Biotechnology company Genentech Inc. says sales of its cancer treatments, led by blockbuster drugs Avastin and Rituxan, drove nearly 5% growth in second-quarter profit, but the results did not meet Wall Street forecasts.
The South San Francisco, Calif.-based company Genentech Inc. (DNA) says its quarterly profit rose to $782 million, or 73 cents per share, from $747 million, or 70 cents per share, in the prior-year period. Revenue rose 8% to just under $3.24 billion from $3 billion easy quick payday loans.
Excluding 2 cents per share for acquisitions and special items, the company earned 75 cents per share in the latest quarter.
Analysts polled by Thomson Financial expected profit of 86 cents per share on revenue of $3.23 billion.
OTTAWA – The federal government’s spectrum auction is already having the desired impact of lowering prices in Canada’s cellphone market, Industry Minister Jim Prentice said Tuesday on the first day of a weeks-long process that could introduce new competition.
The government is auctioning 105 megahertz of radio spectrum, which is used to carry the signals of cellphones.
The auction is expected to raise up to $1 billion for the government treasury and draw interest from the big three existing players in the market, Rogers Communications Inc. (TSX: RCI.B), BCE Inc. (TSX: BCE) and Telus Corp. (TSX: T)
But because 40 MHz has been set aside for new entrants, Prentice says he is hopeful it will increase competition in Canada and lead to lower prices.
"Certainly it will have the effect of introducing more competition to the Canadian market place, there’s no doubt about that," said Prentice.
"There are those who would say even to this point it has started to exert downward pressure on prices."
Independent market reports have placed Canada’s cellphone market as among the least competitive and most costly to users in the industrial world.
Prentice said 24 bidders are in the auction, which will be conducted electronically, with the anticipation there will be many rounds free credit reports. The department will table the results of each round on its website.
But a final determination of winners and losers may not be known for a month, he said.
Following the close of the auction, winning bidders will be required to submit ownership and control documentation and to complete various payment transactions within 30 business days, Industry Canada said.
The department will then review the information submitted by each bidder and issue licences as appropriate.
Top contract chip maker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co Ltd (TSMC) (2330.TW: Quote, Profile, Research) (TSM.N: Quote, Profile, Research) said on Tuesday it may raise prices for its higher-end chips as rising costs threaten to squeeze profits.
Semiconductor makers face higher costs to build state-of-the-art chip plants for most cutting-edge chips, and are also feeling the pain of rising inflation.
As the industry’s leading and oldest player, with more than three times the sales of closest rival, United Microelectronics Corp (UMC) (2303.TW: Quote, Profile, Research), TSMC has stressed in recent years that its products should command a premium over its peers.
“Average selling prices have been falling and profits have been under pressure, and we have to work together to create value,” Jason Chen, a company vice president in charge of global sales and marketing, told a TSMC technology symposium.
He said price changes would be mostly for chips made by advanced process technology, but would not say how big they would be or when they would occur.
He did not say when TSMC last raised prices.
“We face some structural profit pressure free credit report without a credit card. In the short term, we also face pressure from inflation and oil prices,” Chen said.
Consumer prices in Taiwan, where TSMC is based, rose 3.86 percent in April, with core inflation up 3.1 percent — a nine year high.
The soaring price of gas has convinced New Jersey resident Eric Scott to trade the comfort of his car for a seat on the train every morning after 17 years of driving to the office.
"It’s a huge savings," said Scott., "In today’s economy, you know, every penny counts so I’m just glad I made that switch."
Scott, a Senior Trust Administrator with Merrill Lynch in Hopewell, NJ, is saving more than $300-a-month by taking the train instead of driving the 72-mile roundtrip from his home in Willingboro, NJ. His monthly New Jersey Transit train pass costs $77, less than 1/4 of the $400 he had been spending on gas each month.
"I wish I would have done this sooner, it would have been savings in my pocket," said Scott.
Joanne Ralston, an administrative assistant with a medical management company in Hamilton, NJ is saving more than $200-a-month since she began riding a New Jersey Transit train in February instead of driving to the office.
"What I pay for my monthly pass is probably what I would have spent in about seven days for gas, so it’s a huge savings for me," said Ralston. "It’s an easy ride, no traffic, no stress, it’s much better than driving."
As gas price keep climbing, a growing number of Americans are leaving their cars in the garage and getting on board trains. Commuter train lines around the country are reporting big jumps in first quarter ridership: up 15% in the suburbs of Seattle, 13% in the communities north of Miami, 7% in the region surrounding Minneapolis-St. Paul, and better than 5% in New Jersey.
Commuter bus service is also experiencing strong gains, while increases in urban bus and train ridership are generally more moderate since many city customers always rely on mass transit.
"We’ve really seen a very large increase in the use of public transit and particularly for the services that are longer distance in nature, commuter rail lines or express buses that go far into the suburbs," said William Millar, President of the American Public Transportation Association
"It’s been a strong pattern each time the gas prices hit a new plateau, $3 or $3.50, we get increases in the rate that people are trying new services."
As gas prices jumped last year Americans took more than 10-billion rides on public transit, the most in 50 years, according to the American Public Transportation Association low fee cash advance. Now, as the nation’s average gas price approaches $4-a-gallon, a growing number of commuters are listening to the conductor when he says, "ALL ABOARD."
Ridership is at a record on New Jersey Transit, which estimates its average commuter saves $1,200-a-year by taking the train rather than driving to work.
"People can look at riding on the rails as not only saving money, but a much better way to travel," said Richard Sarles, Executive Director of New Jersey Transit.
"They can talk quietly on the cell phone, they can look at movies on their DVD players or i-pod, they can listen to music, in addition to many other things people can do like working or napping on a train that they can’t do when they are driving."
With more people getting on board some commuters are squeezing into standing-room only trains and buses. It’s still better than driving, though, said Marcia McPherson Gunnings as she stood on a NJ Transit train heading out of New York’s Penn Station.
"I can live with that, compared to gas prices. I definitely can live with that," said McPherson Gunnings.
By sacrificing the privacy of their own vehicle mass transit users are also helping the environment, preventing 37 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions each year, according to the American Public Transportation Association.
Transit officials expect the trend toward growing ridership to continue so major expansion projects are underway. Dallas and Denver are growing their railroads and New Jersey Transit has a plan to build a new tunnel under the Hudson River into Manhattan. "The buzz is, get ready for more passengers. They are coming," said New Jersey Transit’s Richard Sarles.
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Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates said Wednesday the company isn’t pursuing other deals following the withdrawal of its $47.5 billion takeover bid for Yahoo.
He said in Tokyo that the company put "a lot of effort" in the talks with Yahoo and has decided the two should pursue "independent paths."
Over the weekend, Microsoft withdrew its three-month-old unsolicited bid for Yahoo Inc. (YHOO, Fortune 500) after seeing the impasse with Yahoo’s board over a mutually acceptable sales price.
"Now at this point Microsoft (MSFT, Fortune 500) is focused on its independent strategy," Gates told reporters at a news conference in Tokyo.
Those comments seemed to set a different tone than Tuesday in South Korea, where he said the company wasn’t ruling out alternative partnerships after the failure to buy Yahoo.
Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer had orally offered to pay $33 per share, or $47.5 billion, for Yahoo, up from an initial bid valued at $44.6 billion, or $31 per share. At the time the negotiations collapsed, the value of Microsoft’s original offer had fallen to $42.3 billion, or $29.40 per share, because half the deal was supposed to be financed with Microsoft’s declining stock.
Yahoo’s board wanted $37 per share — a price that the company’s stock hasn’t reached in more than two years.
Microsoft trails Google (GOOG, Fortune 500) in the online search and advertising markets, and the bid for Yahoo was an attempt at turning that around.
But Gates said that Microsoft was determined to make "advances" in its own search offering and meetings were in the works in Seattle to hammer out more specific plans.
"We will make the advances that give people a great choice there," he said.
Microsoft’s intense pursuit of Yahoo was widely seen as an acknowledgment of weaknesses in Microsoft’s solo Web search and advertising strategy, and the software maker now needs to prove it can innovate without Yahoo as a partner.
Gates makes periodic trips to Asia, and he was in Japan two years ago http://payday-nofax.com. He said he met with business partners in Japan, which he sees as an important market. Talks covered digital broadcast software for Windows-based personal computers and giving free downloads of Microsoft software to Japanese students.
Possible partners for Microsoft in the future might include large Internet companies such as Time Warner Inc.’s (TWX, Fortune 500) AOL and News Corp.’s (NWS, Fortune 500) MySpace and promising startups such as Facebook Inc. and LinkedIn Corp.
Time Warner is the parent company of CNNMoney.com.
Microsoft already owns a 1.6% stake in Facebook, the second-largest social network behind MySpace.
Bank of America Corp (BAC.N: Quote, Profile, Research) agreed to pay David Sambol, COO of takeover target Countrywide Corp (CFC.N: Quote, Profile, Research), more than its own CEO received in 2007 to encourage him to lead the bank’s consumer mortgage business.
The pay, which vests over three years, is 37 percent higher than the $20.4 million Bank of America Chairman and Chief Executive Kenneth Lewis was compensated in 2007 to run the second largest U.S. bank.
Bank of America disclosed the amount in a filing on Thursday with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
“To me, it meant that they really need him and that they have no one else who could handle the job,” says Alan Johnson, compensation consultant at Johnson Associates, Inc. “It shows that BofA is making a serious effort to make a go of it.”
Paul Sorbera a president at Alliance Consulting said: “Compensation always reflects a company’s level of commitment paydayloans. This deal shows BofA is very much interested in keeping CFC’s business intact and maximizing and monetizing the value of the franchise.”
Sambol, who is also Countrywide’s president, was named in January to run the mortgage business after Charlotte, North Carolina-based Bank of America completes its purchase of the largest U.S. mortgage lender. That transaction was valued Thursday at about $4.1 billion.
According to the filing, Sambol would be entitled to a $20 million retention bonus payable in equal installments on the first and second anniversaries of the merger, which is expected to close in the third quarter.
Sambol would also receive $8 million of restricted stock, vesting in three installments on the first, second and third anniversaries of the merger, the filing shows.
The U.S. Federal Reserve and four other central banks on Tuesday teamed up to get hundreds of billions of dollars in fresh funds to cash-starved credit markets, allowing financial firms to use securities backed by home mortgages as collateral for central bank loans.
Stocks surged, bonds fell and the long-suffering U.S. dollar soared in reaction to the moves, a sign financial markets saw the plan as a step in the right direction to ease a crisis that has threatened world economic growth. The Dow Jones industrials closed nearly 3.6 percent higher.
In the latest effort to ease a credit contraction that has disrupted global finance, the Fed, Bank of Canada, Bank of England, European Central Bank and Swiss National Bank announced a series of aggressive measures to boost liquidity. It was the second time in three months that central banks from around the globe had launched coordinated efforts.
Wall Street economists were quick to call the new lending facility a step in the right direction, but what’s most needed is time for the de-leveraging of billions of dollars in loans globally.
“What we’ve seen is really a seizing of the money markets and it will help to alleviate this by injecting much needed cash,” said Kathleen Stephansen, director of global economics at Credit Suisse in New York faxless payday loan. “It doesn’t take away the credit crunch because deleveraging will still have to take place. But this will make it a more orderly process.”
Policy-makers are particularly concerned that tightening credit conditions, sparked by the U.S. subprime housing meltdown, will curb the flow of money to the people and businesses that power the global economy.
The Fed expanded its securities lending program, offering up to $200 billion of highly liquid U.S. Treasuries to primary dealers, secured for 28 days, and said it could increase the size of the program if needed. It also significantly expanded the types of securities that can be used as collateral for the loans. In effect, the plan allows banks to exchange unwanted mortgage notes for easy-to-sell government securities.
“Is this going to cure what ails the economy? I would guess everyone realizes the answer to that is going to be ‘no.’ Is this going to be helpful in addressing the strains in financial markets? For sure, the answer is ‘yes’,” the first deputy managing director of the International Monetary Fund, John Lipsky, told Reuters.
A state banking regulator raised a warning flag about soaring agricultural land values on Tuesday, telling a congressional hearing that the U.S. farm land bubble could burst and unleash a fresh set of economic problems.
“If there has been too much leveraged or loaned against the inflated value of farm land, the bubble will burst, and we will once again experience an economic crisis similar to that of the 1980s,” Iowa Superintendent of Banking Thomas Gronstal told the Senate Banking Committee.
Gronstal, who represented the Conference of State Bank Supervisors, was one of several regulators who testified about the subprime mortgage and credit problems that banks are facing.
“My fellow state supervisors and I are closely watching the agricultural sector,” he said.
Gronstal warned that the current agricultural conditions appear similar to the conditions seen in the 1970s that led to the economic and financial collapse of the 1980s.
“The dramatic increase of farm land value in the last few years makes the agricultural sector look strong,” Gronstal said payday loan. “In the future, should the price of corn, soybeans and other commodities decrease, the price of farm land would most likely also fall.”
The average value of U.S. crop land hit a record high of $2,700 per acre in 2007, compared with $1,340 per acre in 1998, according to U.S. Agriculture Department data. The value of crop land in some key Midwestern states was much higher, with Illinois averaging $4,460 per acre in 2007, the data showed.
Gronstal also said that smaller or community banks have felt the impact of the declining U.S. housing market due to the subprime mortgage crisis.
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