wall street

FEDEX CORP. (New York symbol FDX; www.fedex.com) delivers packages and documents in the U.S. and over 220 other countries and territories. The stock has moved up in the past few weeks, partly due to speculation that activist investment firm Pershing Square Capital Management will soon make a significant investment in FedEx....

Advanced Micro Devices Inc., $3.75, symbol AMD on New York (Shares outstanding: 714.5 million; Market cap: $2.7 billion; www.amd.com), makes computer chips. The company produces microprocessors for desktops, laptops and servers, including its Athlon, Turion and Opteron designs, which are compatible with Microsoft Windows applications. AMD also makes circuits for communications equipment and graphics processors through ATI, which it bought for $5.4 billion in 2006. AMD continues to face strong competition from other chipmakers. At the same time, more consumers are switching to mobile devices and away from desktops and laptops. That’s cutting demand for the company’s chips....

AT&T INC. $35.60, New York symbol T, has agreed to buy Leap Wireless International (Nasdaq symbol LEAP), which provides wireless service to 4.6 million pay-as-you-go subscribers in 35 U.S. states under the Cricket brand. Regulators must still approve the deal, but AT&T expects to close it in the next six to nine months. The company will pay $4.0 billion, which includes Leap’s $2.8 billion of debt. To put that in context, AT&T earned $3.8 billion in the three months ended June 30, 2013. That’s down 2.1% from $3.9 billion a year earlier. However, due to fewer shares outstanding, earnings per share rose 7.6%, to $0.71 from $0.66. If you exclude a gain on the sale of part of its stake in a Mexican phone company, AT&T would have earned $0.67 a share in the latest quarter. That missed the consensus estimate of $0.68....

TECK RESOURCES LTD., $25.11, Toronto symbol TCK.B, reported lower results this week due to weaker metallurgical coal and copper prices. Even so, the latest revenue and earnings beat the consensus forecasts. In the three months ended June 30, 2013, Teck’s earnings fell 50.5%, to $197 million, or $0.34 a share. These figures exclude unusual items, such as foreign exchange losses and asset writedowns. On this basis, the latest earnings beat the consensus estimate of $0.31 a share. A year earlier, Teck earned $398 million, or $0.68 a share. Revenue fell 16.0%, to $2.2 billion from $2.6 billion. Even with the decline, the latest figure also beat the consensus estimate of $2.1 billion....

NCR CORP. (New York symbol NCR; www.ncr.com) is a leading maker of automated teller machines (ATMs), checkout scanners, cash registers and self-serve kiosks.

In February 2013, the company paid $791 million for Israel-based Retalix, whose software helps retailers manage their sales and track inventories. Retailers with a combined 70,000 locations in over 50 countries use Retalix’s products. NCR feels Retalix’s expertise will improve its point-of-sale terminals and self-serve kiosks.

In the three months ended March 31, 2013, Retalix contributed $50 million to NCR’s revenue. That helped push up the total by 13.3% in the latest quarter, to $1.4 billion from $1.2 billion a year earlier. The acquisition should add $255 million to the company’s full-year revenue.

...

One of today’s most dated investment terms is “tech stocks”. You’ll hear the term flung about as if it referred to well-defined groups of stocks such as the oils, the mining stocks or the banks. The difference is that changes in the price of oil have a direct impact on oil company profits and oil stock prices. Changes in mineral prices have a direct impact on mining company profits and stock prices. Changes in interest rates and in bank legislation have a direct impact on bank profits and bank stock prices. But there is no over-riding factor that influences the so-called tech stocks as a group. The term made more sense in the 1990s and before, when technology companies were in a much earlier stage of their corporate development. Back then, shares of these companies did tend to move as something of a loosely connected group. That was mainly because investors had limited information on which to base their views of many of these stocks, and decide how much to pay for them. Now, however, you might say the group has matured. The stocks it covers have differentiated. Stocks that qualify as “techs” still include a lot of companies that are little past the start-up phase and are highly speculative. But it also includes stocks issues that qualify as traditional growth stocks....

INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS MACHINES CORP., $193.54, New York symbol IBM, reported lower second-quarter earnings this week, although they still beat the consensus forecast. The company also raised its earnings estimate for all of 2013. In the three months ended June 30, 2013, the company earned $3.2 billion, down 16.9% from $3.9 billion a year earlier. IBM spent $3.6 billion on share buybacks in the latest quarter. Due to fewer shares outstanding, earnings per share fell at a slower pace of 12.9%, to $2.91 from $3.34. If you exclude unusual items, such as costs to integrate recently purchased companies, IBM’s per-share earnings would have risen 8%, to $3.91. That easily beat the consensus forecast of $3.77....

ALCOA INC., $8.10, New York symbol AA, is closing smelters and cutting costs in response to declining aluminum prices. It also continues to expand its more profitable engineered-products business, which makes wings, fasteners and other components for the aerospace and automotive industries. In the three months ended June 30, 2013, Alcoa lost $119 million, or $0.11 a share. That’s much worse than the $2 million, or nil per share, it lost a year earlier. If you exclude plant-closure costs and other unusual items, Alcoa’s earnings per share would have risen 16.7%, to $0.07 from $0.06. On that basis, the latest earnings beat the consensus estimate of $0.06 a share....

VISA INC. (New York symbol V; www.visa.com) operates the world’s largest electronic payments network. The company processes credit, debit, prepaid and commercial payments under the Visa, Visa Electron, Interlink and PLUS brands. Visa gets most of its revenue from fees it charges card issuers and merchants for using its network. These fees are based on payment volume, transactions processed and other factors. The responsibility for evaluating customer creditworthiness and collecting payments lies with the banks that issue the cards, not with Visa....

APACHE CORP., $82.17, New York symbol APA, produces oil and gas in the U.S., Canada, the U.K., Australia, Egypt and Argentina. The stock fell 2% this week on concerns that political uncertainty in Egypt could disrupt the company’s operations in that country. Egypt accounted for 27% of Apache’s revenue in 2012. The unrest could also make it harder for the company to sell its Egyptian assets, which had a book value of $7.3 billion as of December 31, 2012. To put that in context, Apache’s current market cap (or the value of all its outstanding shares) is $32.2 billion....