wall street

BELLATRIX EXPLORATION LTD., $8.14, symbol BXE on Toronto, is buying Angle Energy (symbol NGL on Toronto) for $576 million in cash and shares. Angle currently produces 10,500 barrels of oil equivalent a day (58% oil and 42% natural gas) in Alberta. Bellatrix’s output is 22,500 barrels a day, so they will have combined daily production of 33,000 barrels. The purchase also increases Bellatrix’s inventory of drilling targets by 500, to over 2,000, and doubles its undeveloped land base to over 400,000 acres. The company now expects to end 2013 with production as high as 40,000 barrels a day, up from 30,000 to 31,000 before the Angle acquisition. It also expects Angle to immediately add to its cash flow per share....

Effective September 23, 2013, the Dow Jones Industrial Average, which consists of 30 companies, removed Alcoa (symbol AA on New York), Hewlett-Packard (symbol HPQ on New York) and Bank of America (symbol BAC on New York) and replaced them with Nike (symbol NKE on New York), Visa (symbol V on New York) and Goldman Sachs (symbol GS on New York). The reasons for Alcoa’s removal centred around its low stock price and its declining role in a U.S. economy that is less oriented toward heavy manufacturing. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was created in 1896 by Charles H. Dow, one of the founders of The Wall Street Journal. The original index had 12 companies, but it gradually increased to 30 by 1928....

ALCOA INC., $8.32, New York symbol AA, continues to do a good job of cutting its costs in the face of weak aluminum demand and prices, mainly by closing smelters. At the same time, the company continues to expand its more profitable engineered-products business, which makes wings, fasteners and other components for the aerospace and automotive industries. Products like these now account for over half of Alcoa’s revenue and nearly 80% of its earnings. In the three months ended September 30, 2013, Alcoa earned $24 million, or $0.02 a share. That’s a big improvement over the $143 million, or $0.13 a share, it lost a year earlier....

AMAZON.COM INC., $310.89, symbol AMZN on Nasdaq, won a $600-million deal to build a cloud computing service for the U.S Central Intelligence Agency early this year. This system would let the CIA more effectively connect with the broader intelligence community. The project will run over four years. However, the CIA has traditionally awarded many of its big computing contracts to IBM (New York symbol IBM), a recommendation of our Wall Street Stock Forecaster newsletter. IBM protested the awarding of this deal to Amazon, and the U.S. Government Accountability Office recommended that the CIA reopen negotiations. Immediately afterward, Amazon filed a complaint, which then led to a hearing on Monday of this week....

MTS SYSTEMS CORP. (Nasdaq symbol MTSC; www.mts.com) makes equipment and software that manufacturers use to test the behaviour of materials, machines and structures. This helps its clients reduce errors and costs....

MONSANTO CO., $105.63, New York symbol MON, is buying Climate Corp., a private company that specializes in weather forecasting software and climate models. These products help farmers decide when to plant their crops in order to maximize their harvests. This technology will also help Monsanto develop genetically engineered seeds for specific regions and weather conditions. The company will pay $930 million for Climate Corp. when the deal closes in the next few weeks. Meanwhile, Monsanto earned $2.5 billion, or $4.60 a share, in its 2013 fiscal year, which ended August 31, 2013. That’s up 21.4% from $2.0 billion, or $3.79 a share, in 2012....

CISCO SYSTEMS INC. (Nasdaq symbol CSCO; www.cisco.com) is a leading maker of hardware and software that links and manages computer networks. The company’s hardware includes routers, local area network (LAN) and asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) switches, and server computers. Cisco mainly sells this equipment to large businesses and government agencies....

J.C. PENNEY CO., INC., $9.05, New York symbol JCP, fell 13% on Friday after the company announced that it is selling 84.0 million new common shares to the public at $9.65 each. Underwriters have an option to buy an additional 12.6 million shares. The potential 96.6 million new shares would increase the total outstanding by 44%. The department store operator will probably use the $932-million proceeds to build up its inventories ahead of the busy Christmas shopping season. Penney is also making progress with its plan to win back shoppers it alienated under a failed everyday low price strategy. The company expects to report positive same-store sales in the fourth quarter of its 2014 fiscal year, which ends January 31, 2014. In the second quarter, same-store sales fell 11.9%. As well, sales through its website continue to improve....

High unemployment and gasoline prices have hurt U.S. consumer spending and prompted shoppers to shift to discount and warehouse chains. That’s putting pressure on department stores. Here is how one of America’s most renowned department stores is seeking to overcome the slowdown in consumer spending....

AGILENT TECHNOLOGIES INC., $52.15, New York symbol A, plans to break itself into two publicly traded companies. The news caused the stock to rise 8% this week. One business will keep the Agilent name and focus on testing equipment for medical-research labs. This company’s revenue will be about $3.9 billion in its 2013 fiscal year, which ends October 31, 2013. It will pay a dividend comparable to Agilent’s current 0.9% yield. The second firm will make testing systems for improving electronics, such as cellphones and computer equipment. Its projected fiscal 2013 revenue is $2.9 billion. This company will not pay a dividend, at least initially....