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Before the bell: Futures higher ahead of data; BSC, LEH, CKB HOme (NYSE: KBH) is set to report fiscal first-quarter results this mornings. Analysts expect the company to report a loss of $1.17 per share, according to Thomson Financial. The comparable year-ago profit was 34 cents per share.
Wyeth (NYSE: WYE) is laying off about 1,200 U.S. sales representatives as part of its major companywide program announced recently to cut jobs and other costs and redesign the struggling business as increased competition and fewer new drugs are taking their toll on the pharmaceutical company.
Fannie Mae (NYSE: FNM) and Freddie Mac (NYSE: FRE) may raise as much as $20 billion in capital as part of an agreement with the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight that allows them to buy more debt securities. They can raise the capital with common shares, preferred shares or convertible preferred shares, further diluting the already troubled stocks but helping the companies to stabilize. FNM shares are up over 2.5% in premarket trading.
Electronic Arts Inc. (NASDAQ: ERTS) is amending its tender offer for outstanding common shares of Take-Two Interactive Software Inc. (NASDAQ: TTWO) to counter Take-Two's poison-pill adoption and its rescheduled annual meeting. EA has offered to buy Take-Two for $26 a share, or about $2 billion in cash. If the price still isn't right, what could Take-Tow come up with next?
Red Hat (NYSE: RHT) shares are up 4.1% in premarket trading this morning after the software distributor reported Thursday after the close that its fourth-quarter profit rose 7% as it expanded the footprint of its open source products with costly internal investments. Red Hat said it earned $22 million, or 10 cents per share, in its first quarter under new CEO James Whitehurst. Revenue rose 27% to $141.5 million. The results were inline with analyst estimates. It seems that investors liked the new CEO's strategy.
Nokia Corp. (NYSE: NOK) are up over 2% despite the an analyst saying the world's largest maker of mobile phones may post low shipments of mobile phones in the first quarter as well as weak average selling prices.
Meredith Whitney, the Oppenheimer analyst who has written one note after another about financial institutions, lowering her estimates constantly, have said today that Citigroup Inc. (NYSE: C) and Wachovia Corp. (NYSE: WB) will likely have to announce dividend cuts next month due to shrinking earnings. Whitney expects Citigroup to earn $1.43 a share less than its dividend payout this year and for Wachovia to have to pay out "just about all of its estimated earnings this year." If investors hold big bank shares for dividend, this could hurt the stocks further, especially as Citi has already reduced its dividend payout by 41% earlier. The shares aren't showing a negative reaction for now.
In a hacking contest where three laptops -- Sony Vaio, Fujitsu U810, and the MacBook -- were offered provided hackers could hack into each of them, Apple's (NASDAQ: AAPL) MacBook Air was first to be hacked (in 2 minutes) after organizers relaxed the rules a little. According infoWorld, "Contest rules state that Miller could only take advantage of software that was preinstalled on the Mac, so the flaw he exploited must have been accessible by, or possibly inside, Apple's Safari browser."
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