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U.S. monetary stimulus, blamed in 2010 for spurring speculative capital flows to emerging markets, may find less opposition this time round in Asia as the region
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Amgen Inc. said Thursday that its fourth-quarter profit fell 8.5 percent as its expenses for taxes and for producing and selling drugs rose faster than its revenue.
The world’s largest biotech company said its net income was $934 million, or $1.08 per share, down from $1.02 billion, also $1.08 per share, a year earlier.
Excluding one-time items, Amgen said it earned $1.04 billion, or $1.21 per share, down 6 percent from $1.1 billion, or $1.17 per share, in 2010’s fourth quarter. Its adjusted income excluded costs for severance payments, stock options, expenses related to selling a manufacturing plant and amortization of product technology rights acquired in a prior year.
The company’s quarterly revenue rose 3 percent to $3.97 billion from $3.84 billion.
Analysts on average expected adjusted earnings of $1.22 per share and revenue of $3.92 billion for the fourth quarter, according to FactSet.
“We exited 2011 with good momentum, and the outlook for 2012 is even stronger,” CEO Kevin Sharer, who is stepping down in May, said in a prepared statement.
Amgen said it expects to earn $5.90 to $6.15 per share for 2012, excluding one-time items, and it forecast revenue of about $16.3 billion. Analysts were expecting $5.97 per share in adjusted earnings and $16.06 billion in revenue for the year.
Sales of Neulasta and Neupogen, for treating a decline of infection-fighting white blood cells caused by cancer and other disorders, rose in the U.S. but fell slightly in other markets. They brought in a total of $998 million and $321 million, respectively.
Earlier Thursday, the maker of biologic drugs for cancer and blood disorders said it plans to buy cancer therapy developer Micromet Inc. for $1.16 billion in cash to boost its oncology pipeline. Founded in Germany and based in Rockville, Md., Micromet is developing an experimental antibody-based drug, blinatumomab. It’s currently in mid-stage testing to treat leukemia and in clinical development for the treatment of non-Hodgkin lymphoma.
The purchase is Amgen’s largest since it bought BioVex Group last year in a deal worth up to $1 billion, including milestone payments.
For the full year, Amgen reported net income of $3.68 billion, or $4.04 per share, down 20 percent from $4.63 billion, or $4.79 per share in 2010. Adjusted income was $4.86 billion, or $5.33 per share, down 3 percent from $5.02 billion, or $5.21 per share. Revenue was up 3 percent to $15.58 billion, from $15.05 billion.
Analysts were expecting adjusted income of $5.33 per share on average and revenue of $15.51 billion.
Amgen shares rose 67 cents following the after-hours report. They ended regular trading Thursday down $1.13, or 1.6 percent, at $68.08.
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The iPhone is taking over Apple.
For the first time, the device that changed how people use mobile phones accounts for more than half of the behemoth company’s sales.
Apple Inc. on Tuesday said it sold 37 million iPhones in the last three months of 2011, vastly exceeding analyst estimates and propelling the company to record quarterly results.
The phone accounted for 53 percent of Apple’s revenue in the quarter. Though it has other hit products, like MacBooks and the iPad, they can’t keep up with the iPhone, whose sales more than doubled over last year from an already high level. The sales mean Apple is set to regain the position it briefly held earlier last year of being the largest maker of smartphones.
October saw Apple launching the iPhone 4S in the U.S. and some other countries. The phone was delayed for a few months, which meant that Apple’s results for the July-to-September quarter were uncharacteristically tepid.
It came back with a vengeance in the holiday season. On Tuesday, Apple said net income in its first quarter, which ended Dec. 31, was $13.06 billion, or $13.87 per share, up 118 percent from $6 billion, or $6.43 per share, a year ago. Analysts polled by FactSet were expecting earnings of $10.04 per share.
Revenue was $46.33 billion, up 73 percent from a year ago. Analysts were expecting $38.9 billion.
The Cupertino, Calif., company shipped 15.4 million iPads in the quarter, again more than doubling sales over the same quarter last year. The November launching of Amazon.com Inc.’s $199 Kindle Fire tablet didn’t appear to put much of a dent in the iPad’s sales, as some analysts predicted it would.
Apple shares rose $33.03, or 7.9 percent, to $453.53 in extended trading, after the release of the results.
Chief Financial Officer Peter Oppenheimer said the company expects earnings of $8.50 per share in the current quarter, and sales of $32.5 billion. Both figures are above the average estimate of analysts polled by FactSet, even though Apple usually low-balls its estimates.
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European finance chiefs piled pressure on Greece’s private creditors on Monday to voluntarily cut the country’s massive debt load, with the Dutch minister warning the bondholders may be forced to take losses.
Negotiations with the banks and other investment firms to reduce Greece’s debt by some euro100 billion ($129 billion) hit an impasse over the weekend, even though time to avoid a potentially disastrous default is running low.
Under the deal, private creditors would swap their old Greek bonds for ones with a 50 percent lower face value. The new bonds would also have much longer maturities, pushing repayments decades into the future, and a much lower interest rate than Greece would currently have to pay on the market.
The Greek government and representatives for the private creditors are moving closer to a final deal _ the mood in financial markets was upbeat on Monday, with the euro, stocks and bonds all rising.
But the issues that need to be resolved _ above all, the interest rates on the new bonds _ are crucial for the deal to be effective.
If the interest rate is too high, a second, euro130 billion ($168 billion) bailout for Greece may not be enough to put the country back on its feet. Several eurozone states and the International Monetary Fund would have to provide more loans, but they are unwilling to do so.
It’s clear that Greece needs some form of deal _ it faces a euro14.5 billion ($19 billion) bond repayment on March 20, which it will be unable to afford if the bond swap doesn’t go through.
As that deadline nears, Dutch Finance Minister Jan Kees de Jager warned that bondholders may be forced to take losses if not enough of them agree to cut their holdings voluntarily.
“We’ve never pushed for a default, but we’ve never said it (a restructuring) must be voluntary,” de Jager said as he arrived for a meeting with his eurozone counterparts in Brussels. “Our goal is a sustainable debt. It has our preference if it’s voluntary, but it’s not a precondition for us.”
His comments illustrate that Greece’s bailout rescuers, the euro partners and the IMF, may have hit a wall in their effort to get private creditors to bear the cost of saving the country. They need Greece’s debt to be reduced to a sustainable level so the country can start focusing on getting its economy to grow again and eventually repay billions in rescue loans.
But the kind of losses that are necessary for that are likely too high to get enough bondholders to participate voluntarily _ especially hedge funds and other high-risk investors who bought their bonds at an already low price or stand to profit from default insurance they hold.
A forced restructuring would likely trigger payouts on so-called credit default swaps _ a derivative contract traded between banks and other investment firms that want to hedge against potential defaults. Because the market in CDS is obscure _ with no clear data on who would owe whom how much _ the eurozone fears that a payout could lead to turmoil on financial markets similar to what happened after the collapse of U.S. investment bank Lehman Brothers in 2008.
Although officials, including the French and Greek finance ministers, insisted that a deal was in the making, few expected a final agreement ahead of a key summit of EU leaders next Monday. De Jager suggested that negotiations may even drag on beyond that.
The debt writedown is a key part of Greece’s second international bailout, tentatively agreed in October. Since May 2010, the country has been surviving on a first euro110 billion ($142 billion) batch of rescue loans agreed on condition of deep spending cuts and sweeping public sector reforms.
Later Monday, ministers will also seek to put the finishing touches on their permanent bailout fund _ the euro500 billion European Stability Mechanism _ which is supposed to come into force later this year. They will also discuss a new intergovernmental treaty designed to keep eurozone countries from overspending.
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JPMorgan Chase, the nation’s largest bank, posted a record profit for 2011. That didn’t translate into a bigger bonus for CEO Jamie Dimon. Morgan Stanley’s latest quarterly results topped expectations as the bank trimmed costs and cleaned up problems dating from the financial crisis. But CEO James Gorman saw the value of his stock awards for the year fall by half.
Across their ranks, Wall Street banks are curbing bonus pay for last year’s performance, which was marked by big drops in stock prices and still-hefty costs for mortgage-related problems. In the last three months of the year, fear about the European debt crisis made the stock and bond markets volatile, and clients of all the major banks shied away from mergers and acquisitions and public offerings of stock. That sharply reduced investment banking and underwriting fees. The banks also faced a surge in populist anger, as the Occupy Wall Street movement went national.
Financial stocks were some of the worst performing in 2011. While the S&P 500 Index finished the year flat, Morgan Stanley shares plunged 44 percent, JPMorgan dropped nearly 22 percent and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. tanked 46 percent.
Compensation followed the downward trend. In a closely watched and politically charged gauge, JPMorgan Chase & Co. revealed earlier this month that it set aside 36 percent less than the year before to pay its investment bankers. Morgan Stanley shed 700 workers last year and capped the amount that workers can get in their bonuses immediately, deferring anything over $125,000. Rival Goldman eliminated 7 percent of its employees and cut 2011 pay by 21 percent.
And it appears the banks’ CEOs are not immune. On Friday, Morgan Stanley’s regulatory filing showed that the value of Gorman’s stock award for the year dropped to $5.1 million from $10.2 million in 2010.
Gorman, who became CEO two years ago, has been slimming down the bank, selling off units like a mortgage servicing division and an asset management business. He’s been emphasizing divisions like wealth management, which provide smaller returns than some investment banking operations but also carry a lot less risk because they’re based on fees rather than markets. Unlike JPMorgan and some other big banks, Morgan Stanley doesn’t have a large consumer deposit base to rely on when its investment bank stumbles.
JPMorgan’s Dimon received restricted stock worth $12.6 million and stock appreciation rights reportedly valued at roughly $5 million for 2011, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission Friday. That compares with about $17.1 million in stock and SARs that he was granted for 2010.
For the full year, JPMorgan posted a record profit of $19 billion, up from $17.4 billion in 2010. But the bank struggled amid the choppy financial markets, which hurt investment banking fees in the fourth quarter. The bank also disclosed that it spent $3.2 billion last year to fight lawsuits, almost all of them over poorly written mortgages. That’s down from $5.7 billion in 2010, but Dimon acknowledged there’s still a “huge drag” on earnings five years after the bubble burst.
Complete compensation details, including the value of the executives’ 2011 cash compensation, perks and benefits weren’t disclosed. None of the banks have filed annual proxy statements, which include those financial details.
Dimon received a total pay package for 2010 valued at $20.8 million, including a salary of $1 million and a cash bonus of $5 million. Gorman received compensation valued at $15.2 million, including a salary of $800,000 and a cash bonus of $3.9 million.
The Associated Press formula calculates an executive’s total compensation during the last fiscal year by adding salary, bonuses, perks, above-market interest the company pays on deferred compensation and the estimated value of stock and stock options awarded during the year. The AP formula does not count changes in the present value of pension benefits. That makes the AP total slightly different in most cases from the total reported by companies to the Securities and Exchange Commission.
The value that a company assigned to an executive’s stock and option awards for 2010 was the present value that the company expected the awards to be worth to the executive over time. Companies use one of several formulas to calculate that value. However, the number is just an estimate, and what an executive ultimately receives depends on the performance of the company’s stock in the years after the awards are granted. Most stock compensation programs require an executive to wait a specified length of time to receive shares or exercise options.
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Asian stock markets rose Friday amid signs that the U.S. economy was picking up steam, but European shares opened lower as nervous traders awaited results of crucial negotiations between debt-mired Greece and its lenders.
Benchmark oil hovered above $100 per barrel while the dollar rose against the euro and the yen.
European stocks fell in early trading. Britain’s FTSE 100 shed 0.1 percent to 5,733.14 and Germany’s DAX was 0.3 percent lower at 6,396.62. France’s CAC-40 lost 0.5 percent to 3,306.20. Wall Street also appeared set to open lower, with Dow Jones industrial futures down 0.2 percent to 12,567 and S&P 500 futures shedding 0.3 percent to 1,306.50.
Critical negotiations were under way in Athens between the government and private creditors over a debt restructuring. Greece cannot afford to repay its debts and is trying to persuade its creditors to accept losses of at least 50 percent on billions of euros (dollars) in Greek bonds.
Failure to seal a deal would likely result in a financially disastrous default by Greece.
“For the moment, the market expects a deal to be made while downside risk still exists and any disappointment could end the week of rallies,” Credit Agricole CIB in Hong Kong said in an email.
Signs out of the U.S. on Thursday indicating the U.S. economic recovery was on track powered Asian shares higher earlier in the day.
On the last trading day before Chinese New Year holidays begin Monday, the Shanghai Composite Index climbed 1 percent to 2,319.12. Japan’s Nikkei 225 index rose 1.5 percent to close at 8,766.36. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng added 0.8 percent to 20,110.37 and South Korea’s Kospi jumped 1.8 percent to 1,949.89.
Strong U.S. corporate earnings boosted investor risk tolerance. IBM Corp.’s fourth-quarter earnings beat Wall Street expectations, while Bank of America and Morgan Stanley both reported results that were better than analysts were expecting no teletrack payday loans.
That helped lift shares in Japan’s major banks, including Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group, which jumped 5.1 percent. Mizuho Financial Group was up 5.5 percent and Nomura Holdings surged 5.2 percent.
Another positive sign for the U.S. economy was data that showed a strengthening job market. The number of people seeking unemployment benefits fell last week to 352,000, the fewest since April 2008.
“The U.S. has better job figures and China’s central bank pumped money into the banking system to provide money to cash-starved enterprises so they can pay new year bonuses. I think after the Chinese New Year, be prepared for a correction,” said Francis Lun, managing director of Lyncean Holdings in Hong Kong.
Some Hong Kong-listed banks and insurers fell as investors sold shares to book profits ahead of the Lunar New Year, analysts said. The Industrial & Commercial Bank of China fell 1.1 percent. Ping An Insurance shed 0.8 percent.
Resources stocks advanced following strong gains in metals prices overnight.
Mining giant Rio Tinto Ltd. rose 1.2 percent. Fortescue Metals Group, Australia’s third-biggest iron ore producer, gained 2.6 percent.
Benchmark crude for February delivery was down 4 cents at $100.35 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The contract fell 20 cents to finish at $100.39 per barrel in New York on Thursday.
In currency trading, the euro fell to $1.2932 from $1.2936 late Thursday in New York. The dollar rose to 77.21 yen from 77.17 yen.
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A European Union embargo on imports of Iranian (OPCRIRAN) oil will probably be delayed for six months to let countries such as Greece, Italy and Spain find alternative supplies, an EU official with knowledge of the talks said.
The embargo, which would need to be accepted by the 27- nation bloc
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