Liquor company Brown-Forman Corp. is reporting a 30 percent rise in its third-quarter profit, led by surging international sales and a strong showing by its flagship Jack Daniel’s brand.
The results beat Wall Street estimates and the company is also raising its full-year earnings outlook.
The maker of Southern Comfort reported net income of $140.7 million, or 96 cents per share, in the three months ending Jan. 31 no teletrack payday loan. That’s up from $107.9 million, or 73 cents per share, a year earlier.
It says net sales for the quarter rose 12 percent to $962.4 million.
Analysts surveyed by FactSet expected earnings of 86 cents per share on revenue of $881.9 million for the quarter.
Amid the reams of census data released Thursday showing an unexpected population loss in St. Louis, perhaps no detail was more striking than this:
In a belt of neighborhoods across the near south side, places around Tower Grove Park and Benton Park that have seen countless homes rehabbed and new businesses open in the last decade, the number of actual residents declined by at least 10 percent.
In Tower Grove East and Shaw, Fox Park and McKinley Heights, population fell faster than the city as a whole. The south side contributed almost as much to St. Louis’ 8 percent population drop as did the continuing exodus up north.
The difference is that while people have flowed out of north St. Louis for decades, many of these south city neighborhoods have in recent years seemed to rebound, acquiring the trappings of urban revitalization, from coffee shops to kickball leagues to parents pushing strollers.
It’s a reminder that progress and population growth don’t always move as one and also that the challenges facing a city still struggling to grow again
Drivers, check your mailboxes.
Toronto will be mailing out refund cheques to anyone who paid the now-scrapped personal vehicle tax in advance for 2011.
The first batch of cheques will be sent out Friday, the city says.
The much-hated tax was axed by city council Dec. 16, 2010, after Ford promised to do away with the fee during his campaign. But the end of the tax didn
General Electric says its oil and gas business has reached a deal to buy the John Wood Group’s well support division for about $2.8 billion.
GE says in a statement Sunday that the deal must be approved by Wood Group’s shareholders. It’s expected to close later this year.
The well support division makes electric submersible pumps, wellhead pressure control systems and information logging systems.
It has 3,800 employees and more than 20 factories and service centers across the world. Last year it reported $947 million in revenue.
GE says the deal makes it a key player in the oil recovery business by adding submersible pumps.
Australia marshaled 4,000 troops and sent a supply ship with tons of food to its cyclone-stricken northeast coast Friday, as awe-struck residents in wrecked towns confronted debris that included boats tossed into neighbors’ yards.
Authorities confirmed the first death from the storm that slammed into the coast early Thursday and said a search was under way for two missing people.
Cyclone Yasi destroyed dozens of homes and ripped roofs and walls from dozens more. It cut power supplies in two regional cities and laid waste to hundreds of millions of dollars worth of banana and sugar cane crops.
“I just hope we don’t get forgotten,” said Lisa Smith, whose house had part of its roof torn off in the hard-hit, seafront town of Cardwell. She complained that state and federal officials had not yet given her remote community any substantial help.
Residents and officials were amazed that the death toll was not higher. The storm whipped the coast with up to 170 mph (280 kph) winds and sent waves crashing ashore two blocks into seaside communities, as tens of thousands of people huddled in evacuation centers.
Power supplies and phone services were gradually being restored Friday, and roads cleared of downed trees and other debris. The efforts were hampered by drenching rain in many parts of the disaster zone, prompting the weather bureau to warn of potentially dangerous flash flooding.
In Cardwell, rain pounded down Friday on already inundated homes through gaping holes in roofs. The waterfront library was in shambles. The roof had collapsed, the books were drenched and the front door lay in the center of the building.
Local police moved through the cluttered streets trying to clear wreckage. Richard Doran, 62, beckoned a backhoe driver over to the front of his shop, where inside, three inches of mud covered the floor. A tidal surge had dumped a tangle of downed trees at his front door.
He still hadn’t seen any state emergency service workers and was hoping help would arrive soon.
“The longer it sits like this, the worse it is,” he said.
Power and water supplies remained cut and the main road into town was torn into chunks in places and piles of sand washed ashore by tidal surges blocked it elsewhere. Yachts and leisure cruisers were piled atop each other at the marina, and some washed up on the boardwalk.
Diane Robson and her husband Michael weathered the storm in their top floor apartment. On Friday, she stood on her balcony looking at her yacht lying in their next door neighbor’s yard, where it was flung by the storm electronic check payday advance.
“I don’t ever want to get back on the boat again,” she said “I’m too scared.”
Smith survived a cyclone in Cardwell in 2006 and felt at the time that help took too long to come. She said she wondered if this time would be any different.
“A lot of us feel like we’re on our own again,” she said.
Officials vowed to work hard to reach isolated towns and urged residents to be patient.
Prime Minister Julia Gillard said 4,000 troops would help with the cleanup operation, and that more than 600 police and emergency services workers were fanning out with chain saws and heavy machinery.
A ship carrying 3,000 tons (2,750 metric tons) of food and other aid was to arrive Friday in the regional city of Townsville, from where it would be trucked to smaller hard-hit towns.
The cyclone has added misery to a state battered for weeks by the nation’s worst flooding in decades, which killed 35 people, swamped dozens of towns and caused an estimated $5.6 billion dollars damage.
Gillard said the cyclone damage would be massive but that it was too early to quantify it.
Treasurer Wayne Swan said the cyclone, which hit a region that produces 90 percent of Australia’s banana crop and 30 percent of its sugar cane, would add about a quarter of a percentage point to inflation.
The central bank said in a report issued Friday that the earlier flooding could shave half a percentage point from Australia’s gross domestic product growth in the six months to the end of March, but that pre-flood growth levels would return in the June quarter as interrupted coal mining resumes.
After that, huge spending on rebuilding could help add quarter of a percentage point to GDP for two years after that. It said those forecasts did not account for the cyclone.
The Reserve Bank of Australia also said the floods would cause a surge in insurance claims but that the industry was well placed to cope with the increase.
Police said the man who died was 23-year-old who asphyxiated due to fumes from a diesel-powered generator he was using in a closed room as he sheltered from the storm.
Officials, who had given dire warnings of the storm’s strength, said lives were spared because people followed instructions to flee to evacuation centers or bunker themselves at home.
A large batch of earnings reports out Tuesday are likely to determine if indexes clear levels last seen more than two years ago.
The Dow Jones industrial average closed 20 points shy of 12,000 on Monday. The last time the Dow closed above 12,000 was June 19, 2008.
Four of the Dow’s 30 companies were scheduled to release results before the market opens Tuesday: DuPont, 3M Co., Verizon Communications Inc. and Johnson & Johnson.
Health care giant Johnson & Johnson said profit dropped 12 percent in the fourth quarter. The maker of Tylenol, medical devices and biologic drugs was hammered by recalls that pulled its products from shelves. Excluding one-time items, its earnings would have been $1.03 per share, matching analysts’ expectations.
DuPont said net income fell but the company still beat expectations. Profits surged at Verizon but fell a penny short of estimates.
Another Dow member, American Express Co., reported results after the market closed Monday. The credit card issuer said quarterly profits jumped 49 percent. But its adjusted earnings fell just short of expectations.
Later Tuesday morning, the Conference Board will release its Consumer Confidence Index for January. The index is expected to hit 54.6, after dropping to 52.5 in December. A reading of 90 signals a healthy economy, a level not seen since the recession began in December 2007.
The economy is also expected to be the focus of President Barack Obama’s State of the Union speech Tuesday night.
Stocks appear headed for a lower open. Dow Jones industrial average futures are down 31 points, or 0.3 percent, at 11,898. S&P 500 index futures are down 5, or 0.5 percent, at 1,282. Nasdaq 100 futures are down 11, or 0.5 percent, at 2,287.
Companies across the market rose on Monday. The S&P 500 index ended the day just 10 points below 1,300.
Technology stocks made big gains after Intel Corp. increased its dividend. Materials companies rose after a report from the National Association for Business Economics showed that economists are more positive about economic growth and the job market than at any time since the start of the Great Recession in December 2007.
Richard Fleming plans to leave his post as chief executive of the Regional Chamber and Growth Association by year’s end, the organization announced today.
Fleming has led the RCGA, the St. Louis area’s chamber of commerce, since 1994.
Fleming will remain in the post until his successor is selected, and will help in the selection, said Bob Reynolds, RCGA board chairman, and chairman of electrical supplier Graybar.
In a press release, Reynolds said that Fleming “wants a new challenge in his career. He has our full support.
A quarter of Indian microfinance companies may fail after a clampdown last month in their biggest market pared debt payments and curtailed bank financing, said N. Srinivasan, who consults on the industry for the World Bank.
As many as 60 to 70 of the nation’s 260 microfinance institutions are likely to collapse in coming months as banks halt lending to them to curb risks, Srinivasan said in an interview Nov. 19 in New Delhi. That would have a “devastating effect” on the poorest borrowers in remote regions, he said.
Lending and collections by micro-lenders have ground to a near halt in southern Andhra Pradesh state after the local government introduced new rules in mid-October aimed at protecting borrowers. A slump in microfinance loans may trigger a chain reaction of defaults by borrowers with multiple debts, Srinivasan said.
“Multiple loans help people manage money, like juggling balls,” he said, adding that every poor household in Andhra Pradesh has 9.6 microfinance-loan accounts on average. “What’s happening is that right in the middle of it, you remove a ball. Suddenly there is no ball to throw.”
Andhra Pradesh, the largest market for most micro-lenders, on Oct. 15 capped interest rates that companies can charge and ordered them to collect payments monthly rather than weekly. It also barred them from using coercive measures to force borrowers to repay debt.
Straining Capital
The move led to a slump in micro-lenders’ cash flows, strained capital levels and spooked banks, which account for most of their funding needs. Microfinance companies are seeking 10 billion rupees ($221 million) from banks for a liquidity fund, Vijay Mahajan, head of a lobbying group that represents about 44 micro-lenders, said Nov. 16 in New Delhi.
The new rules sent shares of SKS Microfinance Ltd., the largest such lender in the nation, plummeting 47 percent before Chairman Vikram Akula said on Nov. 19 that the firm had received bank funding and didn’t have a cash shortage. The comments helped shares of SKS, more than a quarter of whose loans are in Andhra Pradesh, rally 5.4 percent that day.
Rival Share Microfin Ltd., backed by New Zealand billionaire Christopher Chandler, plans to delay an initial public offering until customers restart payments and state and central governments deal with the current upheaval. Banks need to regain confidence in the companies’ operations, M. Udaia Kumar, its managing director, said in a Nov. 18 interview.
‘Trickle-Down Effect’
“Even if a single MFI defaults, it might have a trickle- down effect on the entire sector,” he said pay day loans. “Institutions with stronger net worth have a possibility of survival for a period of time.”
Share Microfin, based in Andhra Pradesh’s capital of Hyderabad, had planned to raise 10 billion rupees in early 2011.
Microfinance, which focuses on loans in poor areas largely shut out from traditional banking services, gained prominence globally when Muhammad Yunus won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006 for his role in founding Bangladesh’s Grameen Bank. India, where banking services are available in about 5 percent of cities and towns, is the largest market for such credits.
India’s micro-lending has expanded at an average annual rate of 62 percent over the past five years in terms of number of customers, and 88 percent in terms of credit, according to Micro-Credit Ratings International Ltd., a Gurgaon, India-based ratings agency for the industry.
Moneylenders
A shortage of microfinance funding may force borrowers to turn to moneylenders, said Dipak Gupta, executive director of Mumbai-based Kotak Mahindra Bank Ltd. These unauthorized lenders operate outside the formal credit-delivery system and charge usurious interest rates.
“Money has stopped and a borrower is used to getting that money and circulating it,” he said. “If you don’t create an alternate system or don’t allow the system to rotate, he will go back to the moneylender.”
SKS, whose stakeholders include George Soros, has received 3.67 billion rupees from eight lenders including Axis Bank Ltd. in the past two weeks, Chief Financial Officer Dilli Raj said on Nov. 19 from Hyderabad, where the company is based.
Axis, India’s fourth-largest lender by market value, is awaiting a report by a committee set up by the central bank last month to review concerns about the microfinance industry, CFO Somnath Sengupta said.
The report, due in January, “will be the guiding principles for lending to the sector,” he said in an interview on Nov. 19. “We will continue to be prudent. There is no reason to panic.”
Axis’s loans outstanding to microfinance companies account for about 1 percent of the total, he said.
Still, the industry is bracing for consolidation, said Mahajan, who is also chairman of Hyderabad-based microfinance company Basix Group.
“We could see casualties among small microfinance institutions,” he said.
MONTREAL â Power Financial Corp. said its net profits plummeted nearly 29 per cent to $323 million in the third quarter due to a litigation charge by its insurance subsidiary.
The main operating arm of Montreal-based Power Corp. said it earned 42 cents per share for the three months ending Sept. 30, compared to 61 cents a year earlier when it earned $452 million.
Its share of a $225 million litigation provision established by Great-West Lifeco was $144 million or 20 cents per share.
Operating earnings grew 1.1 per cent to $467 million, or 62 cents per share, compared with $455 million or 61 cents in 2009.
Great-West Lifeco said its operating earnings excluding the litigation charge were $479 million, up 7.2 per cent from $445 million in the year-ago period.
The stronger Canadian dollar had a negative $22 million impact on earnings in the quarter. Power Financialâs share of the currency hit was $16 million.
IGM Financial Inc. operating earnings were $178 million in the third quarter, compared to $167 million a year earlier. Net earnings including a $8 million share of the litigation charge was $170 million.
Power Financialâs stake in European-based Pargesa Holding S.A. generated $59 million in operating earnings, down from $72 million in 2009.
Power Financial declared a 35-cents quarterly dividend payable Feb. 1 to shareholders of record Dec. 31.
The litigation charge results from a $455.7 million settlement of a class-action lawsuit over the financing of a 1997 takeover of London Insurance Group.
Nearly two million policyholders of Great-West Lifeco Inc. and its London Life subsidiary could get payouts of an average $300.
A judge in London, Ont., rule that Great-West breached sections of the Insurance Companies Act. when it transferred money from the accounts of subsidiaries London Life Insurance Co. and Great-West Life Assurance Co. to finance the takeover.
Great West Life has said it will appeal the decision and that several aspects of the decision are âin error.â
Stocks ended in slightly positive territory Tuesday after seesawing throughout the session, as investors weighed readings on consumer confidence and housing against a slew of earnings reports.
The Dow Jones industrial average (INDU) ticked up 5 points, the S&P 500 (SPX) rose less than a point, and the Nasdaq (COMP) gained 6 points.
Stocks climbed to six-month highs Monday, propelled higher by a stronger-than-expected report on existing home sales. But with so much uncertainty underlying the daily economic and corporate reports, volatility will continue to dominate.
"We’ve had a big run-up, so I don’t see how they can go much higher," said Karl Mills, president and CIO at Jurika Mills & Keifer.
With the Nov. 2 elections approaching and the Federal Reserve’s next policy meeting on tap early next month, the possibility of quantitative easing is also in the back of investors’ minds.
"The belief is that quantitative easing is a done deal, and to a great extent that’s why the market has been as buoyant as it has despite the fact that many leading indicators have stalled or gone down," said Ryan Atkinson, vice president of Balestra Capital. "But it’s now late October, so a lot of players are sitting on the sidelines until the elections and FOMC meeting."
Economy: The Case-Shiller 20-City index of home prices in major metropolitan areas indicated that the housing market remained sluggish in August, with prices falling 0.2% from July. From a year earlier, prices edged up a modest 1.7%, missing the 2% rise economists had been expecting.
"[The report] is consistent with what we’ve been seeing," said Mills. "Housing isn’t going to be coming back robustly any time soon here. We’re going to have a long recovery period."
After the start of trading, the Conference Board released a report showing that consumer confidence inched up in October, but remained at historically low levels. The index rose to 50.2 from 48.6 in September, coming in slightly higher than the reading of 49 economists had forecast.
"Confidence may be improving, but with the housing market still real early in what may be a turnaround and unemployment running so high, there are still a whole lot of people out there not feeling so confident," said John Wilson, chief technical strategist at Morgan Keegan.
Companies: After the market close Tuesday, Barnes & Noble (BKS, Fortune 500) unveiled a new full-color, touchscreen version of its Nook e-reader. The company did not immediately announce the price of the new Nook Color.
Shares of Coach Inc. (COH) jumped 12% after the company posted a 34% rise in first-quarter profit and earnings of 63 cents a share — topping analysts’ estimates.
Ford (F, Fortune 500) reported third-quarter earnings that beat analysts’ expectations. The automaker reported a profit of $1.7 billion, or 43 cents per share. Ford also announced plans to further pay down its debt. Shares rose 1.5%.
DuPont (DD, Fortune 500) exceeded forecasts by reporting quarterly earnings of 40 cents per share early Monday, despite a decline in pharmaceutical income related to patent expirations. Shares of the company slipped 1%.
Shares of Sony (SNE) rose 1% Tuesday, on media speculation that the electronics maker might be a takeover target for Apple (AAPL, Fortune 500).
Shares of Lexmark (LXK) tumbled 21% after the printer-maker’s CEO Paul Curlander announced that he will retire in the spring of 2011.
Late Monday, insurance giant AIG (AIG, Fortune 500) disclosed that its chief executive, Robert Benmosche, has been diagnosed with cancer and is undergoing "aggressive" treatment. AIG shares jumped 2.3%.
World markets: European stocks finished with losses. Britain’s FTSE 100 dropped 0.8%, and the DAX in Germany was down 0.4%. France’s CAC 40 slipped 0.5%.
Asian markets ended the session lower. The Shanghai Composite was off 0.3%, while the Hang Seng in Hong Kong was 0.1% lower. Japan’s Nikkei fell by 0.2%.
Currencies and commodities: The dollar strengthened against the euro and the Japanese yen, but fell against the British pound.
Oil for December delivery added 3 cents to settle at $82.55 a barrel.
Gold futures for December delivery fell 30 cents to $1,338.60 an ounce.
Bonds: The price on the benchmark 10-year U.S. Treasury fell, pushing the yield up to 2.65% from 2.57% late Monday.
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