wall street
CAMPBELL SOUP CO. (New York symbol CPB; www.campbellsoupcompany.com) is the world’s largest maker of canned soups. It also makes Prego canned pasta and sauces, Pepperidge Farm cookies and V8 vegetable juices. Wal-Mart accounts for 19% of its sales....
ARCHER DANIELS MIDLAND CO., $41.33, New York symbol ADM, processes corn, wheat, soybeans, canola, flax seed, peanuts, cocoa and other crops into a wide variety of food ingredients, such as flour, oils and sweeteners. It is also the largest maker of ethanol from corn in the U.S. The company owns port facilities, inland grain elevators and an oilseed processing plant in Ukraine. These assets continue to operate normally, despite the political turmoil in that country. As well, the new Ukrainian government has pledged to protect the country’s large agricultural industry. The country accounts for 17% the world’s wheat exports and 16% of its corn shipments....
VERIZON COMMUNICATIONS INC., $47.56, New York symbol VZ, has completed its purchase of the 45% of Verizon Wireless that it didn’t already own from U.K.-based Vodafone Group (Nasdaq symbol VOD). The company now owns 100% of Verizon Wireless, which sells wireless services to 102.8 million subscribers in the U.S. In 2013, it supplied 67% of Verizon’s revenue and 81% of its earnings. Verizon paid $130 billion in cash and shares for Vodafone’s stake. To put that in context, Verizon’s market cap (or the total value of all its outstanding shares) is $196.7 billion....
WAL-MART STORES INC., $73.12, New York symbol WMT, reported better-than-expected earnings this week. However, the company’s U.S. big box stores are facing strong competition from online retailers, particularly for clothing and electronics. Harsh winter weather has also slowed customer traffic. In the fourth quarter of its 2014 fiscal year, which ended January 31, 2014, Wal-Mart’s earnings fell 22.2%, to $4.35 billion from $5.6 billion a year earlier. Earnings per share declined 18.6%, to $1.34 from $1.67, on fewer shares outstanding. Without several unusual items, such as costs to close stores in Brazil and China and restructure its Sam’s Club warehouse outlets, Wal-Mart earned $1.60 a share in the latest quarter. That beat the consensus estimate of $1.59....
You may have read about the “scary 1929 market chart” that has been making the rounds on Wall Street. It shows two periods of trading history of the Dow Jones Industrial Average, superimposed one over the other. (You can see the chart in a Mark Hulbert column at www.marketwatch.com) One period covers 1928 and 1929. The Dow had a sharp rise in 1928 and the first three quarters of 1929, followed by the October 1929 market plunge which led into the 1930s depression. The second period on the chart shows the Dow from mid-2012 through today. The two periods are aligned so that the peak in the 1929 market is roughly above the recent peak in today’s market. When you compare the two historical patterns, you can see some vague similarity between the two sets of squiggles. It’s clear that the creator of the chart wants to suggest that history is repeating itself and the Dow is headed for a 1929-1932 style collapse. These “1929-all-over-again” charts have been around for as long as I’ve been in the investment business. The last time I recall one of them gained this much notice was in the first half of 1988. Back then, investors were still rattled by the one-day, 22.5% market plunge that happened on October 19, 1987, sometimes referred to as “Black Monday”....
CONAGRA FOODS INC., $29.36, New York symbol CAG, fell 5% this week after it cut its profit outlook for the current fiscal year. In January 2013, ConAgra paid $4.75 billion for Ralcorp Holdings, the largest maker of private label food in the U.S. To put the price in context, ConAgra’s current market cap (or the value of all its outstanding shares) is $12.3 billion. The company is taking longer to absorb Ralcorp than it expected, and strong competition has hurt sales of its branded foods....
Royal Canadian Mint Gold Reserves Exchange Traded Receipts (ETRs), $13.61, symbol MNT on Toronto (Receipts outstanding: 35.8 million; Market cap: $540.4 million; www.reserves.mint.ca), are receipts issued by the Royal Canadian Mint (the Crown corporation responsible for minting and distributing Canada’s circulation coins) that let investors own gold bullion stored in the Mint’s vaults. The value of these ETRs varies with the price of gold. Investors can trade their ETRs on the stock exchange, or once a month they can redeem them for gold coins or bullion with a minimum purity of 99.99%. This requires at least 10,000 ETRs plus redemption and fabrication fees for the gold coins or bars. Instead of physical gold, investors can choose to redeem their units for cash equal to 95% of the lesser of: a) the ETR price on the redemption date; or b) the volume-weighted average price of the ETRs for five trading days prior to and including the redemption date....
