wall street
AMAZON.COM INC., $177.24, symbol AMZN on Nasdaq, will now offer free streaming of movies and TV shows to its Amazon Prime members. These are customers who pay $79 a year to get unlimited two-day shipping from Amazon with no minimum purchase requirements. The company will offer Prime members more than 5,000 movies and TV shows. Netflix (New York symbol NFLX), Amazon’s rival in the Internet movie market, offers about 30,000 movies and TV shows for $96 a year. Amazon’s new service will benefit the company in a number of ways: It will reward Prime members. As well, it will draw attention to the company’s movie and TV-show downloading service, Amazon Instant Video, which lets customers buy or rent more than 90,000 commercial-free movies and TV shows (with prices of up to $3.99 for new releases)....
Yum! Brands Inc., New York symbol YUM, operates over 37,000 fast-food restaurants in over 110 countries. Its main banners include KFC (fried chicken), Pizza Hut, Taco Bell (Mexican food) and Long John Silver’s (seafood). The company continues to grow strongly in China. That offsets slower growth in the U.S. and other parts of the world. In 2010, Yum’s sales rose 4.7%, to $11.3 billion from $10.8 billion in fiscal 2019. Overall sales rose 17% in China, while same-store sales in China grew 6%. Yum opened 507 new restaurants in China in 2010, along with another 884 international outlets outside China....
Buckeye Partners L.P., symbol BPL on New York, operates over 8,700 kilometres of pipelines in the northeastern and midwestern U.S. These lines pump gasoline, jet fuel and other petroleum products. Buckeye also owns oil and natural-gas storage terminals and other related businesses. Buckeye is one of the income investing picks we analyze in Wall Street Stock Forecaster. In 2010, Buckeye’s revenue jumped 78.0%, to $3.2 billion from $1.8 billion in 2009. The gain mostly reflects the company’s recent acquisition of oil pipelines and storage terminals. In addition, the company is transporting more fuel due to the improving economy. Rising oil prices have also pushed up the company’s fee income....
Kraft Foods Inc., symbol KFT on New York, is the world’s second-largest food company, after Switzerland-based Nestle. Kraft has 11 brands that generate over $1 billion each in yearly sales. Aside from Kraft (cheeses, pasta and salad dressings), the large cap stock’s brands include Philadelphia (cream cheese), Maxwell House (coffee), Nabisco (biscuits), Oreo (cookies), Trident (gum) and Oscar Meyer (meats). In April 2010, Kraft paid $18.5 billion in cash and stock for U.K.-based Cadbury plc, a leading maker of confectioneries, including chocolate, candy and gum. Cadbury’s well-known brands include Dentyne and Clorets (gum), Dairy Milk (chocolate bars) and Halls (cough drops)....
Teradata Corp., symbol TDC on New York, makes computers and software that capture and store large amounts of a business’s data. Teradata then analyzes this information and identifies buying habits and trends. Teradata is taking advantage of the weak economy to hire new salespeople. That’s helping it enter new markets and offer more technology and services to its existing clients. In the year ended December 31, 2010, the tech stock’s sales climbed 13.5%, to $1.9 billion from $1.7 billion. Sales rose 19% in the Americas, 10% in the Asia-Pacific region, and 3% in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. The tech stock’s earnings rose 18.5% in 2010, to $301 million from $254 million a year earlier. Earnings per share rose to $1.77 from $1.46, on fewer shares outstanding. The company bought back 3 million of its own shares for $88 million in 2010....
Sysco Corp., symbol SYY on New York, supplies food and kitchen supplies to over 400,000 restaurants, hotels and schools in North America and Ireland. In its fiscal 2011 second quarter, which ended January 1, 2011, the U.S. stock’s earnings fell 3.8%, to $258.2 million, or $0.44 a share. That fell short of the consensus earnings estimate of $0.47 a share. A year earlier, it earned $268.3 million, or $0.45 a share. The company’s labour, pension and fuel costs all rose during the quarter. Revenue rose 5.8%, to $9.4 billion from $8.9 billion. However, most of the gain came from a 4.5% rise in food prices (meat, dairy and seafood jumped more than 10%), which Sysco passed along to its customers. A year earlier, food prices had dropped 3.5%....
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- Think like a portfolio manager: Portfolio managers gather information from companies, industry studies and other sources. A good portfolio manager then tries to build his or her client a portfolio that makes money if things go well, but won’t lose too much if the opinions sometimes turn out to be faulty....
Visa Inc., symbol V on New York, operates the world’s largest retail electronic payments network. The company processes credit, debit, prepaid and commercial payments under the Visa, Visa Electron, Interlink and PLUS brands. The company generates 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. Visa continues to benefit from the global trend toward greater use of credit and debit cards. In its 2011 first quarter, which ended December 31, the company’s revenue rose 14.2%, to $2.24 billion from $1.96 billion a year earlier. Earnings rose 15.9%, to $884.0 million from $763.0 million....
Toyota Motor Co. (symbol TM on New York) has been the world’s largest carmaker since GM lost that position in 2008. The company is one of the world stock market investments we analyze in our Wall Street Stock Forecaster newsletter. In its third fiscal quarter, which ended December 31, 2010, Toyota’s earnings fell 33.7%, to $1.1 billion from $1.7 billion a year earlier. Earnings per ADR dropped 33.9%, to $0.72 from $1.09, on more ADRs outstanding. Toyota’s sales declined 4.3%, to $56.3 billion from $58.3 billion a year earlier. The strength of the yen against the U.S. dollar was the main reason for the decline (a strong yen lowers the value of Toyota’s exported vehicles.) As well, the Japanese government ended incentives for lower-emission cars....
Western Union Co. (New York symbol WU) provides money-transfer and foreign-exchange services in over 200 countries. In 2010, Western Union reported revenue of $5.2 billion. That’s up 2.1% from $5.1 billion in 2009. If you exclude the negative impact of exchange rates, revenue would have risen 3%. The company earned $909.9 million in 2010, up 7.2% from $848.8 million in 2009. During the year, Western Union spent $584 million on share buybacks. Due to fewer shares outstanding, the growth stock pick’s earnings per share rose 12.4% to $1.36 from $1.21 the year before. If you exclude one-time items, including restructuring expenses, earnings per share would have risen 10.1%, to $1.42 from $1.29....