c posts
FeedPosted Nov 6th 2009 11:00AM by Tom Taulli (RSS feed)
Filed under: Citigroup Inc. (C), Initial public offerings

Being 34% owned by the U.S. government,
Citigroup's (NYSE:
C) destiny is somewhat murky. Yet, to pay off the loans, this massive financial institution must shrink. To this end, Citigroup has
filed a public offering for its Primerica Financial Services. According to the prospectus, the deal is expected to raise $100 million, but it's likely the amount will be much larger.
Primerica certainly has an interesting history. Back in 1977, an aggressive financial service executive, Arthur Williams, started the company, with the focus on providing term insurance to consumers as well as mutual fund products. However, he had an interesting twist on distribution: he used network marketing. Basically, a Primerica agent would get incentives by recruiting new agents. As a result, the company's growth exploded.
Continue reading Primerica IPO: Citigroup unwinds its far-flung empire
Posted Nov 2nd 2009 10:00AM by Jim Cramer (RSS feed)
Filed under: Coca-Cola (KO), PepsiCo (PEP), Market matters, Citigroup Inc. (C), CIT Group (CIT), Kellogg Co (K), General Mills (GIS), Cramer on BloggingStocks
TheStreet.com's Jim Cramer wonders whether the big selloff was caused by anxious managers locking in profits. What happens if it is was mostly lock-in action? What if the big themes that everyone so feared weren't so big, and that the selloff -- so ugly, with so much damage -- was just technical and remains that way?
Besides my oft-repeated statement that I don't expect a pullback to exceed 7%, I think this market didn't make a lot of sense last week.
Here were the big themes: dollar getting stronger, causing a decline in minerals and resources; industrials faltering; recession stocks roaring back.
Continue reading Cramer on BloggingStocks: Assigning blame after Friday's market plunge
Posted Oct 17th 2009 11:40AM by Steven Mallas (RSS feed)
Filed under: Earnings reports, Citigroup Inc. (C), JPMorgan Chase (JPM), Bank of America (BAC), Goldman Sachs Group (GS), Financial Crisis
I don't think anyone could have had a positive reaction to Bank of America's (NYSE: BAC) third-quarter report, which was released on Friday. According to Bloomberg, management lost $1 billion in the past three months. Big ouch on that one. The financial institution bled 26 cents per diluted share. No earnings beat here, either. Wall Street sent shares down 4.6% by the end of yesterday's trading session.
The year-ago period was a happier time. Back then, Bank of America was rolling in the dough, posting a profit of 15 cents per share. What a difference 12 months makes. Looking at the nine-month record perhaps gives a small amount of comfort to shareholders. The company made 39 cents per diluted share. Of course, that doesn't sit too well next to the $1.09 per diluted share booked in the comparable period. But at least it's not a loss, know what I mean?
Continue reading Bank of America loses a lot of money in Q3
Posted Oct 2nd 2009 10:50AM by Laurie Pasternack (RSS feed)
Filed under: Analyst reports, Analyst upgrades and downgrades, Apple Inc (AAPL), General Electric (GE), Nokia Corp. (NOK), Citigroup Inc. (C), Bank of America (BAC), Comcast Cl'A' (CMCSA), Analyst initiations, Rio Tinto plc ADS (RTP), E*TRADE (ETFC), U.S. Bancorp (USB)
Analyst upgrades:
- UBS upgraded Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) to Buy from Neutral and raised its target to $265 from $170, citing higher iPhone expectations, new partnerships, and likely upward revisions to Street estimates driven by gross margins.
- Wells Fargo upgraded Comcast (NASDAQ: CMCSA) to Outperform from Market Perform. The firm views a possible deal between end General Electric's (NYSE: GE) NBC Universal positively, as it thinks NBC will provide higher-margin growth for Comcast.
- Janney Montgomery upgraded Michael Baker (AMEX: BKR) to Buy from Neutral after the company completed the sale of its Energy business. The firm raised its target on shares to $46 from $40.
- Jefferies assumed coverage of Endo Pharma (NASDAQ: ENDP) and upgraded the stock to Buy from Hold. The firm cites valuation, a strong base business, and solid cash flow for the upgrade, and has a $30 target price on shares.
- Marten Transport (NASDAQ: MRTN) was upgraded to Overweight from Equal Weight at Stephens.
- U.S. Bancorp (NYSE: USB) was upgraded to Outperform from Market Perform at Keefe Bruyette.
Continue reading Analyst upgrades, downgrades and initiations: AAPL, BAC, C, CMCSA, NOK, USB ...
Posted Sep 30th 2009 5:40PM by Zac Bissonnette (RSS feed)
Filed under: Bad news, Citigroup Inc. (C)
If you're a sixties-style artistic purist, you may want to skip this bit of news -- or at least take a couple tranquilizers first.
Bob Dylan's upcoming "Christmas in the Heart" album will be made available online to Citigroup rewards program customers one week before it hits stores. To be fair, Reuters reports that "Dylan, 68, will donate his proceeds from the Columbia Records release to charities that feed the needy. "
But still. Citigroup and Bob Dylan as partners? It's hard to argue that it's anything other than tacky, although the album does have some fantastic songs on it: "All I want for Christmas is a $700 billion bailout", "A Christmas Overdraft", "The Three Stupid CEOs" (featuring Vikram Pandit on the ukelele and Ken Lewis on the obo) and "God Rest Ye Merry Foreclosure Victims."
Dylan's decision to partner with Citi is puzzling. On the one hand, we can hardly accuse him of greed -- all the money's going to charity.
But it does raise questions about the legend's judgement. Couldn't he have found a less polarizing company to partner with?
Posted Sep 30th 2009 3:30PM by Tom Taulli (RSS feed)
Filed under: Citigroup Inc. (C), JPMorgan Chase (JPM), Goldman Sachs Group (GS), Morgan Stanley (MS), Initial public offerings

Last week, we saw
Shanda Games Ltd. (NASDAQ:
GAME) raise a cool $1 billion in
its IPO.
And today, there was another big-time offering: Talecris Biotherapeutics Holdings
picked up $950 in its IPO (issuing 50 million shares at $19 each). This is the second largest IPO of 2009.
Talecris is one of the largest producers/marketers of plasma-derived protein therapies, dealing with things like chronic inflammatory demyelinating polyneuropathy (CIDP), primary immune deficiencies (PI), alpha-1 antitrypsin deficiency, bleeding disorders, and severe trauma.
Continue reading Talecris: Another mega IPO hits the markets
Posted Sep 29th 2009 4:00PM by Douglas McIntyre (RSS feed)
Filed under: After the bell, Major movement, Citigroup Inc. (C), Bank of America (BAC), CIT Group (CIT), Research in Motion (RIMM), Xerox Corp (XRX), S and P 500, DJIA, NASDAQ
Out of the chute this morning, the S&P/Case-Shiller index rose 1.2% in July and gave the market a nice uptick for a while. Then came the report from the Conference Board that its consumer confidence index for September fell to 53.1 from 54.5 in August. What was worse is that economists had estimated a rise to 57 for the month. The soft confidence number is almost certainly due to people worried about losing their jobs. Right now, it could be that traders are waiting for Friday's unemployment report before jumping one way or the other. The negative news won out and the indexes traded down most of the day.
The numbers:
Dow
S&P 500
Nasdaq
Continue reading Closing Bell: Housing, consumer confidence deliver lukewarm trading (CIT, C, BAC, ACS, XRX, SQNM & RIMM)
Posted Sep 28th 2009 4:00PM by Douglas McIntyre (RSS feed)
Filed under: Major movement, Hewlett-Packard (HPQ), International Business Machines (IBM), Citigroup Inc. (C), Abbott Laboratories (ABT), Bank of America (BAC), Xerox Corp (XRX), S and P 500, DJIA, NASDAQ
Traders had on their rally caps today, and the DJIA moved as high as 9,823 as it renewed its ascent toward 10,000. The index moved back down a bit at the end of the day as traders got lazy during a session in which most of the news came before the bell.
Abbott Laboratories (NYSE: ABT) and Xerox Corporation (NYSE: XRX) both announced deals today that pumped some air into the M&A business. Financial shares are mostly moving higher because increased M&A activity generally means more fees for financial services companies. Trading volume was light, mostly due to the Yom Kippur holiday today.
Today's numbers:
Dow 9,789.44 +124.25 (1.29%)
S&P 500 1,062.88 +18.50 (1.77%)
Nasdaq 2,130.74 +39.82 (1.90%)
Continue reading Closing bell: M&A gives market a boost; Coffee also provides stimulus (C, BAC, ACS, DDRX & GMCR)
Posted Sep 27th 2009 10:30AM by Ted Allrich (RSS feed)
Filed under: Earnings reports, Ford Motor (F), International Business Machines (IBM), Citigroup Inc. (C), Bank of America (BAC), Wells Fargo (WFC), Comfort Zone Investing
We're wrapping up the third quarter soon. Earnings will be out in October for most companies, certainly the largest names. They should look very good ... when compared to the third quarter of last year. And the fourth quarter will most likely look even better when comparisons are made.
There's the rub. The percentage increase in earnings will be strong for most companies as many of them wrote down assets, especially in the financials, last year at this time. Mortgages that weren't paying, loans that were way past due, they were losses. Every kind of asset a bank or thrift owned was under scrutiny. Many financials bit the bullet and wrote off large numbers, to get the bad news out of the way. Others nibbled at it, stretching out the pain over several quarters. By now many of those write offs have been taken, and those kinds of losses will be lighter, making earnings much better.
Continue reading Comfort Zone Investing: Earnings will look great but ...
Posted Sep 24th 2009 9:00AM by Mark Fightmaster (RSS feed)
Filed under: Rumors, Citigroup Inc. (C)

On Thursday morning,
Citigroup (NYSE:
C) announced that it is going to
lower the number of U.S. retail outlets, limiting the banks to six major metropolitan areas.
The Wall Street Journal reports that the bank will also limit its lending mainly to wealthy customers. Citigroup chose to take this step in order to control the amount of its consumer lending, limiting its transactions to credit cards and jumbo mortgages.
According to the report, Citi will release its plans in October, when we should learn that the bank will be a presence mainly in New York, Washington D.C., Miami, Chicago, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. That said, it turns out the plan could be contingent upon approval from the U.S. Government. The report notes that some Citi executives are concerned the government may not issue approval.
Continue reading Citigroup cutting back on retail outlets
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