Market briefing --- Lane (fast)
NYSE --- Julie (slow)
Disney --- Bob (fast)
welcome to “world financial report.” i’m lane bajardi in new york. glad you’ve joined us. we start with ebay, shares rising in extended trading after the brett auction company posted a 77% gain in third-quarter earnings. customers sold more items on ebay and the company expanded paypal in europe. ebay earned 27 cents a share. the company’s fastest growth was outside the u.s. the sales and earnings forecast for next year is below many analysts’ forecasts. one fund manager says he doesn’t see a catalyst for stocks. in his words, it’s a muddle-looping situation. the two-year note is up 2/32.% the dollar fell below $1.26 per euro for the first time since february, erasing this year’s gain. you see the latest trade in the pacific rim following the action in new york. stocks were pulled lower by financial and banking shares but got support from technology names in today’s session. julie hyman has more from the new york stock exchange.
>> earnings from financial company j.p. morgan disappointed investors today. that helped pull stocks lower much of the session before we had a late-day rebound. j.p. morganchase falling almost two% after the company said third-quarter profit fell 13% because of costs related to the purchase of bank one and a slump in fixed income trading. c.e.o. jamie dimon called the results “terrible” and that pulled down diversified financial. we saw banking stocks decline with countrywide missing analysts’ estimates and cutting its forecast for the year. the banking and financial stocks accounting for many of the declines today. also, consumer durable stocks falling mostly because of eastman kodak and whirlpool, saying third-quarter net income fell because of higher steel costs, taking that stock down 3.7%. bright spots today, notably among the semiconductors, particularly as we headed late into the day. semiconductors rebounding in the last hour of trading and extended their gains. teradyne leading gains even after the company did disappoint for the earnings. other movers shown there. oil stocks performing well with the price of oil gaining once again. i’m julie hyman, bloomberg news, at the new york stock exchange.
>> an energy department report showed inventories of heating oil declined as the season of peak demand years. supplies of crude oil rose less than analysts’ estimates. crude oil up 3% at $54.92 a barrel. gasoline up 3.3%, heating oil up 3.4% and natural gas over 7% higher. gold rose to a six-month high. u.b.s. cut its forecast for the dollar against the euro and said gold may climb to $430 an ounce in the next three months, higher than its previous estimate of $425, not far from that level. gold is also used as a hedge against inflation and gold stocks moved higher today with newmont mining up over 3%, barrick gold and goldcorp up, as well. the trial over the severance package the disney company paid michael ovitz. disney shareholders contend the board of directors failed to do their duty overseeing o’vits’ tenure. bob bowden is covering the trial and joins us with more on day one.
>> things just wrapped up a few minutes ago at the top of the hour and the testimony of deborah demott, the duke university law professor, is finished. the issue is not whether it was a bad idea to pay $140 million to michael ovitz but whether the corporate board of directors should be held responsible for a breach of fiduciary duty and much of demott’s testimony centered on the subject of customs of corporate boards and she testified that one-on-one conversations with michael eisner and individual board members were not a substitute for formal communications with the board. it was alleged there was no discussion at all in terms of ovitz’s sally and there were no similar comparison salaries of similar executives offered and his termination agreement was not even discussed, what would happen if mr. ovitz were to leave, not discussed at all, according to miss demott. we have 24 lawyers from disney, all the defendants, the former board members of disney, including former senator george mitchell and sidney poitier to michael eisner and others. the disney lawyers have their own, two of their own vans picking them up. these are not typical mini-vans, but big busses taking them from one place to another. there is certainly, while we have not seen mr. eisner or mr. ovitz, that is expected next week, their lawyers are here in force.
>> bob bowden, thank you very much.% you are there in force and will continue to be, more on the trial tomorrow on bloomberg television. a tough stretch for allstate, third-quarter profits fell 92% due largely to mother nature. the florida hurricanes cost allstate nearly $1 billion. allstate earned nine cents a share. the nation’s second largest home and auto insurer cut its 2004 profit forecast. allstate now expects to earn as little as $4.15 a share. allstate shares down 14 cents in after hours trading. quarterly profits more than tripled at cendant. real estate brokerage fees led the increase as low mortgage rates fueled home buying. cendant earned 56 cents a share. it owns the century 21 and caldwell banker real estate franchises, involved in one out of every four homes sold in the u.s. cendant shares up .75% in extended trading. amgen coming in with better-than-expected results. excluding acquisition costs, amgen earned 64 cents a share in the third quarter, two cents more than the average analyst estimate and up 20% from the same period last year. revenue rose 23% as doctors wrote more prescriptions for its anemia drug. johnson & johnson makes a rival drug to treat anemia and amgen took away j&j’s market share. at&t speeding up job cuts as it prepares to post its net loss tomorrow. it says it will write down the value of the network, wiping out any income. analysts surveyed by thomson financial expect earnings of 51 cents a share, not counting the writedown. revenue is thought to have fallen 15%. a union official says at&t has already eliminated of the 90% of the over 12,000 jobs it plans to cut by the end of the year and is cutting 1,600 jobs this week. eastman kodak shares fell after the company’s third-quarter earnings. we will hear from chief executive, dan carp, when we return.
