Market briefing---Matt (slow)
Cisco---Carmen (fast)
NYSE---Deb (fast)
>> welcome to “world financial report.” i’m matt nesto. cisco shares are on the rise in extend trading after the company reported record-setting earnings as costs fell and demand for its routsdzers and switches increased. shares rose as much as 6% to $23.10, the highest prices in two and a half years. the world’s largest maker of computer networking equipment says net income rose 76% to $1.1 billion. that’s 15 cents a share. profit on a continuing operations was 17 cents a share. that’s two cents better than expected and sales topped $5 billion for the first time since the quarter that ended in january of 2001. carmen roberts has been monitoring cisco’s conference call and joins us now with all the details. carmen?
>> matt, lots of interest today in cisco’s ongoing conference call because, you know, many investors view the company as a blomer the for the u.s. -- barometer for the economy and spending on u.s. equipment. and john chambers told an analyst, in his words, we are continually seeing a number of signs that could be interpreted with a caveat as optimistic. chambers, in his ninth year as chief executive, is pushing devices such as wireless internet phones to cope with falling sales. chambers, who cut costs and repurchased the company’s shares to maintain profit said that he is more optimistic now than he has been in more than two years. analysts view the sales picture at cisco to be significant. down only 1.2% sequentially. and chambers, who received $1 annual salary and declined the bonus for second straight year, has used part of the company’s $27 billion in cash and invest 78s to repurchase shares. and that’s the latest on cisco, matt, back to you.
>> thank you, carmen, very much for that. shares of qualcomm are on the rise in the after hours trading. sales and profit in the company’s fiscal fourth quarter beat analysts’ forecasts. the company reported earnings of 35 cents a share. analysts had expected a profit of 29 centings a share. revenue rose 4% to $908 million, easily topping the median forecast compiled by thomson financial. and the company also said its fiscal first quarter profit will exceed analyst forecasts. in the regular session, qualcomm shares down 1.5% and extended hours, i think we already just took peek at that. so, we’ll move along to news corps, which also reported quarterly financial results after the close of trading. trading at news corps, american depository receipts in extended hours are on the rise right now. and this after the company said profit and sales beat wall street forecasts. the company said the first quarter earnings more than doubled to $422 million. that’s 32 cents a share for each a.d.r. and that topped the median forecast of 20 cents a share. revenue rose 22% to $4.6 billion. home video sales and cable networks such as fox news channel, attracting more viewers. in the regular session a 1% gain for news corps’ a.d.r.’s. and the extended trade, do we have it? ok. we don’t have it. we’ll move on. news of improper trading in mutual funds sent shares of those financial companies lower today and deborah kostroun was tracking that and i’m sure a whole lot more down at the nyse. deb?
>> well, that’s right, mats mat. in fact, we did see financial stocks , one of the biggest areas of concern, one of the biggest drags on the s&p 500. prudential financial losing along with wachovia, that is the nase is investigating prudential securities, a retail brokerage, owned by wachovia and prudential financial, that over alleged impromer trading of mutual funds, that according to the “wall street journal.” also, alliance capital. that is the biggest publicly traded u.s. money manager, losing quite a bit in today’s session. that company is facing some mounting legal claims as shareholders file lawsuits and also regulators examining possible improper mutual fund trading and it may face civil charges as early as next week. other financials under pressure in today’s session. in addition to the financials on the other end of the spectrum, we did see some in the health care industry performing quite well. take a look at watson pharmaceuticals. this was the second biggest gainer in the s&p 500. you can see there. and watson pharmaceuticals saying that their 2003 earnings forecast, they increased their 2003 earnings forecast, their third quarter profit increased as well, up 10 % in today’s session. also, as we’re talking about, you can see the other pharmaceuticals a little bit mixed. but definitely watson pharmaceuticals having a pretty strong performance. amerisource bergen, this is the biggest drug wholesaler. their quarterly profit jumped 26%. this is the third biggest percentage gainer in the s&p 500. we talked about the second and third biggest gainer, you can see the other drug distributors. let’s talk about symbol technology, the biggest gainer in the s&p 500. this is the world’s largest maker of bar code scanners that rose to see a 52-week high, after morgan stanley upgraded the stock , saying they have a backlog of orders which is growing as the companies also boosting its sales force. back to you.
>> thank you very much. we’ll talk to you again in a little bit. let’s look at the big picture here. the dow, the s&p and nasdaq actually mixed because the nasdaq trading up ever so slightly there. little moves across the board for the key benchmark index. volume, though, still pretty much on average. 1.3 billion shares for the neist. nasdaq volume also right at that keel $2 billion level. so, the buying is still there and the wilshire 5000 not even -- look at that. .08%. also we take a look at the bonds. you’re going to see treasuries declining here today, both at the long and the shortsdz. we don’t have a long end anymore. 10-year, the middle end, which is now the long end. in new york t dollar rose against the ewe row and the yen as u.s. service industries expanded last month. the service sector is the largest part of the u.s. economy and growth may boost the appeal of u.s. investments and join us to talk about the dollar’s strength is tim mazanek, senior currency strike that zwrist at investors bank and trust in boston. let’s start off with those economic reports today. the service index, factory orders, how big an impact is that on the dollar?
>> the dollar has had a very strong last four or five days since the g.d.p. number came out last week, which was a surprise to see the upside. that performed very well f. you go back to just over a week ago against the euro, we were trading in upwards of $118 or just a little bit below and here we are around 114. all these good numbers we’ve had in the last week have hemmed the dollar.
>> yeah. dollar euro and dollar-yen is an interesting player. i’m sure you’re following that closely as well?
>> yeah. the dollar has not shown as much strength against the yen as it has against the european counterparts. even if we have good more data, a lot of strategist, such as myself, believe that the yen will strengthen over the course of time. you look at, say, the next six months and i believe the dollar-yen should be trading closer to 105. what would risk that is if we head towards, say, 112. you might see a lot of investors second guess the immediate trend, which it has been lower. if we pop through 112, maybe we could get back to 115, which is what the japanese want. if you go back to the last hong kong survey, most of the corporates were expecting dollar-yen to trade at 115 at their fiscal year end, which is next march, which they obviously would like, not as much yen strength which would hurts their exports. but most of us think that the yen is going to strengthen against the dollar in the next three to six months.
>> all right. we have to leave it there. thanks, as always, appreciate your insight on the currency markets. and moving along here, it is almost time for a break. when we come back, the interim new york stock exchange chairman john reed, has announced his new board, eight people for the world’s largest stock exchange. we’ll take a closer look at a proposal some see as controversial. we’ll be joined by fordham university legal professor stephen fell right after this.
