Before the bell: BA, AMZN, WMT, AAPL, DIS, GE

Posted Nov 26th 2007 8:31AM by Melly Alazraki
Filed under: Before the Bell, Apple Inc (AAPL), eBay (EBAY), General Electric (GE), Wal-Mart (WMT), Amazon.com (AMZN), Walt Disney (DIS), Target Corp. (TGT), Boeing Co (BA), Alcatel-LucentADS (ALU)

Before the bell: Retail sales lift Wall Street's mood

In what must have been a blow to Boeing (NYSE: BA), yet somewhat expected with Sarkozy's trip to China, the Asian country had ordered $14.8 billion worth of planes from Airbus. Airbus will sell 160 commercial passenger jets to China. Nevertheless, BA shares are up over 1.6% in premarket trading this morning. Other deals Sarkozy managed to help close were a, $11.9 billion deal with French state nuclear engineering firm Areva to build two nuclear reactors for China and a $1.1 billion deal in the telecommunications equipment field, where Alcatel-Lucent (NYSE: ALU) will expand the mobile networks of domestic operators China Mobile and China Unicom.

After the surprising 8.3% gain in brick and mortar retail stores on Black Friday, now is the time for online retailers to hope to shine. Internet retailers such as Amazon.com (NASDAQ: AMZN) and eBay (NASDAQ: EBAY) will no doubt be in focus this Cyber Monday.

Meanwhile, Wal-Mart (NYSE: WMT) and Target (NYSE: TGT) could get yet another lift today after a survey showed almost 65% of people who shopped on Friday said one of the places they shopped was at a discount store, according to America's Research Group.

Now that iPhones sells in Europe, different reports have started popping up from across the pond.
Engadget reports that Apple's (NASDAQ: AAPL) iTunes unlocks iPhones sold by T-Mobile in Germany. Apple is the one actually unlocking the phones over the network with a bit of help from iTunes in a procedure taking just seconds.
InformationWeek reports that "British iPhone buyers are in an online uproar over reception problems they're experiencing on the network of O2."

Disney's (NYSE: DIS) "Enchanted" took more than $50 million over the five-day Thanksgiving holiday weekend at the North American box office.

Royal Philips Electronics NV announced today will buy Genlyte Group Inc. for $2.7 billion. Philips, the world's largest lighting maker, "said the acquisition would strengthen its position in energy-efficient lighting, and will allow it to surpass rival General Electric Co. (NYSE: GE) as the largest lighting company in North America."

Tags: aapl, alu, amzn, ba, dis, ebay, ge, inthenews, tgt, wmt