it doesn’t jump forward then other PC makers are going to preempt it and get theirs out ahead of Apple.  It is time to see and touch this product.

The Blackstone Group, LP (NYSE: BX) is likely to have an IPO for its majority-owned Travelport Ltd.  This is the travel reservation and booking operations (with Galileo and Worldspan brands) that is set to announce plans to raise about 1.2 billion Pounds (close to $1.95 billion U.S. Dollars) in a London Stock Exchange IPO.  This will help to pay down more than $3 billion in debt from the company after Blackstone and co-investors paid some $4.3 billion in 2006, and the Orbits IPO has already happened.

Phillip Morris International (NYSE: PMI) may be one to watch for exposure to China.  China is said to finally be making good on a promise to cut smoking in public with a public building smoking ban in 7 of the nation’s capitals with promises to clamp down more.  PMI has a venture with China National Tobacco to increase production and market share in China and China is the world’s largest tobacco market.  Bans in the U.S. and Europe have had far less impact than many thought it would against the tobacco companies, but that fear is there that smoking will ultimately be less and less prevalent if they limit the number of places you can smoke.

Verizon Communications Inc. NYSE: VZ) and AT&T Inc. (NYSE: T) are entering into a price war which may be a no-win scenario for any carrier and a drag on smartphone maker margins.  Most unlimited voice and data plans for top smartphones will now be closer to $100 per month, down from about $130 now.  This may be ‘another price war round of cuts’ rather than something that is exactly new, but this creates the great race to zero by our count.

Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (NYSE: BRK-A) (NYSE: BRK-B) is doing another deal, although this one may not have any major impact other than showing that Warren Buffett doesn’t mind making sure that Berkshire Hathaway stays dominant in the insurance and financial sector.  Swiss Re is getting about $1.27 billion from Buffett by transferring part of Swiss Re’s life insurance operations n the United States over to Berkshire Hathaway.

The business world is getting high on chocolate.  A bidding war for the sake of their being a bidding war is ensuing over Cadbury plc (NYSE: CBY).  Weekend reports have Hershey Co. (NYSE: HSY) planning to leverage itself to the hilt.  The family trust controlled company is said to be about to offer at least $17.9 billion next week for Cadbury in an effort to top the Kraft Foods Inc. (NYSE: KFT) offer of $17.2 billion.  That would put Hershey’s price  offer in a range of 800 to 820 pence per the WSJ, over the implied 770 pence per share offer currently on the table from Kraft.  Here is the problem with Hershey doing this, they think it is the financial world of 2006 to 2007 where using leverage is a norm.  This will include a loan of at least $10 billion (WSJ noted from J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. and Bank of America Merrill Lynch) and is likely to include $5 billion in newly issued Hershey shares and $3 billion or more from private investors and the Hershey trust.  Meanwhile, there are no assurances that THIS deal will get approved either as the CEO of Cadbury has already signaled that he believes shares will rise to more than 1,000 pence over the next three years.  Meanwhile, Kraft has a Tuesday deadline of deciding to hike its offer to Cadbury.  Hershey shareholders will get to decide if this over-leveraging of the business is the right move after shares have been cut in nearly half over the last five years and have been dead-money for the last two years without all the new leverage.

We could see a lowering of bias on revenues after JPMorgan for banks and brokers this week with a huge onslaught of financial firms reporting earnings.  This week’s top bank and financial earnings are as follows:

• Citigroup Inc. (NYSE: C) is Tuesday morning and estimates are -$0.33 EPS and $18.43 billion in revenue.
• Wednesday is Bank of America Corporation (NYSE: BAC) and estimates are -$0.52 EPS and $26.84 billion in revenue.
• Wednesday is also Wells Fargo & Co. (NYSE: WFC) and estimates are -$0.02 EPS and $21.88 billion in revenue.
• Thursday is Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (NYSE: GS) and estimates here are $5.19 EPS and $9.75 billion in revenue.

You are invited to join our free daily email distribution list to hear about top analyst upgrades and downgrades, IPOs and secondary offerings, ongoing day trader and options trader alerts, stock and market rumors, Buffett and guru investor news, M&A and more.

JON C. OGG

Updated 1.14 PM EST  Leap Wireless (NASDAQ:LEAP) may have hired a banker to put itself on the block (Barron’s)

Updated 1.14 PM  Oracle (NASDAQ:ORCL) may fire 50% of the workforce at Sun.

Wall St. bankers made $145 billion last year (WSJ)

Motorola (NYSE:MOT) no longer plans to break itself up (WSJ)

MGM plans to move ahead with an IPO of its Macau operations. (NYTimes)

Citigroup (NYSE:C) plans to cap bonuses at $100,000. (FT)

Hershey (NYSE:HSY) is pressing its bid to make an offer for Cadbury (NYSE:CBY)  (Bloomberg)

UBS (NYSE:UBS), Credit Suisse (NYSE:CS), and Julius Baer may have lost almost $18 billion due to an Italian tax amnesty (Morgan Stanley)

Douglas A. McIntyre

Reuters:   Regulators will face the panel looking at the credit crisis causes.

Reuters:   The capex outlook in Japan is weak.

Reuters:   US foreclosures shattered a record in 2009.

Reuters:   Lawmakers want Geithner’s records about AIG (AIG).

WSJ:   A panel looking into the credit crisis attacked Wall St. CEOs.

WSJ:   Morgan Stanley (MS) and Goldman (GS) are in a race to release 2009 earnings.

WSJ:   HP (HPQ) and Microsoft (MSFT) set up a cloud computing program.

WSJ:   The Fed Beige Book showed modest improvement.

WSJ:   Yahoo! (YHOO) and the AP are close to a content deal.

WSJ:   PC shipments rose 15% in the fourth quarter.

WSJ:   Zale’s fired three top executives.

WSJ:   ETF assets topped $1 trillion.

WSJ:   The current cold weather will not help refiners much.

WSJ:   Google’s problems in China raises the question of espionage by the country.

NYT:   Avon’s (AVP) small operation to use e-commerce to stimulate agent sales is a success.

FT:   China ignored Google’s threats and pushed its internet controls.

FT:   Investment banks will bear the burden of a new bank tax.

FT:   Hershey (HSY) is preparing a Cadbury bid (CBY).

FT:   Gold hit a peak again.

Bloomberg:  Greece is having difficulty convincing investors that it can cut its deficit.

Douglas A. McIntyre

Hershey shares are up 2.7% at $37.18, in part because Hershey is far too small to get involved on its own as an acquirer.  The present offer from Kraft puts the deal at almost twice the size of Hershey today.

Kraft is up 0.7% at $29.01, and suddenly the stock is 4% short of its 52-week highs and it is now up 6.6% so far in 2010.  This might begin to make one wonder a scandalous thought for a moment.  Maybe Kraft never really wanted to pay up or really want Cadbury at all.  Maybe it just needed to signal that it had its own house in order and was able to look forward rather than fixing its woes of the past.

JON C. OGG