Before the bell: ETFC, DELL, LEN, C, XOM, RIMM, AAPL ...

Posted Dec 3rd 2007 8:25AM by Melly Alazraki
Filed under: Before the Bell, Analyst Reports, Analyst Upgrades and Downgrades, Microsoft (MSFT), Apple Inc (AAPL), Dell (DELL), Exxon Mobil (XOM), Citigroup Inc. (C), Tiffany and Co (TIF), Research in Motion (RIMM), Morgan Stanley (MS), Lennar Corp'A' (LEN)

B efore the bell: Stock futures somewhat higher

Bank of America downgraded E-Trade Financial (NASDAQ: ETFC) to Sell from Hold, saying it no longer believes the value of its retail brokerage business can offset negative value at the bank. ETFC shares are down over 18% in premarket trading. [Update: as of 8:52 a.m., ETFC was down over 12%.]

Dell Inc. (NASDAQ: DELL) signed an advertising agreement woth $1.5 billion annually for three years with British firm WPP Group Plc (NASDAQ: WPPGY) rather than with rival Interpublic Group of Companies, Inc. (NYSE: IPG).

Lennar (NYSE: LEN) and Morgan Stanley Real Estate, a unit of Morgan Stanley (NYSE: MS) formed a land investment venture to buy, develop, manage and sell residential real estate. Lennar sold the venture properties with a net book value of $1.3 billion for $525 million. Lennar will have 20% ownership and 50% voting rights in the venture.

Shares of Citigroup Inc. (NYSE: C) are trading 1.2% higher in premarket action after the company said late Friday it has reduced the assets of structured investment vehicles (SIVs) it sponsors from $83 billion at the end of September to $66 billion as of Nov. 30.

An international consortium led by Eni (NYSE: E) and that includes Exxon Mobil (NYSE: XOM) and Royal Dutch Shell (NYSE: RDS.A) have agreed to transfer part of their stakes in the Kashagan oil field to Kazakhstan's state-run KazMunaiGaz to end a long-running dispute.

According to a Net Applications survey, Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL)'s shares of the operating system market grew 3.34% in November to hit a record 6.81%. Naturally Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ: MSFT) holds the commanding lead with a 92.42% share.

Morgan Keegan downgraded Research in Motion Ltd. (NASDAQ: RIMM) from Outperform to Market Perform.

Tiffany & Co. (NYSE: TIF) and The Swatch Group reached an alliance to make and distribute Tiffany-brand watches.

Tags: aapl, c, dell, etfc, inthenews, ipg, len, ms, msft, rimm, tif, wppgy, xom

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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

12-03-2007 @ 10:58AM

dave said...

On the Apple note, the Net Applications survey (from what I've read elsewhere) deals mainly with e-commerce and corporate websites. People who access these sites could be mostly businesses and most businesses are Windows based, the installed base of Apple computers could be higher than the survey suggests, for example many schools use Macs and I doubt many grade schoolers would access corporate websites. Anyway it is good to see Apple's share growing.