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business newsTicker Shock: Dow Chemical Gets Burned, Motorola Gets Dropped, Schering-Plough Gets High
Tuesday's top stories and stocks with potential to move.
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Think about it. Weather forecasters make a boatload of money without the pressure of accuracy. Regardless of how mistaken one is, we tune in every night and make plans around often misguided predictions. Am I right?
Asian stocks were off a smidge overnight. The Hang Seng and the Nikkei were both down less than 1%. Meanwhile, European stocks were showing me some green earlier this morning and here in the US we're currently trading marginally higher.
Here’s what has my attention this morning.
Schering Plough (SGP):
Well, Mom must’ve been wrong when she said "don’t do drugs."Take a gander at New Jersey-based Schering’s fourth-quarter numbers.
It earned $0.39 a share excluding items, which was pretty sweet, given the Street was at $0.30.
There was a downside to the story in that its sales line came in at about $4.35 billion - a little shy of the just-over $4.5 billion that analysts were looking for. That's an issue: Schering has proved it can cut costs, but now it has to prove it can get the ball seriously rolling on the revenue line if I'm going to be gung-ho on the shares.
Overall, it seemed like a decent quarter though, and the shares could close on the upside today.
Dow Chemical (DOW):
A swing and a miss… The big-name chemical giant was out with its fourth-quarter numbers this morning.
Excluding items, it lost a hefty $0.62 a share. Not too swift: The estimate I’m seeing was for a gain of $0.06 a share. To boot, its revenue line came in at about $10.9 billion, which was a country mile south of the approximately $13.3 billion the Street had apparently been looking for.
I think the shares can mount on a comeback at some point. But with the Rohm & Haas (ROH) saga still playing out -- and given the big miss (we're not talking just a few bucks here) -- I plan on avoiding the shares at this point.
One potential ray of sunshine was this snippet in the release:
“Commenting on the Company's outlook, Liveris said: 'As we enter 2009 we're assuming that the late 2008 demand levels will continue for several quarters and possibly beyond. Most of our value chains are running at very low inventory levels, and when a recovery begins, possibly through government stimuli in the back half of the year, the recovery could be rapid.'"
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