sales posts
Posted May 19th 2009 2:40PM by Michael Fowlkes
Filed under: Major movement, Earnings reports, Products and services, Competitive strategy, Home Depot (HD), Employees, Market matters, Lowe's Cos (LOW), Housing, Recession, Financial Crisis
Home Depot (NYSE:
HD) reported its
first quarter numbers today, topping Wall Street estimates, but cautioning that the company's business remains under pressure from the
current housing crisis.
Ahead of today's earnings report, analysts had been expecting to see Home Depot, the nations largest home improvement retailer, show earnings of 29 cents per share for its first quarter, but the company surprised to the upside with 35 cents per share. Sounds like good news, but Wall Street has been selling the stock off so far in today's action.
Continue reading Home Depot (HD) tops estimates but remains under pressure
Posted Mar 25th 2009 4:00PM by Beth Gaston Moon
Filed under: Bad news, Rumors, Consumer experience, Recession

The Consumerist, a website published by the parent of
Consumer Reports, has a potential
lead on an alleged development at
Borders Group (NYSE:
BGP). Forgive all the wishy-washy verbiage; nothing is confirmed yet. An individual identifying him/herself as a Borders employee informed the website that the chain is severely paring down its CD and DVD sections, leaving only top sellers and reducing the prices of those.
Said alleged employee also encourages shoppers to wait for deep-discount sales of remaining digital inventory in the coming weeks.
On one hand (or on many hands), this makes sense. The advent of MP3 technology,
Amazon.com (NASDAQ:
AMZN),
Netflix (NASDAQ:
NFLX), and file-sharing services have seen bigger and better CD/DVD outlets (e.g. Tower Records - SOB!) go belly up, so why wouldn't Borders focus all of its energy on its more popular books line?
Continue reading Will Borders Stop Selling CDs and DVDs?
Posted Feb 11th 2009 8:45AM by Mark Fightmaster
Filed under: Technology, Recession

Last week, the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA) announced that worldwide semiconductor sales dropped to $17.4 billion from $22.3 billion in December, a drop of 22%. Compared to November, December's sales were 16.6% lower. For comparison, November 2007 chip sales fell only 10%.
SIA President George Scalise noted that weakened demand for automotive products, personal computers, cell phones, and corporate information technology products. However, Scalise said the largest revenue declines were "in the memory sector where price pressure more than offset significant growth in total bit shipments."
Continue reading Chip sales fall 22% in December
Posted Feb 5th 2009 5:10PM by Michael Fowlkes
Filed under: Earnings reports, Forecasts, Bad news, From the boards, Products and services, Boeing Co (BA), Recession, Financial Crisis

Most companies saw sales weakness in January, and
The Boeing Company (NYSE:
BA) was no exception. As the global economic slowdown continues to drag out, the company saw sharp drops in order for both freight and passenger jets in the month.
The figures are pretty staggering. In January, the company only received order for 18 jetliners. When you compare this with January of last year, when the company had orders for 65 of its planes, you see a year over year decline of 72%.
Continue reading Boeing sees huge drop in jet orders
Posted Jan 7th 2009 5:00PM by Michael Fowlkes
Filed under: Major movement, International markets, Forecasts, Bad news, Products and services, Intel (INTC), Technology, Recession, Financial Crisis

Shares of chip maker
Intel Corporation (NASDAQ:
INTC) are selling off today after the company announced that
fourth quarter revenues were going to be below (
wsj subscription required) an already lowered estimate.
The stock is currently down 6.4% on the day to $14.38 and trading near its intraday low of $14.34 following the announcement that the company is expecting to see revenues for its fourth quarter around the $8.2 billion level. At this level, the quarterly revenues would be 20% lower than its previous quarter, and well below its guidance from November that forecast a 12% dip in the quarter.
Today's news is a clear sign of the troubles that the semiconductor industry is dealing with at this time. Typically, the fourth quarter is the strongest quarter, and as recently as October, Intel had forecast that its fourth quarter sales would actually be higher than its third quarter numbers by around 3%. How quickly things can change.
Continue reading Intel sells off following Q4 revenue guidance
Posted Dec 26th 2008 4:00PM by Michael Fowlkes
Filed under: Good news, Products and services, Apple Inc (AAPL), eBay (EBAY), Amazon.com (AMZN), Recession

While most retailers were looking at dismal holiday shopping seasons this year, online retailer
Amazon.com (NASDAQ:
AMZN) announced that it had
its best holiday season in history.
Early indications are showing that retail sales figures could be down as much as 5.5 to 8% during this year, as rising unemployment and general concern over the economy has led to most consumers tightening up their spending this year.
Amazon, which has probably actually been benefiting from the current economic slowdown, saw massive sales on December 15, which is typically the company's strongest day of the year. This year it saw sales of 6.3 million and shipments of 5.6 million units on the 15th, its strongest day in history.
Continue reading Amazon announces best holiday season ever
Posted Nov 11th 2008 6:32AM by Sarah Gilbert
Filed under: Starbucks (SBUX), McDonald's (MCD)

The world has not been swayed by the coy laugh of organic vegetables, the winsome eyes of local produce, the sparkling personality of grass-fed beef. When money's tight, the world goes to McDonald's for a dollar burger, and maybe a splurge on Southern-style chicken, an opportunity to win big -- or small, that next package of French fries has to come from somewhere -- with the chain's traditional 'Monopoly' game.
Same-store sales were up 8.2% worldwide, with a respectable 5.3% increase in U.S. outlets.
McDonald's Corporation (NYSE:
MCD) is still struggling to gain Wall Street approval for many of its recent moves, such as expanding hours and diving head-first into competition with Starbucks, rolling out espresso bars and fancy blended coffee drinks into its U.S. stores. Given some rough numbers from
Starbucks (NASDAQ:
SBUX) out yesterday, it seems reasonable to wonder whether customers are avoiding the pricey pastries and coffee drinks at Starbucks and heading for the Dollar Menu at McDonald's.
Continue reading McDonald's same-store sales reflect world's love for cheap food
Posted Sep 3rd 2008 5:00PM by Michael Fowlkes
Filed under: Forecasts, Bad news, Press releases, Competitive strategy, Ford Motor (F), General Motors (GM), Toyota Motor Corp. (TM)

August was yet another tough month for American auto maker
Ford Motor Company (NYSE:
F) as the company reported today that during the month,
U.S. sales were off by a mind boggling 26.5%.
During the month, Ford was able to sell a total of 155,172 light vehicles, which was 3.6% below July's figures of 160,990, which was the worst month for U.S. car sales in the past 16 years.
As expected, truck sales really took a beating last month for the company. With consumers dealing with record high gasoline prices, truck sales have been weak for some time now, and last month the company saw truck off by more than 32%. Its car sales fell by nearly 9%.
Continue reading Ford struggles in August
Posted Jul 8th 2008 9:43AM by Michael Fowlkes
Filed under: Before the bell, Major movement, Earnings reports, Forecasts, Bad news, Office Depot (ODP), Recession

Look for shares of
Office Depot (NYSE:
ODP) to take a beating today after the office supplies retailer shocked Wall Street by predicting a
huge drop in its second quarter same-stores sales.
Office Depot is going to announce its second quarter numbers later this month, and investors got a better picture of just what to expect this morning after the company stated that it is now forecasting a 10% drop in its same-store sales for the quarter, citing the slowing American economy as the main reason.
The company also warned it expects the remainder of the year to remain difficult. While the retailer believes that sales trends should improve slightly, it is remaining pessimistic. Margins for the quarter, it says, have declined by about 200 basis points than what it had previously anticipated. Even before today's revision, the company had estimated about 200 to 250 basis point decline in its margins. Looking at the rest of the year, the company thinks that its margins should increase sequentially in both Q3 and Q4.
Continue reading Slowing economy hits Office Depot (ODP) hard
Posted Jul 2nd 2008 3:20PM by Michael Fowlkes
Filed under: Bad news, Products and services, Consumer experience, Competitive strategy, Ford Motor (F), General Motors (GM), Toyota Motor Corp. (TM), Oil

It probably should come as no surprise, but June was a
tough month for automakers, and all signs are pointing to more troubles out on the horizon.
All but one major automaker saw their sales drop last month, with
Honda Motor (NYSE:
HMC) being the sole exception. For the month, Honda actually had a
1% year-over-year sales growth, which given the current market place was an exceptional feat.
So just how bad was June for the automakers? Pretty bad. During the month, combined auto sales fell to 1.19 million vehicles sold, a 266,000 decline from the same period last year. This just continues the trend that we have been seeing all year, amounting to roughly a 10% sales decline during the first half of the year.
Continue reading Automakers brace for more hard times to come
Posted Jun 27th 2008 4:17PM by Eric Buscemi
Filed under: Earnings reports, Forecasts, Conventions and conferences, Annual meetings, Ford Motor (F), General Motors (GM), IAC/InterActiveCorp (IACI), H and R Block (HRB), Family Dollar Stores (FDO), Texas Instruments (TXN)

Monday, June 30
Tuesday, July 1
- Constellation Brands (NYSE:STZ) to report Q1 earnings; conference call at 10:00am.
- Texas Instruments (NYSE:TXN) to discuss enhanced financial reporting structure at 11:00am.
- Ford (NYSE:F) to report June sales at 1:00pm; General Motors (GM) to report June sales at 2:00pm.
- Apollo Group (NASDAQ:APOL) to report Q3 earnings; conference call at 5:00pm.
Wednesday, July 2
Thursday, July 3
- Corel Corp (NASDAQ:CREL) to report Q2 earnings; conference call at 8:00am.
- Stolt-nielsen to report Q2 earnings; conference call at 9:00am.
Friday, July 4
- Markets closed for Fourth of July holiday.
Posted May 2nd 2008 3:01PM by Eric Buscemi
Filed under: Earnings reports, Conventions and conferences, Annual meetings, Wal-Mart (WMT), Walt Disney (DIS), Target Corp. (TGT), Amer Intl Group (AIG), Abercrombie and Fitch (ANF), Sotheby's (BID), Anadarko Petroleum (APC)
.gif)
Monday, May 5
- Happy Cinco de Mayo!
- Day one of the two-day FDA Anesthetic/Life Support Drugs & Drug Safety/Risk Management Advisory Committees meeting: Purdue Pharma's NDA for Oxycontin.
- Anadarko Petroleum (NYSE:APC) to report Q1 earnings; conference call Tuesday at 10:00am.
Tuesday, May 6
- Day two of the two-day FDA Anesthetic/Life Support Drugs & Drug Safety/Risk Mgmt Advisory Committees meeting: Cephalon's (NASDAQ:CEPH) sNDA for Fentora.
- Molson Coors (NYSE:TAP) to report Q1 earnings; conference call at 12:00pm.
- Walt Disney Company (NYSE:DIS) to report Q2 earnings; conference call at 4:30pm.
Wednesday, May 7
Thursday, May 8
Friday, May 9
Posted Apr 14th 2008 10:48AM by Joseph Lazzaro
Filed under: Bad news, Economic data, Recession
U.S. business inventories increased 0.6% in February 2008 to $1.468 trillion, the
U.S. Commerce Department announced Monday. Economists
surveyed by Bloomberg News had expected inventories to increase by 0.6% in February 2008.
Meanwhile, sales declined 1.1% in February 2008, the category's largest drop since January 2007.
Also, the inventory-to-sales ratio, an indicator of demand, increased to 1.28 in February 2008 from 1.26 in January 2008.
Economists, business executives, monetary officials and investors/traders monitor the inventories statistic because it can indicate business optimism and/or growing sales in the months ahead.
Further, the ratio of inventories-to-sales can help investors determine whether production demand will expand or contract in the near future -- a major factor in U.S. GDP growth.
Economic Analysis: A sub-par February 2008 business inventories report. The key statistic is the 1.28 inventory-to-sales ratio, which continues to increase. It's been rising since late 2007 -- and a sustained rise historically indicates, at minimum, economic sluggishness up ahead; at worst, a recession. For example, the ratio increased throughout 2001, prior to the start of the U.S.'s last recession. Conversely, it decreased throughout the ensuing, nearly 6-year economic expansion.
Next Page >