NASCAR fans know Lowe's (NYSE: LOW) Motor Speedway for the Coca-Cola 600. Well, that will soon be a thing of the past, as the hardware giant has decided to back out of its naming-rights sponsorship.

The hardware firm had an 11-year relationship with the racetrack, and it was the first racetrack to have naming rights. Unfortunately for the racetrack, Lowe's decided in the past two weeks to not extend the agreement. The initial agreement between the two was for 10 years and $35 million -- an agreement that lasted through last year. When that initial $35-million contract expired, the company decided to agree to a one-year extension through 2009.

Altria Group (NYSE: MO) is up $1.35 to $70.54 on a report of a spin-off of international operations.

Today, so far Altria Group moved 23,300 contracts on the September 70 calls and traded 4,700 contracts on the September 75 calls. In options there have been 59,605 contracts traded; of them 13,432 contracts are puts while 46,173 contracts are calls. For all options there are 297,119 put contracts open and 820,321 call contracts open. This means that the put/call open interest ratio for MO is 0.36. With so many more calls than puts being traded it also shows that speculators expect the stock to rise.

Call option activity is generally an indicator of bullish speculation on a stock. Call options give the buyer the right to purchase the stock at a set price. Each option contract is represents an interest in 100 shares of the underlying stock. Some of this call option activity may be people expecting a little boost from the spin-off. Altria's stock has moved from around $57 to $72 over the last year and is now trading near the high end of that range.

Looking at key metrics, Altria Group is solidly in line with its competitors in the industry. MO employs 175,000 people and had revenue of 71.22 billion with a gross margin of 46.6% and a net operating margin of 25.4%. British American Tobacco (NYSE: BTI) employs 97,000 people and had revenue of 19.49 billion with a gross margin of 71.65% and a net operating margin of 31.1%. Reynolds American (NYSE: RAI) employs 7,500 people and had revenue of 8.7 billion with a gross margin of 44.42% and a net operating margin of 26.28%. Altria's profit margin is of 17.1% is healthy and it has a high dividend yield is at 3.8%.

Kevin Kersten is an Options Analyst with InvestorsObserver.com. Disclosure note: Mr. Kersten owns and or controls a diversified portfolio of long and short positions that may include holdings in companies he writes about.