Before the bell: Awaiting payroll data, futures slightly higherAfter making inroads throughout the year, Thursday it became official. Toyota Motor Corp. (NYSE: TM) overtook in 2007 Ford Motor Co.'s (NYSE: F) second place as determined by U.S. sales. Toyota sold 2.62 million cars and trucks in 2007, up 3% for the year. No. one automaker by sales remained (at least for now) General Motors Corp. (NYSE: GM), selling 3.82 million vehicles in 2007, down 6% from the previous year. December was a tough month for automakers despite holiday discounts, with Toyota's sales slipping 2% for the month, GM's down 4% and Ford's down 9%.
Meanwhile, General Motors might miss its target to have its breakthrough electric-powered car the Chevrolet Volt in production by 2010. CEO Rick Wagoner made these comments during an online forum Thursday to mark the 100th anniversary of the automaker.
FORTUNE's Apple 2.0 brings an interesting case where
Intel Corp. (NASDAQ: INTC) was downgraded to Neutral from Overweight at J.P. Morgan. Following recently lowered estimates from Acer and DSG in Europe, the broker claims the chip giant had a "late-quarter slowdown in order rates from the PC end market," which may have offset other upside factors. Intel shares are continuing their decline this morning with yet another 1.5% fall in share price in premarket trading.
UBS initated coverage of Johnson & Johnson (NYSE: JNJ) with a Buy rating and a $77 target price. JNJ shares are up 0.6% in premarket trading.
The New York Times reported Friday that Spark Networks (AMEX: LOV) owner of the popular Jewish online dating site JDate.com, is seeking a buyer and was in early talks with companies including Yahoo Inc (NASDAQ: YHOO), eHarmony, News Corp's (NYSE: NWS) MySpace, as well as IAC/InterActiveCorp (NASDAQ: IACI)'s Match.com.
The president of operations and sales for Sirius Satellite Radio Inc. (NASDAQ: SIRI) exercised options for 33,334 shares of common stock at $1.04 a piece, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing, and then sold them all on the same day for $3 a piece.
Meanwhile, Sirius also said Thursday sit ended 2007 with 8.3 million subscribers, up 38% from a year earlier. The company added about 2.3 million net subscribers during the year. Shares of Sirius closed 3.3% higher Thursday as CEO Karmazin also said the company expects "to report significantly greater positive free cash flow in the fourth quarter of 2007..."
As for the merger with Xm Satellite Radio Holdings Inc. (NASDAQ: XMSR), despite hoping for approval by the end of 2007, that didn't come. Reuters explains the complexities.
Why do we have a weak dollar?
Holiday hiring slow for retailers
Closing Bell: What sell-off? (AIG, ABK, EPR, MBI, JAVA, ORCL, ERTS)
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
1-04-2008 @ 10:11AM
deborah said...
Where does it say that Microsoft brought the case against Apple? It says class action lawyers brought the case.