Market briefing --- Matt (slow)
Nasdaq --- Julie (slow)
Data --- Su (fast)
>> welcome back to “world financial report,” i’m matt nesto.how about a free recap of the markets ? on the houses are as we say. the dow and s&p, each up .5%. the nasdaq, .3% lower. bonds on the rise today for almost the same reasons, surprisingly weak economic data today. there you see the 10-year and five-year on the up, three-year and two-year notes also rising. financial stocks stemmed the nasdaq’s losses today as concerns about rising interest rates eased. julie hyman has a wrap-up of the nasdaq activity from the market site in times square.
>> the financial group within the nasdaq today gained about 1.6%. banking stocks were up 1%. this is as firms were less worried about interest rates as they were earlier in the week. however, this group is still the biggest decliner for the week as a whole, down 3.7% for the banks and 3.6% for other financial stocks since interest rate concerns dominated the remainder of the week. the nasdaq down 2.8% thus far for the week. again, interest rate concerns the primary reason. in today’s session, we also had a lot of worse-than-expected earnings forecasts or earnings themselves. the semiconductors were the worst performers we’ve seen today and throughout the week. they were hit by concerns about slowing sales growth in the quarters to come. p.m.c. sear amaker of chips for telecommunications equipment saying today that its sales growth will slow in the second quarter to 5% to 8%, growth compared to the first quarter, a slow down from 11% growth previously. that hitting semiconductor stocks once again and a host of semi stocks falling in today’s session. sun microsystems also coming out today with its third-quarter earnings. they said sales fell 5% in the quarter, more than analysts had forecast. they also said their loss excluding some costs was eight cents a share, wider than forecast. and doubleclick coming out with the second-quarter forecast that was behind analysts’ estimates. this, by the way, the biggest provider of internet advertising services. looking forward to next week, the earnings barrage will continue. some of the big names expected to report, we have microsoft, we have amgen. we have amazon and a lot of the chip names still to watch, names like k.l.a. tencor, altera and xilinx. we’ll continue to watch the earnings picture next week.
>> earnings season may have picked up this week, but we’re not halfway through the period. as of yesterday’s close, 90 members of the s&p 500 reported first-quarter results. su keenan is here with a summary, a summation of the river of data.
>> i had to look ahead. you think we have a lot of earnings now, next week is the peak of earnings season. more than 1,400 companies reporting with approximately 170 companies in the standard & poor’s 500 telling us how they’ve performed. a look at the earnings trend of those companies who have reported so far, nearly three out of every four companies has reported a positive earnings surprise, topping the analysts’ estimates, but so far corporate profits have lagged forecasts by an average of 17 cents per share or 2%. they are about 15% hire than -- higher than last year’s first quarter. looking at individual stories, delphi, the world’s largest auto parts maker is one of the s&p’s companies exceeding forecasts. while analysts expected delphi’s first-quarter profit to fall, they say ongoing concerns about rising steel prices and the decline in business from general motors has caused the stock to fall. it’s down today, down for the fifth time in seven sessions. chief executive j.t. battenberg says the company is diversifying and focused on non-g.m. revenue.
>> this diversification move, the move into electronics, consumer electronics, pushing the electronics through circuit city, best buy, target, et cetera, will continue to push the top line at delphi, push the diversification and allow us to have strong cash flow for the rest of the year so we’re feeling pretty good right now.
>> looking at the networking software maker, novell reporting next month and have seen sales quadruple in the past year. chief financial officer joseph tibet said the company is trying to boost the revenue by expanding into new areas after the core business slumped.
>> it’s not the same market it was a number of years ago but novell has been able to position itself to be a story stock.
>> first-quarter profits at stryker corporation rose by almost 1/3 pushing shares to their highest price in more than a decade today. the company makes implants for reconstructive surgery and gets half its revenue from international business which helped the last quarter with the weaker dollar.
>> assuming the current exchange rates hold for the next two or three-year quarters, we would still get a kicker for the next quarters.
>> looking forward to next week, the peak of earnings season, some of the big companies reporting include eli lilly, honeywell, motorola and international paper and we’ll run down those numbers as they hit the tape next week.%
>> we love numbers here, we’re all about the numbers. thank you very much, su keenan, very much. anirvan banerji heads up the economic cycle research institute and forecasts turning points in business cycles. we’ll talk to him about inflation and the outlook for rates coming up.
