Active Health Foods (OTCBB: AHFD) Announces GNC Agreement

Atlanta, GA 6/28/12 (StreetBeat) -- Active Health Foods, Inc. (OTCBB:AHFD), the maker of "Active X™" 100% Organic Certified, 100% Natural, Kosher and Vegan Certified Energy Bars announces that General Nutrition Centers, Inc., commonly known as GNC, has agreed to do a 600 store test, all of their "A" LIST STORES, in two flavors of the Active X™ Energy Bars, Peanut Butter Chocolate Joy and Almond Chocolate Delight.

General Nutrition Centers, Inc. (NYSE:GNC), started in 1935 and based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, has as its primary focus the retail sales of healthy and nutritious products including vitamins, supplements, minerals, herbs, sports nutrition, diet and energy products. GNC has over 6,000 corporate owned and franchised stores nationwide and is widely considered the premier health store chain in the United States.

"Our agreement with GNC for our Active X™ Almond Chocolate Delight and Peanut Butter Chocolate Joy Energy Bars represents a monumental opportunity for Active Health Foods, Inc," said Greg Manos, President and Chief Executive Office of Active Health Foods Inc., who added, "Active Health Foods, Inc. is looking forward to building on this success and further expanding our exposure to the public through the thousands of GNC outlets."

Active X™ Energy Bars may be purchased at Amazon.com (Nasdaq: AMZN) and leading retail outlets such as Sheetz, Inc. and Scolari's Food and Drug.

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Amazon (Nasdaq: AMZN), Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) lead rush for new Web real estate

Northern, WI 6/13/12 (StreetBeat) -- An unprecedented land grab for new Web addresses began in earnest on Wednesday with fierce competition for new internet real estate including .app, .blog and .web from applicants hoping to break the near-monopoly of the .com top-level domain.

The ambitious plan to liberalise internet addresses attracted 1,930 applications, almost half of them from north America, with Web giants Amazon (Nasdaq: AMZN) and Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) applying for dozens of domains including .cloud, .buy and .book.

The liberalisation of top-level domains beyond the fewer than two dozen in existence - dominated by .com, .org and .net - is intended to stimulate competition and innovation by giving organisations more control over their Web presence.

Critics say the new suffixes are unlikely to catch on, and some trademark owners have complained that the move is causing them unnecessary expense - at $185,000 per application plus running costs - to defend their online turf.

Previous small-scale experiments in liberalising domains led to low take-up of suffixes such as museum, .jobs and .travel.

"At the highest level, this is all about creating competition to .com," said Jonathan Robinson, non-executive director of internet registry services company Afilias, which has applied for more than 100 new domains on behalf of clients.

"That's where short, memorable, distinctive three-letter type terms become very interesting," said Robinson, whose organisation already provides key infrastructure for .org, .info and .mobi.

Competing applications were received for 231 domain names. The most popular were .app with 13 bids, .home with 11, and .inc with 12.

Technology giant Apple's (Nasdaq: AAPL) claim to .apple was uncontested by the Apple music label or anyone else.

"The big names of the Internet have either invested massively or not at all," said Stuart Durham, European sales director for Melbourne IT, which has handled 150 applications on behalf of clients.

"There appear to be no applications from Facebook (Nasdaq: FB) or Twitter. There are different strategies in play here and some big gambles."

Just 17 applications were received from Africa, and 116 for names in non-Latin alphabets. Expanding the Internet beyond the Latin alphabet was one of the original reasons behind the liberalisation drive, which began seven years ago.

ICANN will now spend the rest of the year assessing the applications, with contested domains going to auction where more than one party has a legitimate claim. The first new domains are likely to come online in the first half of 2013.

Some critics, including senior figures at Google, have warned that the liberalisation risks effectively privatising the Internet by giving already powerful Web players more scope to control portions of it.

"Our concern is that this could lead to more Facebook-style walled gardens as big brands seek to keep you in their own areas of the Internet," said Stephen Ewart, marketing manager for Names.co.uk, a British domain-name registrar.

"Make no mistake, this change to the domain name world will lead to more competition and consumer choice, but it could also be viewed as a silent privatisation of the Web - for better or worse," he said.

The project is a key test for U.S. non-profit organisation the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), whose authority to administer the Web's naming systems is being challenged by emerging nations who say it is too U.S.-centric.

"The plan we have delivered is solid and fair," ICANN Chief Executive Rod Beckstrom told journalists at a news conference in London. "It is our fundamental obligation to increase innovation and consumer choice."

Nations including China, Russia and Brazil are pushing for ICANN's functions to be transferred to a body such as the United Nations, in which governments would have more control.

ICANN is set to net some $350 million from the liberalisation project - about five times its annual budget.

Beckstrom said the organization had priced the applications to cover its costs and that the use of any surplus would be decided by its community - which includes Internet companies, governments and ordinary citizens.

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Research in Motion (Nasdaq: RIMM), Struggling, Ponders a Dim Future

Orlando, FL 6/1/12 (StreetBeat) -- After rejecting the idea of a sale for months, Research in Motion (Nasdaq: RIMM) acknowledged on Tuesday that it was considering "strategic business model alternatives" - or in banker's speak, RIM, which makes the BlackBerry, said it was pondering a potential deal for all or parts of the company.

But did it wait too long?

A year ago, RIM, a Canadian company, became the subject of takeover rumors, after Google’s (Nasdaq: GOOG) $12.5 billion deal for Motorola Mobility. Then, analysts believed that RIM would draw interest from Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT), Amazon.com (Nasdaq: AMZN) or any number of Chinese phone manufacturers who could afford what would have been a pricey deal.

The company's executives rebuffed the idea, arguing that RIM was on the verge of a turnaround. New phones were coming that combined touch-screens with BlackBerry's e-mail and security features. And the PlayBook, with an industrial-strength operating system, could stand toe to toe with the iPad.

But RIM's prospects have withered since. In March, the company disclosed that its quarterly sales had plunged 20 percent from the previous quarter, as customers migrated to iPhones and Android devices. The company warned on Tuesday that it expected another loss.

The weakness is reflected in the stock's sharp decline. RIM's market value is just $5.4 billion, down roughly 76 percent from a year ago. Its share price fell slightly on Thursday, to $10.33.

"Buying this stock is like going to the casino," analysts at National Bank Financial wrote in a research note on Wednesday.

Now, executives appear to be reluctantly admitting they need to make a change. On Tuesday, the company said that it is conducting a strategic review. As part of its effort, RIM tapped JPMorgan Chase (NYSE: JPM) and RBC Capital Markets to help assess its potential options.

Those efforts may not lead to a sale, but instead partnerships with other companies or the licensing of BlackBerry software. Earlier this year, RIM's chief executive, Thorsten Heins, disavowed any need to consider "drastic change."

Ehud Gelblum, an analyst at Morgan Stanley, wrote in a note - entitled "No Happy Ending in Sight" - on Wednesday that he did not believe RIM was seeking to sell itself as a whole, but may consider outsourcing its network operating center or selling off parts.

That may be the best option. Earlier this year, the sales prospects for RIM did not look promising. A few analysts believed that RIM did not have "much to offer" a potential buyer.

The company's prospects may have deteriorated in the intervening months. Some analysts indicate that RIM may only be worth the total value of its patents and its cash, roughly $1.8 billion. It is unclear what the patents may fetch, though analysts at Jefferies estimated last fall that the intellectual property could bring $1 billion to $2.5 billion.

Should RIM put itself on the auction block, it may find the universe of potential buyers remains fairly small. Microsoft, long considered a possible suitor, has been focused on its new Windows operating system and its tie-up with Nokia. Amazon.com has cast its lot with a version of Google's Android. And buyers in China and India may face complaints from important BlackBerry customers like the United States and Canadian governments.

And patience isn't necessarily a virtue in deal-making.

Take Yahoo (Nasdaq: YHOO), which Microsoft offered to buy for nearly $45 billion in 2008. The talks quickly cratered, and a deal never panned out. Yahoo has since run through three chief executives and cast about for a new business model.

It has agreed to sell about half of its stake in the Alibaba Group of China, a move that will generate cash that can be paid out to investors. And it has revamped its board.

But it is unclear whether such efforts will make up for Yahoo's 58 percent drop in value since Microsoft's takeover attempt.

Then there is Palm Inc., which is often compared with RIM at this stage. Having failed to gain traction with a series of devices built on its own smartphone operating system, the company began a sales process several years ago, drawing in five bids.

One suitor, Hewlett-Packard (NYSE: HP), was pressured into raising its offer by 20 percent, and ultimately paid $1.2 billion to win the bidding. The deal represented a 23 percent premium to the smartphone maker's closing price from the day before the offer was announced in 2010. Yet by that point, Palm's stock price had dropped 50 percent over the previous 12 months.

Still, there's some hope left for RIM. Motorola Mobility had largely been left for dead by August 2011, trailing Samsung and H.T.C. in the race for Android device dominance. Then Android's creator, Google itself, arrived with a bid carrying a whopping 63 percent premium, spurred by the valuable patents that Motorola held.

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It's a Smocial Ad World

Northern, WI 5/15/12 (StreetBeat) -- Figures released by BIA/Kelsey this morning shows that social media advertising revenues are expected to rise from $3.8 billion in 2011 to $9.8 billion in 2016, for a 21% compound annual growth rate.

The local social story is even better: there, BIA/Kelsey predicts that advertising revenues will grow from $840 million in 2011 to $3.1 billion in 2016, for a CAGR of 29.8%.

Such numbers go far in explaining how it is that Groupon (Nasdaq: GRPN) managed to overcome dashed investor expectations and suspicious prodding by regulatory authorities with its pretty amazing quarterly earnings report and why companies such as Google (Nasdaq: GOOG), Amazon (Nasdaq: AMZN) and American Express (NYSE: AXP), just to name three, are trying to horn in on the market that is widely believed to be oversaturated. The numbers also explain why local merchants keep coming back to the daily deal model, despite its numerous drawbacks (for them at least). Simply put, there are few other digital ad channels that not only can so effectively reach a local community and also wear well when translated into the mobile and social formats.

Social Commerce’s Slow Crawl

Social media commerce, meanwhile, is still a statistical blip on the radar. According to the IBM (NYSE: IBM) retail economic indicator, shoppers referred from social networks generated 1.1% of all online traffic over Q1 2012, identical to the 1.1% seen in 2011.

More promising is IBM’s finding that shoppers referred to retailer sites from social networks generated 2.4% of all online sales, over Q1 2012, an increase from the 1.7% seen over this period last year.

That jump is statistically significant, says Jay Henderson, strategy director of IBM Digital Marketing, but it is still a relatively small increase.

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Amazon soars as digital sales boost margins

Tallahassee, FL 4/27/12 (StreetBeat) -- Shares of Amazon.com Inc (Nasdaq: AMZN) rose 16 percent in premarket trading on Friday, after the world's largest Internet retailer reported a surprise increase in gross margins, prompting a slew of price target increases by analysts.

Amazon on Thursday posted better-than-expected quarterly results as heavy spending on infrastructure and new products like the Kindle Fire began to pay off through sales of more digital content on the tablet.

"The biggest surprise in the quarter was Amazon's gross margin increase of 120 basis points year-over-year, the largest uptick in ten years," RBC Capital Markets analyst Ross Sandler said.

Faster growth at Amazon Web Services and sales of its digital goods drove the improvement in margins, analysts said.

During the first quarter, nine of the 10 top-selling products on Amazon.com were digital products, including Kindle e-books, movies, music and apps.

"Bulls have been waiting a long time for this gross margin upside and it finally came in the first-quarter," Macquarie Equities Research analyst Ben Schachter said.

The company's shares had been hit by the lack of the margin growth over the past few months.

Schachter expects gross margins to continue to ramp up in the long term as the company benefits from the increasing use of the Internet.

Analysts at Macquarie, RBC, Citigroup and at least nine other brokerages raised their price target on the stock. Nomura upgraded it to "buy" from "neutral".

According to Thomson Reuters StarMine, 12 analysts rate the stock "strong buy," 11 a "buy," 15 a "hold" and one a "sell." Only one rates the stock "strong sell." Analysts have a mean price target of $218.69.

Amazon shares were up at $227.75 in premarket trade. They closed at $195.99 on Thursday on the Nasdaq.

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Turnaround Story Continues at eBay (Nasdaq: EBAY); Trading +13%

Atlanta, GA 4/19/12 (StreetBeat) -- eBay Inc. (Nasdaq:EBAY) reported first quarter earnings of 48 cents including share based compensation, which exceeded the Zacks Consensus by 5 cents. Earnings excluding SBC came in at 56 cents, better than estimates. The quarter was a good one for eBay, driven by a strengthening marketplaces segment and solid payments business.

Revenue

Gross revenue of $3.28 billion was down 3.0% sequentially and up 28.7% year over year, exceeding consensus expectations of $3.15 billion and eBay’s guidance range of $3.05-3.15 billion Improved customer experience seems to be having a positive impact on results.

Nearly 86% of total revenue was transactions-based, while the remaining 14% came from marketing services. Seasonality impacted both transactions-based revenue (down 2.5% sequentially) and marketing services revenue (down 6.1% sequentially). Growing 26.7% and 41.8%, respectively, both contributed to the upside versus guidance.

Revenue by Segment

eBay reports revenue under the Marketplaces and Payments segments. The Marketplaces segment essentially refers to the revenue earned from the sale of goods available on eBay properties. The Payments segment refers to revenues generated through Paypal. Consequently, both segments derive revenue from transactions, as well as marketing services.

eBay’s core gross merchandise volume (:GMV) during the quarter excluding vehicles volume was down 1.7% sequentially and up 11.8% year over year. The increase from the year-ago quarter was helped by fashion, parts and accessories, and ticket sales, all of which were up double-digits. Additionally, both fixed price (64% of GMV) and auction (36%) grew in the last quarter. Vehicles GMV did not do so good, declining 9% from last year.

eBay’s Paypal remains the star performer, generating total payment volume (:TPV) growth of 1.5% and 22.5%, respectively from the previous and year-ago quarters. TPV on eBay properties was up 18%.

Management has a three-pronged growth plan here, targeting the online, mobile and offline segments. Opportunities abound in the first two areas, while they continue to unfold in the offline segment as well. The company’s POS solution took off in the last quarter, with the first adoption at The Home Depot (NYSE:HD) stores. eBay also introduced a solution for small businesses called Paypal Here.

eBay’s mobile business touched $4 billion in 2011, having grown very strongly from $2 billion in 2010. Management stated that there were 12 million downloads of eBay mobile apps in the last quarter. The Paypal Mobile Express Checkout system and the Zong acquisition are expected to boost mobile payment volumes going forward. eBay currently expects total mobile payment volume to increase to $7 billion in 2012.

Marketplaces revenue for the quarter was down 2.5% sequentially and up 11.2% from the year-ago quarter. The sequential revenue decline was the net impact of a 1.3% decline in transaction revenue and a 7.9% decline in marketing services revenue. The year-over-year increase was due to a 10.9% increase in transaction revenue and a 12.8% increase in marketing services revenue.

Marketing services continued to benefit from the addition of GSI in the June quarter. Active users in Marketplaces were 102.4 million, up 2 million during the quarter. Marketplaces generated 53% of total revenue.

eBay’s top-rated sellers now account for around 50% of GMV in the U.S., with same store sales growing 22% year over year, outperforming the market. Therefore, sellers are gaining from coming to eBay and driving more traffic to eBay properties. Technology improvements and deduplication of listings are helping the process.

Payments revenue increased 5.6% sequentially and 31.9% from the year-ago quarter. Revenue from transactions was up 5.1% sequentially and 29.0% year over year. The revenue per user declined sequentially and increased significantly from the year-ago quarter.

The revenue per transaction was flat sequentially and down significantly from last year. The trend indicates that customers showed a preference for a larger number of lower-value items. Revenue from marketing services was up 12.1% sequentially and up 87.4% from the year-ago quarter. The Payments segment generated 40% of total revenue.

GSI - Last year, eBay closed the acquisition of GSI, which brought in the remaining 7% of revenue, down 34.8% during the quarter. However, sales grew strongly from last year, with same store sales at GSI customers increasing 26%.

Revenue by Geography

Around 48% of total revenue was generated in the U.S., representing a sequential decline of 5.1% and a year-over-year increase of 38.6%. The balance came from international markets, which were down 1.1% sequentially and up 20.7% year over year.

eBay’s Asia/Pacific business, particularly China and Korea strengthened in the last quarter. The U.S. and U.K. also strengthened, while Germany stabilized.

Margins

The pro forma gross margin for the quarter was 70.6%, up 66 bps sequentially and down 105 bps year over year. Volumes were a positive in the year-over-year comparison. However, eBay sold more low-value items, which resulted in a slight negative. The take rate was up strongly in the Payments segment however, helped by lower transaction expenses and partially offset by a slightly higher transaction loss rate.

Marketplaces margins are generally much higher than Payments margins. However, 64% of transactions in the last quarter were under the fixed price format. The share of the fixed price format has been more or less stable to slightly growing for the last four quarters, which basically means that the company is now much more exposed to the severe price competition in the online retail market.

Operating expenses of $1.56 billion were higher than the previous quarter’s $1.51 billion. The operating margin was 23.1%, down 229 bps sequentially and 199 bps from the year-ago quarter. The sequential decline was higher expenses as a percentage of sales, which witnessed a seasonal decline. The year-over-year decline was mostly on account of higher cost of sales.

Excluding the impact of amortization of intangible assets, accretion of note receivable and loss on divested business on a tax-adjusted basis, the pro forma net income was $632.0 million or 19.3% of sales, compared to $676.2 million or 20.0% in the previous quarter and $531.1 million or 20.9% in the year-ago quarter.

Including the special items, the GAAP net income was $570 million ($0.44 per share) compared to $1.98 billion ($1.51 per share) in the December 2011 quarter and $475.9 million ($0.36 per share) in the March quarter of last year.

Balance Sheet and Cash Flow

The company has a solid balance sheet, with cash and short term investments of $5.87 billion, down $58.4 million in the last quarter. eBay generated $531 million in cash from operations and spent $242 million on capex, netting a free cash flow of $289 million (up from $691 million in the last quarter). eBay also spent $240 million on share repurchases.

Outlook

Management expects second quarter 2012 revenue of $3.25-3.35 billion (flat sequentially and up 19.6% year over year at the mid-point), which was below consensus expectations of $3.36 billion. The company expects to generate a GAAP EPS of 49 to 51 cents and a non-GAAP EPS of 53 to 55 cents. The EPS guidance is below the Zacks Consensus of 46 cents.

For 2012, management expects revenue of $13.8-$14.1 billion, GAAP EPS of $1.91 to $1.96 and non GAAP EPS of $2.30 to $2.35.

Conclusion

eBay’s business continues to show all signs of a turnaround. Both Payments and Marketplaces are showing improving trends versus the year-ago quarter, an indication of the changing business profile.

We think eBay has taken all the necessary measures, beginning with the fixed price format, moving on to wooing big sellers and customers, and then improving the technology and navigation of its properties.

To this, the company is adding key capabilities through acquisitions. For instance, GSI brought fulfillment services, while Zong brought capabilities in online payment systems.

At the same time, we remain concerned about increasing competition from major online retailers, such as Amazon.com (Nasdaq:AMZN), as well as many other smaller players. Additionally, Google Inc (Nasdaq:GOOG) has been making some plays in the online retail space that potentially increase competition for the company. While eBay’s payments business shows great promise and innovation has been very strong here, competition is not far behind.

All things considered, we are impressed with eBay’s strategy and execution and expect investors to be willing to pay a higher multiple for the stock. Our sentiments are reflected in the Zacks Rank of #2, which translates to a Buy rating in the short term (1-3 months).

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Best Buy (NYSE: BBY) Leadership Vacuum Seen Amid Amazon (Nasdaq: AMZN) Threat

Austin, Tx 4/16/12 (StreetBeat) -- Best Buy Co. (NYSE: BBY) has a leadership vacuum at the top at the very time it's struggling to find a way to compete against online retailers.

Directors at the world's largest electronics retailer are searching for a new chief executive officer after Brian Dunn resigned last week amid a board probe into his "personal conduct." With few internal candidates prepared to take the job, the board placed one of its own, four-year director G. Mike Mikan, as interim CEO. While Mikan, a former finance executive in health care, is keen to take the job, some board members want an outsider with online-retail experience, said a person familiar with the search.

With Dunn gone, Richfield, Minnesota-based Best Buy has a chance to alter its reliance on leaders versed in its traditional big-box store business and tap someone able to compete against digital rivals such as Amazon.com Inc. (Nasdaq: AMZN) and Apple Inc. (Nasdaq: AAPL), which are becoming dominant.

"The board would be short-sighted not to see this as an opportunity to go in a different direction," said Bryan Gildenberg, an analyst with London-based research firm Kantar Retail. "They need someone from Google or Amazon, who are changing the world. There's an ecosystem to the digital world that you can't understand unless you have competed in it."

Dunn resigned amid an investigation that he may have misused company resources while having an inappropriate relationship with a 29-year-old female subordinate, said two people familiar with the matter. The board last week hired Washington law firm WilmerHale to oversee its investigation, with former U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission Director of Enforcement William R. McLucas and former U.S. Attorney for the District of Colorado Thomas Strickland assigned to the case.

Nine-Month Search

Best Buy director Kathy J. Higgins Victor will oversee the board's global CEO search, which will take six to nine months, the company said in a statement last week.

Chairman and founder Richard Schulze may prefer an insider as the next CEO because he believes in grooming executives through the ranks who know the company's culture, according to a person familiar with the search. Other directors want an outsider with more online experience, said the person, who asked to be named because the matter is private. Looking outside of its headquarters would be a first for Best Buy, whose only CEOs after Schulze -- Bradbury Anderson and Dunn -- were company lifers.

Schulze and other directors, through Ron Hutcheson, a spokesman for the board who works for Hill & Knowlton Strategies in Washington, have declined to comment about the CEO search or Dunn's departure.

Operating Performance

Best Buy said Dunn's departure wasn't over any disagreements on the company's operating strategy. On March 29, Best Buy reported a $1.7 billion fourth-quarter loss and announced the closing of 50 big-box stores. The company also said it would speed up the openings of smaller stores that focus on mobile-phone sales and services. The company's operating margin narrowed to 4.6 percent for the 2012 fiscal year, which ended March 3, from 5.6 percent five years ago.

The company has said Mikan will be considered for the permanent CEO spot. He previously served as chief financial officer of UnitedHealth Group Inc. (NYSE: UNH) and CEO of Optum, a UnitedHealth affiliate in health-care services. He has no retail store or digital experience.

Dunn also lacked digital experience. He started as an electronics salesman in one of the company's stores, became a store manager and worked his way up the corporate ladder.

Trailing Amazon

He became CEO in June 2009 and company sales stagnated. While Seattle-based Amazon's sales have soared about 40 percent in each of the past two years, Best Buy's sales of $50.7 billion last year are just 13 percent higher than they were the year before Dunn took over.

In that time, Cupertino, California-based Apple also has expanded its retail presence to 361 stores that $6.1 billion in sales in the quarter ended Dec. 31, up 59 percent from the same period a year earlier.

For this year, analysts project Best Buy's sales will fall to $50.2 billion, the average of 18 estimates compiled by Bloomberg. The shares declined 27 percent in the 12 months before today, compared with a 17 percent gain for the Standard & Poor's 500 Retailing Index. (S5RETL)

While Dunn was active on social-networking sites Facebook and Twitter, many of his posts were about sports or his personal life. For all of his online networking, Dunn didn't find a way to battle back against companies like Amazon and Apple's iTunes, which have been raiding Best Buy's customer base, said Michael Fertik, CEO of Reputation.com Inc., a Redwood City, California- based company that monitors online postings for companies.

Professional Persona

"Like a lot of guys who are enraptured with social media but don't fully understand it, this is an example of someone who embraced it but may not be able to actually point to anything that it did for him," Fertik said in a telephone interview. "Part of that arises from the fact that he merged his personal and professional personas. A lot of his tweets are about sports."

The appointment of Mikan as interim CEO is a sign the company lacks a senior executive prepared to take charge and create change, said Kantar Retail's Gildenberg.

"Best Buy's operating culture is a little insular," he said. "Management and the board don't have anyone who has deep digital experience."

Of its top executives, only Stephen Gillett, president of Best Buy's digital and global business services, has digital experience, Gildenberg said. He was hired from Seattle-based Starbucks Corp. (Nasdaq: SBUX) last month.

Hiring Outside

That's why the board is likely to go outside to find someone new, said former Best Buy CEO Anderson, who held the job prior to Dunn.

"I expect the board will look outside," Anderson said in a phone interview last week. "The organization does need some significant change, and I would expect they are going to look for someone who can lead that kind of change."

Anderson said the big-box model can still work. The company can use the stores for both sales and to offer consumers expertise in electronics and sell services. The new CEO, though, will have to come up with a vision that reaches consumers who are going elsewhere, he said.

"It's what we're trying to do with technology in our lives that the company has to focus on," he said.

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FrogAds Shares Hop on Signing of Pamela Anderson as Spokesperson

Tallahassee, FL 2/14/12 (StreetBeat) -- Saying that Valentine’s Day came early, FrogAds, Inc. (OTCBB:FROG) is seeing its shares rising slightly in trading today upon news that the company has signed Pamela Anderson as a new celebrity spokesperson for its Video News Release campaign.

“I’m looking forward to working with FrogAds.com to enhance its brand awareness,” said Anderson in a company press release.

Pamela Anderson has become one of the most recognizable names in the entertainment industry as a model, actress, mother, entrepreneur and philanthropist and has appeared on more magazine covers than any other star of her generation. The Guinness Book of World Records has even dubbed her “most downloaded,” making her perfectly suited to represent FrogAds.com’s groundbreaking online social media platform, according to the company’s report.

The company seems to be looking to leverage Anderson’s uber-popularity and the awareness that the Facebook IPO is bringing to social networking to showcase the enormous potential in monetizing its website. FrogAds.com is a free global marketplace for both classifieds and auction that enables users to post ads, photos and videos, making them visible to the global marketplace. The site has married the fundamentals of other booming websites such as eBay (NASDAQ:EBAY), Amazon.com (NASDAQ:AMZN), YouTube and Craigslist to create a one-of-a-kind advertising infrastructure.

“I couldn’t be more excited to have Pamela Anderson involved with my company as I, like the Frog, am a huge fan of Pamela, dating back to her first Playboy issue,” said Julian Spitari, Founder & CEO of FrogAds.com.

The company recently hired celebrity endorsement expert, Dayna Zegarelli, to identify a celebrity spokesperson that best identifies with the FrogAds.com brand. Zegarelli said that Anderson was the obvious choice.

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Amazon’s (Nasdaq: AMZN) Revenues Disappoint

Palm Beach, FL 2/1/12 (StreetBeat) – Amazon.com’s (Nasdaq: AMZN) plans for world domination hit a slight bump on Tuesday. For years, the retailer has been telling Wall Street to ignore how little money it was making and focus instead on the fact that it was bringing in more and more customers and keeping them so happy they never went anywhere else for anything.

In Amazon’s fourth-quarter results, however, investors finally glimpsed off in the distance that growth beginning to flatten. Its revenue rose to $17.43 billion, up 35 percent. Most retailers would die happy with such a jump. But for the e-commerce leader, sales were nearly a billion dollars short of what analysts had been expecting.

Even as investors are panting for Facebook’s public stock offering, established Internet stars are disappointing. Amazon’s poor showing came on the heels of a similar miss from Google. Among the reasons for Amazon’s missed expectations: Video games were lackluster. There were supply issues from flooding in Thailand. And maybe there was a bit of backlash.

In December, Amazon.com created an uproar by encouraging customers to use a price-checking app on Main Street and in the malls, and then return to Amazon for a better deal. Booksellers, who have long felt themselves in the retailer’s cross hairs, were particularly offended. A tentative “buy local” movement sprang up.

In its earnings release, Amazon also warned that it could lose money in the current quarter, offering a range between $100 million in operating income and a $200 million loss. Shares of Amazon, which rose $2.29 to $194.44 on Tuesday, immediately slumped in after-hours trading by $18.

“With the valuation Amazon is carrying, you got to perform,” said Colin Gillis, senior technology analyst for BGC Financial. “You’ve got to be like Apple — smash through the numbers people are afraid even to whisper. Instead, they’re only making slightly over a penny on every dollar in revenue. That’s pathetic in any industry.”

Other analysts were more optimistic. “The long-term story is very much intact,” said Scott Devitt of Morgan Stanley, although he noted that investors might not be buying the stock for the next six months or so. The biggest question on the mind of analysts going into this earnings report was, How well did the Kindle Fire do? But they knew what the answer was, which was that Amazon was not going to tell them.

“We were very pleased with the great growth we had,” said Tom Szkutak, Amazon’s chief financial officer, in a conference call. The only data Amazon would share about Kindles is that their sales were up 177 percent from the fourth quarter of 2010.

“That seems like a healthy business,” Mr. Devitt said.

If sales were weaker than expected, profits were higher than forecast. Net income decreased 58 percent to $177 million in the fourth quarter, or 38 cents a share, compared with $416 million, or 91 cents a share, in the year-earlier period. Analysts expected sales of $18.3 billion and earnings per share of 17 cents, according to FactSet Research. The company said earlier that it might lose money during the quarter, traditionally the best part of the year for any retailer.

Amazon has been in the enviable position of growing much faster than the industry itself. But all that meteoric growth, stoked by selling goods as cheaply as possible and then shipping them either for a pittance or free, does not leave much room for profit. Its margins declined for four quarters before rebounding in the fourth quarter.

Yet even as margins have suffered, the stock has been strong. Ever since its founding in 1994, Amazon has built for the future. “We’d rather have a very large customer base and low margins than a smaller customer base and higher margins,” Amazon’s chief executive, Jeff Bezos, explained in a recent interview with Wired magazine.

For a company often thought of as virtual, with its e-books and vibrant cloud computing service, Amazon is increasingly rooted in the real world. Delivering sneakers and diapers and Kindles to the masses requires a lot of warehouses and a lot of warehouse workers. Nomura Securities estimated this week that Amazon would add the rough equivalent of 450 Costco stores from 2011 to 2016. Costco, by comparison, has 592 stores worldwide. “E-commerce is a long secular growth story,” Brian Nowak, a Nomura analyst, said in the report. “We’re still at only 5 percent penetration. So there’s a lot of runway left.”

The Fire was unveiled with the sort of splash not seen since Apple introduced the iPad two years ago. But where the acclaim for the iPad only grew once users had it in hand, the Kindle Fire has been subject to some grumbling by some early customers, which has in turn produced crankiness from the device’s fans.

Despite the dispute, which shows signs of resembling a high-tech Hatfield and McCoys-style feud, the $199 Fire and the $499 iPad are not necessarily competitors. Analysts have been estimating that Amazon sold as many as six million Fires plus millions more traditional Kindles.

Apple said last week that it sold more than 15 million iPads during its fourth quarter, drawing customers who might otherwise have bought Macs or Windows-based PCs. The introduction of the Fire, said Apple’s chief executive, Timothy D. Cook, did not have “an obvious effect” on the iPad.

About 27 percent of the Fire reviews on Amazon’s own site have mixed to negative feelings about the device, down from a third immediately after its debut.

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LargeCap Stocks to Watch Today

Swan Lake, MS 11/28/2011 (StreetBeat) – AT&T is considering an offer to divest a significantly larger portion of assets than it had initially expected to salvage its $39 billion merger with T-Mobile USA, according to a Bloomberg report.

The exact size of the disposals hasn't been determined, said a person familiar with the plan, but they could be as much as 40% of T-Mobile USA's assets, Bloomberg reported.

The asset sale is an attempt to address the concerns of the Justice Department, which sued to block the takeover on Aug. 31, and the Federal Communications Commission which last week signaled an attempt to block it, Bloomberg said.

Retailers that opened at midnight or earlier on Black Friday, like Wal-Mart , Target , Macy's , Kohl's and Best Buy , saw on average a 24% boost in their conversion (the number of shoppers that actually made a purchase), according to the NPD Group, a consumer research firm.

As shoppers go online Monday to find the best deals -- a day now known as Cyber Monday -- Amazon.com could be a big winner. Cyber Monday 2010 was its peak day last year, the company said.

Ralcorp , the maker of Raisin Bran cereal and other packaged foods, is expected to post fourth-quarter earnings. The report was originally scheduled for Nov. 8, but was delayed pending the completion of a goodwill impairment analysis of the company's Post cereals business.

Analysts expect Ralcorp to earn $1.39 a share in the fourth quarter on revenue of $1.22 billion.

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Groupon (Nasdaq:GRPN) Shares Pull Back Near IPO Price

Shawshank, VA 11/22/2011 (StreetBeat) – Groupon(Nasdaq:GRPN) shares plunged 13% to $20.50 on Tuesday afternoon, falling close to their $20 IPO price.

The daily deals company, which raised $700 million in its public market debut two weeks ago, saw shares rise 40% on their first day of trading.

The stock fell as low as $20.03 on Tuesday, and volume of 2.8 million looks relatively strong, despite the issue's short trading history, on pace for the biggest churn the shares have seen since Nov. 9.

This initial pop in stock price came despite shake-ups among Groupon's management team, scrutiny over its accounting metrics and concerns about its long-term ability to turn a profit.

Chicago-based Groupon is also facing heavy competition from tech giants like Amazon(Nasdaq:AMZN) and Google(Nasdaq:GOOG), as well as 600 other entrants.

A recent study by social media marketing company iContact found 70% of small business owners "hate" Groupon. The site has been criticized by businesses for not providing them with repeat customers and diluting their brand.

Founded in 2008 by CEO Andrew Mason, Groupon has expanded rapidly to more than 10,000 employees by offering discounts on services like yoga classes and massages. Revenue swelled to $312.9 million in 2010, compared to $14.5 million in the year before.

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Google Launches Music Service

Swan Lake, MS 11/17/2011 (StreetBeat) – Google Inc. (Nasdaq:GOOG) has turned on the music at its new online store, aiming to wrest the lead from Apple Inc. (Nasdaq:AAPL) and Amazon.com Inc. (Nasdaq:AMZN) in audio entertainment distribution despite the absence of a major record label.

Google Music, with more 13 million songs, will be integrated with Android Market, the company's online store for smartphone apps and videos as it plays catch-up with its rivals. Apple, Amazon and Facebook have to varying degrees integrated music into their core online and mobile products.

Google Music will allow the Web search leader to do the same by letting consumers access music from various Internet-connected devices and easily share tracks with friends.

But analysts said the lack of soundtracks from Warner Music - a major label whose artists include Led Zeppelin and Prince, among others - will limit the appeal of Google Music.

"They've got to get that catalog filled pretty quickly," said Mike McGuire, an analyst at industry research firm Gartner. "It's a launch, but it's kind of like a work-in-progress."

Google Music was unveiled at a splashy event at the Mr. Brainwash Studios in Hollywood, California on Wednesday.

Google has negotiated U.S. deals with three of the four major music companies: Vivendi SA's Universal Music Group; Sony Corp's Sony Music Entertainment; and EMI. It has also signed deals with the increasingly influential independent label group Merlin and London-based Beggar's Banquet label group, home to the year's biggest selling artist, Adele.

Analysts say selling online music is unlikely to provide much of a lift to Google's revenue. But they say Google needs to be in the market to ensure that its Android-based mobile efforts can match offerings from competitors.

Android is the world's No. 1 smartphone operating system, powering about 200 million devices worldwide. But without a music service, Android-based smartphones and tablets may not be as attractive to consumers seeking a product that offers a seamless media experience.

And with music storage increasingly moving to remote Internet servers in "the cloud" rather than on the device itself, companies like Google and Apple have a way to keep users locked in to their respective mobile services, said BGC Partners analyst Colin Gillis.

"Everyone is using music and media as a jail. Ultimately, this stuff is going to be stored in the cloud and it becomes harder and harder to switch systems," he said.
To help jump-start the new music store, Google said it will offer one free song for consumers to download every day.

Google will also allow consumers to share purchased songs with friends on the Google+ social network. The feature will give users of Google+ a "free, full-play" of songs purchased by their friends.

"Recommendations from friends are the single most important way that people discover music and we think that this feature has the potential to really transform purchasing behavior," said Zahavah Levine, Google's director of content partnerships for Android, at Wednesday's event.
Music executives said that even though sales have struggled in recent years, music usage has never been more popular on different types of formats like social networks and mobile devices.

Facebook, the world's largest social network, unveiled a tab in September through which music services like Spotify, Rdio and MOG enable Facebook users to share music. Amazon has also long been a major music retailer and has a music locker service.

Earlier this year, Google unveiled the Google Music beta, which allowed users to upload their music to Google servers, and access the music from multiple devices.
Shares of Google, which finished Wednesday's regular session at $611.47, were up 72 cents in after-hours trading.

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TV: Not Dead Yet

Palm Beach, FL 11/11/11 (StreetBeat) --A few years ago, many people were predicting the end of television as we know it. The rise of video-on-demand, social games and other Web-based diversions all were supposed to kill TV. Who could possibly want to watch an antiquated, live network or cable show, the theory went, when one could Tweet, surf Facebook or watch something cached on Hulu or streamed on Netflix (Nasdaq: NFLX) instead?

Fast-forward to today. The TV business certainly has undergone some seismic shifts due to new technologie. But the bottom line is, people are still watching the tube. Nielsen predicted that the number of U.S. homes with TV access would hit 115.9 million in the 2010-11 season, up 1 million from the year before and representing an all-time high. American teenagers, one of the most tech-savvy segments of the population, have seen their TV viewership actually increase six percent in the last five years, according to a Nielsen report. And major, live TV events continue to draw enormous audiences: 111 million viewers in the U.S. watched the Green Bay Packers beat the Pittsburgh Steelers in the 2011 Super Bowl, while 38.6 million tuned in to see last season’s American Idol winner crowned.

Why has live TV remained so powerful? Part of it, obviously, is community. People still like to be a part of major world events and discuss them while they’re fresh—not a week later, when everyone knows which handsome bachelor “The Bachelorette” picked, or who won the big game. But there’s a new twist to that today: Thanks to the rise of social media and the Internet, people can discuss live TV while it’s happening. It’s even given rise to a new term, “social TV.” A recent study by Ovum, a business/technology research firm in the U.K., found that almost 40% of TV viewers discuss particular TV shows via social media while they’re watching them. This is evidenced by the average one million tweets generated during each of the seven games of this year’s World Series and 4.5 million from this year’s Superbowl viewers. Some shows, like “The Voice”, a live singing contest, even show viewer tweets on air.

More broadly, 51% of consumers surveyed said they used the Internet to access news or information while watching TV—the “second screen” phenomenon. The upshot: Rather than being a replacement for TV, many Internet technologies are proving complimentary; the online environment is the new water cooler where people gossip with each other about TV shows and other topics. Indeed, the new stereotype of a couch potato is fast becoming someone splayed out on his or her couch, snacks in hand, pecking away periodically at a laptop or tablet to trade comments with friends.

Equally important, the nature of TV content has changed profoundly over the last several years to favor live viewing. Today, reality, talk and contest-type programs, a la “American Idol,” “The Biggest Loser” and “Dancing with the Stars,” dominate the airwaves. Old-fashioned comedies and dramas no longer sit at the top. (In the 2010-11 season, the top-rated, prime-time network shows were, in order, two “American Idol” episodes, “Dancing with the Stars”, “Sunday Night NFL Football” and, then, finally, “NCIS.”) And to fully participate in some of these programs, like Idol, one must watch them live. Otherwise, you can’t vote for the winner. And people like to vote—over 100 million votes were cast in this year’s Idol season finale. And even for traditional broadcast shows, social media presents the opportunity for “spoilers” from your network, so you better watch your show live to avoid missing out on the surprise ending in the season finale of your favorite drama.

That said, it doesn’t mean people are going to be watching all their TV on an actual TV set in the coming years. Cable and satellite companies are all working feverishly to catch up to new, Internet content-providers like Hulu, YouTube, Netflix, AppleTV, Roku and, of course, Amazon.com (Nasdaq: AMZN). The traditional players, like Comcast (Nasdaq: CMCSA) and Time Warner Cable (NYSE: TWC), are testing new technologies to allow them to deliver shows and movies via Internet protocol, which means they can be beamed via broadband connections to multiple devices—PCs, smartphones, tablets, whatever. It’s a concept known in the industry as “TV Everywhere”, and it’s the natural evolution of online video. It’s also a natural evolution of IP: The Internet has gradually chewed through countless traditional industries, from data to voice to music, and TV is one of the last analog bastions.

There are some obstacles to the IP-video revolution, including securing rights for specific content and figuring out how to measure viewership when people are watching shows on multiple devices. But the cable and satellite providers have a big incentive to figure it out—namely, keeping their subscribers. Today’s on-the-go consumers, who expect to complete most computing tasks on a mobile phone or an iPad, are also demanding the kind of high-quality video they get on their living room TVs when they’re out of the house. And right now, the video experience on computers, smartphones and other mobile devices—especially for live content—can still be lacking. Current pay TV providers are in the best position to be a one-stop source for high-quality video, anywhere and everywhere. Many start-up companies, including ours, are working to provide them with cutting-edge technologies to make that happen—keeping TV alive (with a little help from Simon Cowell).

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Yap, Can Amazon Take on Siri by Acquiring You?

Palm Beach, FL 11/11/11 (StreetBeat) –Amazon (Nasdaq: AMZN) acquired a voice recognition company called Yap this week and the tech press is buzzing with speculation that the online retail giant plans to add voice-to-text capabilities to a future version of its Kindle Fire tablet to better compete against Apple's Siri technology for its own mobile devices.

Siri, the most talked-about (and to) addition to Apple's next-generation iPhone 4S smartphone, has laid down a gauntlet of sorts for Apple rivals to come up with their own voice-responsive personal assistants. Google, Apple's chief rival in the mobile operating system market, has improved the speech recognition in its Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich OS, set to appear in smartphones and tablets before the year is out.

Apple hasn't included Siri in an iPad, though it likely will in the iPad 3. Amazon, of course, hasn't even released its first tablet yet. The Kindle Fire is riding a wave of buzz, propelled by an attractive $199 sticker price and Amazon's content and services clout, but it won't actually be made available until next Tuesday.

As mentioned, Ice Cream Sandwich has beefed up Android's speech recognition and the updated OS now features continuous, real-time speech-to-text dictation. Amazon has shown with the Kindle Fire that it's perfectly willing to take what Android gives it and tweak the heck out of the OS to fit its own needs. At this point, it would probably help to know what Yap does, exactly.

The startup's "first and only branded consumer product, Yap Voicemail, was a Google-Voice-like transcription app available for iOS and Android," according to Justin Ruckman of the Charlotte, N.C.-based CLTBlog, who is acquainted with brothers Igor and Victor Jablokov, who founded the company in 2006. Ruckman said he used Yap Voicemail for more than a year and was "surprised last month when I received a notice that the service was to be discontinued, effective in only a matter of days."

The Jablokovs landed $8 million in funding in 2007 and 2008, but Yap never managed to get its product out of private beta, according to Ruckman. Igor Jablokov did manage to get some ink in The New York Times around the time of Yap's Series A funding round, however, telling the newspaper that he and his brother were inspired to start the company to get their kid sister to stop text-messaging in the car.

So what do others say about Yap? Madrigal dug up this quote from Paul Grim, general partner at SunBridge Partners, the Charlotte VC that led Yap's 2008 round of funding: "Yap is truly a leader in freeform speech recognition and driving innovation in the mobile user experience. It is increasingly clear that the fastest, easiest, and safest way to interact with services on a mobile device is using your voice, and Yap makes this both possible and intuitive."

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LargeCap Stocks to Watch Today

Tomahawk, WI 11/3/2011 (StreetBeat) – Struggling Eastman Kodak posted a third-quarter loss from continuing operations of $222 million, or 83 cents a share, wider than a year-earlier loss of $43 million, or 16 cents.

Analysts were expecting Kodak to post a loss of 42 cents a share in the third quarter.

Kodak said it expects a loss from continuing operations in 2011 of $400 million to $600 million. It previously forecast a loss of $200 million to $400 million.

The stock rose 4 cents, or 3.5%, to $1.20 in premarket trading Thursday.

CVS Caremark posted adjusted third-quarter earnings of 70 cents a share.

Analysts expected CVS to earn 67 cents a share in the quarter.

The drugstore and pharmacy benefits manager said it expects adjusted earnings from continuing operations in 2011 of $2.77 to $2.81 a share, a 2-cent raise in the bottom end of the range.

CVS shares rose 0.9% to $35.77.

Business social networker LinkedIn is expected Thursday to post its second earnings report as a public company.

Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters expect a loss of 4 cents a share in quarter ended in September on revenue of $127.6 million.

The stock was off 5% to $84.50 in premarket trading Thursday.

NYSE Euronext said third-quarter profit rose 54% to $186 million on strong trading volumes.

NYSE said it is continuing talks with European regulators about receiving clearance for its $9 billion merger with Deutsche Boerse.

NYSE shares rose 3.1%, up 77 cents, to $25.53 in premarket trading.

Costco Wholesale , the warehouse retailer, said same-store sales in October jumped 9%, while total sales rose 11% to $7.01 billion.

Amazon on Thursday launched a program in which Kindle and Kindle Fire users who have Amazon Prime memberships can get access to Amazon's new digital book library service.

AIG is expected by analysts to post a quarterly loss of 27 cents a share on revenue of $13.6 billion.

On Tuesday, AIG paid back the Treasury Department $972 million of the billions it received in a rescue package from the U.S. government in 2008.

Kraft Foods handily beat Wall Street's expectations for its fiscal third-quarter results and lifted its full-year outlook

The stock rose 0.2% to $34.64.

Shares of Wells Fargo were down slightly in premarket trading to $25.22, after The Wall Street Journal reported that a state judge in Illinois ruled the state may proceed with a lawsuit alleging that the San Francisco bank steered minority buyers into risky subprime mortgage loans.

According to the Journal, this is the first of such cases to proceed to the discovery stage, and continues the pullback from states' lawsuits over consumer issues, with federal regulators having almost complete jurisdiction.

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Amazon Tablet Serious Competition to Apple iPad

Oxford, MS 9/28/2011 (PennyPayDay) – Amazon is unveiling today a tablet, called the Fire, that may not have all the same features as an iPad, but will start at a much lower price.

According to a Bloomberg report citing Amazon executives, it will cost $199, compared to the iPad, which starts at $499.

Initially, it appears the Kindle Fire will be more of a color version of the Kindle e-reader than a true competitor to the iPad.

The device will have a 7-inch display (3-inches shy of the iPad), and will run Google’s Android software, but it won’t have an embedded camera or microphone. Additionally, it will come with Wi-Fi, but not 3G.

All Things D’s Peter Kafka is live in New York to cover all of the proceedings.

As rumored previously, the device will come with a 30-day free trial of Amazon Prime, the Seattle company’s $79 annual membership, which includes free two-day shipping, but also some content, like streaming video.

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LargeCap Stocks to Keep an Eye on Today

Northern, WI 9/28/2011 (PennyPayDay) – Amazon shares were rising 1% to $226.40 in premarket trading Wednesday as the online retail giant gets ready to launch its long-anticipated tablet computer.

Electronics manufacturing services provider Jabil Circuit forecast first-quarter earnings of 62 cents to 70 cents a share on revenue of between $4.3 billion and $4.5 billion. The current consensus view is for profit of 61 cents a share on revenue of $4.41 billion in the quarter.

The company posted core earnings of $136.3 million, or 62 cents a share, on revenue of $4.28 billion for its fourth quarter, trouncing the average estimate of analysts polled by Thomson Reuters for a profit of 56 cents a share on revenue of $4.19 billion.

Shares were surging 9% to $18.95 in premarket trading Wednesday.

Progress Software said it sees non-GAAP earnings of 30 cents to 33 cents a share for the fourth quarter on revenue ranging from $130 million to $134 million. Analysts are looking for a profit of 42 cents a share in the quarter on revenue of $145.4 million.

The Bedford, Mass.-based maker of infrastructure software reported third-quarter non-GAAP earnings that beat the average analysts' earnings per share view by 2 cents.

Shares were tumbling 7.3% to $17.98.

Shares of Avago Technologies were tumbling 3.6% to $33.25 after the analog semiconductor devices provider announced the sale of 15 million Avago shares by certain shareholders to Citigroup and Deutsche Bank Securities, the underwriters in the public offering of those shares.

Payroll, human resource and benefits outsourcing solutions provider Paychex reported first-quarter earnings of 41 cents a share, beating the average analyst estimate of 38 cents a share.

Shares were spiking 2.6% to $27.39 in premarket trading Wednesday.

Shares of apparel company Ralph Lauren were falling 1.9% to $145.94 after the stock was cut to hold from buy at Citigroup.

Independent oil and natural gas company SandRidge Energy agreed to sell certain East Texas natural gas properties to NFR Energy for $231 million.

SandRidge plans to use the cash proceeds to fund a portion of its oil-focused drilling program. SandRidge expects the transaction to close in November.

Shares were rising 1.7% to $6.60.

Darden Restaurants posted first-quarter earnings of 78 cents a share, in line with analysts estimates.

Shares were falling 1.2% to $46.40.

Family Dollar Stores is predicting full-year earnings of between $3.50 and $3.75 a share vs. the average analyst estimate of $3.58 a share.

The company forecasts earnings of 65 cents to 73 cents a share in the first quarter vs. the Wall Street consensus target of 66 cents a share.

Family Dollar reported fourth-quarter sales of $2.13 billion, in line with estimates, while profit came in at 66 cents a share vs. the average analyst estimate of 63 cents. Gross profit as a percentage of sales came in at 34% from 34.7% mainly because of stronger sales of lower-margin consumables.

Shares were down 1.2% to $53.52.

Google plans to build three of its own data centers in Europe with an investment of more than $200 million.

The stock was rising 0.5% to $542.11.

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Amazon to Launch Digital Book Library

Tomahawk, WI 9/12/2011 (PennyPayDay) – Amazon.com Inc is in talks with book publishers about launching a media library service similar to Netflix Inc for tablets and other digital books, The Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday.

Seattle-based Amazon, which makes the popular Kindle electronic reader, is also expected to release a tablet to rival Apple Inc's iPad in coming weeks, the Journal reported.

Under the proposal for a digital media library, customers would pay an annual fee to access a library of content, the Journal reported, citing people familiar with the matter.

It is unclear how much traction the talks have received, the Journal reported, citing the people familiar with the matter.

Several unnamed publishing executives said they are not enthusiastic about the idea because it could lower the value of books and could strain their relationships with other retailers that sell their books, the newspaper reported.

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Music Locker Service from Amazon Faces Backlash

Oxford, MS 3/29/2011 (Penny PayDay) -- A new Amazon.com Inc service that lets customers store songs and play them on a variety of phones and computers is facing a backlash from the music industry that could ignite a legal battle.

Amazon's Cloud Drive, announced on Tuesday, allows customers to store about 1,000 songs on the company's Web servers for free instead of their own hard drives and play them over an Internet connection directly from Web browsers and on phones running Google Inc's Android software.

Sony Music, home to artists such as Shakira and Kings of Leon, was upset by Amazon's decision to launch the service without new licenses for music streaming, said spokeswoman Liz Young.

"We hope that they'll reach a new license deal," Young said, "but we're keeping all of our legal options open."

Amazon beat rivals Google and Apple Inc into the market for such "music locker" services, which are meant to appeal to consumers frustrated by the complexities of storing their favorite songs at work, home and on their smartphones. Apple and Google were expected to launch their services at the end of last year.

Shares of Amazon rose 3.1 percent to close at $174.62 on Nasdaq.

Music labels were informed of the plans last week. Only later did Amazon address the issue of negotiating licenses, one source close to the discussions said.

That executive called the move "somewhat stunning" and noted that some within the media industry said the service might be illegal.

"I've never seen a company of their size make an announcement, launch a service and simultaneously say they're trying to get licenses," said the executive, who requested anonymity because the discussions were not public.

In 2007, EMI sued MP3tunes, which offered a similar service. Consumers are allowed to store music files on their own computers, but it is unclear whether they have that right when they use remote storage services offered by cloud computing.

"The labels have engaged in a legal terror campaign over the last 10 years using litigation to try and slow technology progress," MP3tunes founder Michael Robertson said of the music industry's latest reaction to Amazon's plans. MP3tunes is based in San Diego.

Amazon's service is part of its plan to be a bigger player in the digital content business and reduce its reliance on the sales of CDs and books.

"They don't have leadership in digital formats," said BGC Partners analyst Colin Gillis. "The next big race is locker services -- that's what we want."

Gillis said he expected Google to introduce a remote music storage service in May and for Apple to follow suit in June.

Although Amazon's service lets users listen to music from most computers or phones regardless of where they bought the song, it will not work on Apple's iPhones or have an "app" on that company's devices.

Amazon said customers would initially get 5 gigabytes of free storage, enough for about 1,250 songs or 2,000 photographs. They can buy 20 gigabytes for $20 a year.

Alternatively, a customer can get an upgrade to 20 gigabytes of free storage with the purchase of any MP3 format album from Amazon. New music purchases from Amazon saved directly to the cloud service will not count against any storage quota.

Users can save music files in MP3 as well as the AAC format, which is the standard for Apple's iTunes service.

Amazon is also offering Cloud Player, which allows users to listen to music, download tracks and make playlists.

On Nasdaq, Google rose 1.1 percent to $581.73, and Apple fell 0.2 percent to $350.96.

(Additional reporting by Yinka Adegoke and Kenneth Li in New York and Sakthi Prasad in Bangalore; Editing by Gerald E. McCormick, Lisa Von Ahn and Richard Chang)

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Some LargeCap Stocks to Keep an Eye on Today

Time Warner, the media giant, said fourth-quarter net income rose 22% to $769 million, or 68 cents a share, from $631 million, or 53 cents a share, a year earlier. On an adjusted basis, earnings in the quarter were 67 cents a share. Revenue rose about 8% to $7.81 billion from $7.21 billion. The Wall Street consensus called for earnings of 62 cents a share on revenue of $7.48 billion. The stock was up 3.5% to $33.45.

Hershey Foods said fourth-quarter net income increased about 7% to $135.5 million, or 59 cents a share, from $126.8 million, or 55 cents a share, a year earlier. On an adjusted basis, earnings were 61 cents a share. Net sales increased about 5% to $1.48 billion from $1.41 billion the year before. Analysts, on average, expected earnings of 61 cents a share on revenue of $1.48 billion. Shares of the company were unchanged at $47.14 in premarket trading Wednesday.

Mattel said fourth-quarter net income fell about 1% to $325.2 million, or 89 cents a share, from $328.4 million, or 89 cents, a year earlier. Net sales rose 9% to $2.12 billion from $1.96 billion. Analysts, on average, expected Mattel to report earnings of 86 cents a share on revenue of $2.09 billion. Mattel shares rose 1.5% to $24.50 in early trading.

Whirlpool, the appliance maker, said fourth-quarter earnings jumped 80% despite a dip in sales in North America. Whirlpool shares fell 4.5% to $81.61 in premarket trading Wednesday.

Borders Group could file for bankruptcy protection as soon as next week, according to Bloomberg. Shares of Borders were falling 14.9% to 40 cents in premarket trading Wednesday.

NaviSite agreed to be acquired by Time Warner Cable for $230 million. NaviSite shares surged 32.5% to $5.47 in premarket trading Wednesday. Time Warner cable finished the previous trading session at $68.73, up 1.3%.

GlaxoSmithKline said Wednesday it sold its entire stake in Quest Diagnostics for $1.7 billion. Quest Diagnostics was flat at $56.95 in premarket trading. GlaxoSmithKline was down 1% to $37 early Wednesday.

Yum! Brands is scheduled to report quarterly earnings after the markets close Wednesday. The company is expected to have a difficult conference call because of the recent Taco Bell lawsuit claiming its taco beef is only 35% beef and the rest is fillers. Yum! stock was up 0.9% to $47.83 in premarket trading.

Visa reports its quarterly results after the closing bell. The current average estimate of analysts polled by Thomson Reuters is for a profit of $1.21 a share on revenue of $2.23 billion in the December period. The credit card issuer has beat Wall Street's profit expectations in the past eight quarters. The stock was up 0.4% to $71 in premarket trading.

Amazon is working towards a film streaming service that would put it in direct competition with Netflix, according to the Financial Times. Shares of Amazon were down 0.2% to $171.80 during premarket trading, while Netflix fell 1.3% to $210.20.

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