Market Morning: Flat Start as Greece Talks Stall
NEW YORK (
) -- U.S. stock futures signaled a flat to lower Wall Street open while European shares gained Thursday despite an uncertain future for a €130 billion Greece bailout.
Talks in Athens stalled early Thursday after the three parties backing Greece's coalition government failed to accept the entire batch of new harsh austerity measures demanded by creditors,
The Associated Press
reported.
Asian stocks ended mixed as inflation in China rose faster than expected and a government report showed a decline in Japan machinery orders.
Japan's Nikkei 225 index closed down 0.2% to 9,002.24, South Korea's Kospi rose 0.5%, and Hong Kong's Hang Seng slipped slightly.
In the U.S. on Wednesday,
stocks finished tentatively higher
Wednesday on the lack of clarity on a restructuring of Greek debt.
The
Dow Jones Industrial Average
climbed 5.75 points, or 0.04%, to 12,884. The
S&P 500
rose 2.9 points, or 0.2%, to 1,350, and the
Nasdaq
finished 11.8 points higher, or 0.4%, at 2,916.
The economic calendar in the U.S. on Thursday features weekly initial and continuing jobless claims data at 8:30 a.m. EST, and wholesale inventories at 10 a.m.
Economists forecast initial claims of 370,000, slightly higher than last week's 367,000.
PepsiCo
(PEP) - Get Report
, the beverage and snacks maker, is expected by analysts Thursday to post fourth-quarter earnings of $1.13 a share on sales of $19.91 billion.
Competitor
Coca-Cola
(KO) - Get Report
reported better-than-expected results for the fourth quarter Tuesday as the company continued to expand international sales volume.
The U.S. Justice Department will probably give antitrust approval next week to
Google's
(GOOG) - Get Report
bid for
Motorola Mobility Holdings
(MMI) - Get Report
,
Bloomberg
reported, citing two people familiar with the matter.
If approved by regulators, the acquisition of Motorola Mobility will give Google more than 17,000 patents for mobile-phone technology.
Dow
component
Cisco Systems
(CSCO) - Get Report
, the networking-equipment maker,
topped analysts' earnings expectations
and raised its quarterly dividend by more than 30%.
Cisco on Wednesday reported non-GAAP earnings of $2.6 billion, or 47 cents a share, in its fiscal second quarter on revenue of $11.5 billion.
Analysts were expecting Cisco to report earnings of 43 cents a share on revenue of $11.23 billion.
Groupon
(GRPN) - Get Report
posted a loss in its first quarterly report as a public company.
Groupon, the daily deals Web site, on Wednesday posted a pro forma adjusted
of $9.8 million, or 2 cents a share, on revenue of $506.5 million, more than triple the revenue recorded in the year-earlier equivalent period.
The company said adjusted results in the latest quarter reflect a negative impact of 7 cents a share from high taxes on its international operations.
Analysts were expecting adjusted profit of 3 cents a share on revenue of $475 million in the quarter.
-- Written by Joseph Woelfel
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Joseph Woelfel
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