Month: September 2015

3M Co. said it plans to explore alternatives for its health information systems business, which includes a potential spin off, sale or further investment in the business. The business has trailing 12-month revenue of about $730 million, and has compounded annual growth of more than 10% for the past three, five and 10 years. Shares of 3M, which makes a wide range of products including Scotch tape, Post-it Notes, masking tape for painting, water-filtration systems and pet care products, tacked on 0.5% in premarket trade. The stock has dropped 11% over the past three months through Wednesday, while the Dow Jones Industrials Average has lost 9.7%.

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The Brazilian real fell to an all-time low of 3.90 real to the dollar Thursday after Standard & Poor’s Ratings Services downgraded Brazilian sovereign debt into junk territory late Wednesday. Doug Borthwick, the head of foreign exchange at Chapdelaine & Co., said the real’s move was “a kneejerk reaction that may see a pullback during the day today.” The currency has steadily weakened over the past year amid falling commodity prices and a corruption scandal at the state-owned Petrobras. The prospect of higher interest rates int he U.S. has caused the dollar to strengthen against emerging-markets currencies, a category that includes the real. The currency recently traded at 3.87 to the dollar, down 2.5% from its level late Wednesday in New York.

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Hedge-fund manager David Tepper on Thursday said Apple Inc. is a “cheap stock” at its current price. In an interview with CNBC, the closely-tracked founder of Appaloosa said he’s maintaining a position in Apple but that he doesn’t have a “huge position” in the stock. Tepper, who also said that a flat position in stocks is attractive right now, noted that his equity book at present is relatively small. Apple shares are 0.3% lower in premarket trade Thursday. Tepper also said he sold out of the remainder of his position in Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Inc. in early July.

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Billionaire hedge-fund investor David Tepper on Thursday said that a “flat” position in stocks is “not a bad place to be right now.” In an interview with CNBC, the founder of Appaloosa Management expressed doubt about earnings expectations and the ability to maintain current price-to-earnings multiples. Tepper said he’s not comfortable being short stocks given equities tendency to rise over time. Tepper said a drawdown in global foreign-exchange reserves is contributing to rising volatility and making for a more difficult investing environment. Tepper’s fund manages more than $20 billion and was up more than 12% year-to-date through the end of August, CNBC reported. The fund returned 2.2% in 2014 after a 42% return in 2013.

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Cablevision Systems Corp. and Tribune Media Co. on Thursday said they have reach a broad-based, multi-year content and media agreement. Along with renewing rights to distribute the 42 local TV stations operated by Tribune Media to Cablevision’s Optimum TV customers in New York, Hartford; Conn. and Philadelphia, Cablevision also acquired Tribune Media’s 2.8% interest in Newsday Holdings LLC. This makes Newsday a wholly-owned subsidiary of Cablevision. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Cablevision retained use of Tribune Media’s TV listing and movie data from Gracenote, which provides programming information for the Optimum interactive guide, DVR recordings and video-on-demand content on set-top boxes and the Optimum app. Cablevision will launch the media company’s new general entertainment cable network, WGN America. Shares of Cablevision are up nearly 40% in the year to date, outperforming Tribune Media, down nearly 40%. The S&P is down more than 6%.

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WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) – The prices the U.S. paid for imported goods fell by a seasonally adjusted 1.8% in August, marking the biggest decline since the start of the year. Oil prices fell sharply again and strong dollar has also made foreign products cheaper for Americans to buy. Excluding fuel, U.S. import prices declined by a 0.4% last month, the Labor Department said Thursday. Meanwhile, the price of U.S.-made goods exported to other nations dropped 1.4%. From August 2014 to August 2015, import prices tumbled 11.4%, the biggest year-over-year drop since the last year of the Great Recession in 2009. The plunge in oil prices and a soaring dollar are the main culprits. Import prices minus fuel are down a smaller but still sharp 3% year over year. That’s also the largest 12-month decline since 2009. Falling import prices are a significant factor in keeping U.S. inflation low at a time when the Federal Reserve wants to see prices increase. Lower prices for American exports have also hurt sales and profits of companies such as large manufacturers that do a lot of business overseas.

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WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) -The number of people who applied for U.S. unemployment benefits in the first week of September fell by 6,000 to 275,000, showing that layoffs remain near the lowest level in decades. Economists polled by MarketWatch had expected claims to fall to a seasonally adjusted 275,000 in the week ended Sept. 5. The average of new claims over the past month, meanwhile, rose by 500 to 275,750, the Labor Department said. The four-week average smooths out sharp fluctuations in the more volatile weekly report and is seen as a more accurate gauge of labor-market trends. Some 2.26 million people were already collecting weekly unemployment benefits, known as continuing claims, in the seven days ended Aug. 29. That was up 1,000 from the prior week. Continuing claims are reported with a two-week lag.

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PSAV Inc., an audiovisual and event technology services company with $1.9 billion in revenue last year, has filed for an initial pubic offering. The company plans to apply for listing on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol “PSAV.” The number of shares the company plans to offer for sale have not yet been determined. Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley are the lead underwriters of the planned IPO, with Barclays, Credit Suisse Macquarie Capital, Piper Jaffray and William Blair also participating. Based in Schiller Park, Illinois, which is just outside of Chicago, PSAV operates in nine international markets, including Canada, Mexico and the United Kingdom, and has over 7,500 employees.

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Mondelez International Inc. affirmed on Thursday its 2015 revenue growth outlook while detailing the progress it has made with its cost-cutting plans and growth initiatives. The snacking giant said it still targets organic revenue growth of at least 3% this year. The company reiterated its target for adjusted operating income margin of about 14% in 2015 and 15% to 16% in 2016. The company said it expects to cut overhead costs by at least 2.5% of revenue through 2016. That would equate to about $721 million of the 2016 FactSet revenue consensus of $28.84 billion. Mondelez said it expects e-commerce revenue to increase from less than $100 million in revenue currently to up to $1 billion by 2020. The stock, which was still inactive in premarket trade, has gained 4% over the past three months, while the S&P 500 has declined 7.8%.

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The Bank of England on Thursday left its lending rate at a record low of 0.5%, as expected. Policy makers voted 8-1 to hold the rate where it’s been since March 2009. BOE member Ian McCafferty voted for a rate increase of 25 basis points. The bank’s quantitative-easing program was also left unchanged, at 375 billion pounds ($577 billion). The pound rose to $1.5437 after the decision was released, compared with $1.5369 late Wednesday. The FTSE 100 index slightly extended its loss to 1% at 6,167.28.

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