Wednesday, January 20, 1999
Markets
U.S. stocks closed mixed after a late selloff, with the Internet sector suffering worst, and tech stocks managing to hold on to a measure of their earlier gains. Until the downturn, the downbeat
comments on the stock market from
Federal Reserve
Chairman
Alan Greenspan
(see below) seemed to have had little effect.
The
Dow Jones Industrial Average
dropped 19.31 to 9,335.91, and the small-cap
Russell 2000
lost a scant 0.28 to 430.61. The
S&P 500
rose 4.61 to 1,256.61, while the
Nasdaq Composite Index
gained 7.36 to 2,415.53.
TheStreet.com Internet Sector
TheStreet Recommends
index lost 39.41 to 508.85.
European bourses closed higher, as did Asian markets, as Hong Kong's
Hang Seng
gained 24.80 to 10,314.91, and Japan's
Nikkei 225
picked up 257.61 to close at 14,028.05.
For more markets action and news, click
here.
Companies
American Airlines
parent
AMR
(AMR) - Get Alpha Metallurgical Resources Inc. Report
said its fourth-quarter profit fell 13% to $182 million.
A $495 million charge sliced
Bristol-Myers Squibb's
(BMY) - Get Bristol-Myers Squibb Company Report
1998 fourth-quarter earnings to $413 million. Without the charge, the company's profit increased 13%.
Caterpillar
(CAT) - Get Caterpillar Inc. Report
reported fourth-quarter earnings of $301 million, down from $451 million a year ago.
Having retained
BT Alex. Brown
to advise the company on ways to restructure,
Chancellor Media
(AMFM)
said it's considering selling some or all of its assets.
General Motors
(GM) - Get General Motors Company Report
today reported fourth-quarter earnings of $3.25 a share, up 55% from last year and easily beating analysts estimates of $2.65 a share.
Newport News Shipbuilding
(NNS)
announced that it will buy fellow shipbuilder
Avondale Industries
(AVDL) - Get Avadel Pharmaceuticals plc Report
in a stock deal worth about $470 million.
New York Life Insurance's
board of directors voted to keep the company a mutual insurer.
Suffering from low wood prices,
Weyerhaeuser
said that profits for the fourth quarter of 1998 were 69% lower than the previous year.
For more news on companies and stocks, click
here.
Tech
High-speed Internet service provider
@Home
(ATHM) - Get Autohome Inc. American Depositary Shares each representing four class A. Report
yesterday agreed to buy the search engine
Excite
(XCIT)
for $6.7 billion in stock.
TSC's
Kevin Petrie
weighed in yesterday on the deal's impact on the bandwidth industry.
Dutch software company
Baan
undefined
said that revised restructuring charges of about $160 million will contribute to an expected fourth-quarter loss of $250 million.
Microsoft
(MSFT) - Get Microsoft Corporation Report
late yesterday reported second-quarter earnings of 73 cents a share, easily beating analysts' estimates of 59 cents a share.
The
Supreme Court
yesterday refused to hear a case in which
SBC Communications
(SBC)
,
US West
(USW)
and
Bell Atlantic
(BEL)
attacked the 1996 telecommunications law that kept them from selling long-distance service in America. San Antonio-based Baby Bell company
SBC Communications
(SBC)
will acquire
Comcast's
(CMCSK)
cellular business for about $1.7 billion in cash and debt.
Texas Instruments
(TXN) - Get Texas Instruments Incorporated Report
reported fourth-quarter earnings of 59 cents a share, beating Street estimates by a handy nickel.
For more tech news and commentary, click
here.
International
British Aerospace
yesterday agreed to buy
General Electric PLC's
Marconi Electronics for about $12.7 billion in a deal that will create a U.K. defense group on the scale of U.S. juggernauts such as
Boeing
(BA) - Get The Boeing Company Report
and
Lockheed Martin
(LMT) - Get Lockheed Martin Corporation Report
.
Sweden and Norway said they will merge state-owned telecoms
Telia AB
and
Telenor AS
into a single company. The governments then plan to sell 33.2% of the company to investors.
Japan's
Toyo Trust
and
Sanwa Bank
today announced a broad alliance one day after
Mitsui Trust
and
Chuo Trust
said they were in merger talks.
For more international news and commentary, click
here.
General News
Addressing the
House Ways and Means Committee
today, Federal Reserve Chairman Greenspan said: "The level of stock prices would appear to envision substantially greater growth of profits than has been experienced of late." Greenspan also reiterated his uneasiness with the notion of investing Social Security funds in the stock market.
Commerce Department
figures show housing starts are now at an 11-year high.
In a meeting with two top
NATO
generals, Serbian President
Slobodan Milosevic
maintained his opposition to a
U.N.
investigation of the Serbian massacre of 45 ethnic Albanians in Kosovo.
Elsewhere
Ho-hum.
University of Texas
running back
Ricky Williams
last night accepted his second consecutive
Doak Walker
award.
