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Friday, May 3, 2013

Valeant adjusted profit up; raises profit forecast

(Reuters) - Valeant Pharmaceuticals International Inc , Canada's biggest publicly traded drugmaker, reported a 12 percent rise in adjusted quarterly profit due to higher product sales and raised its full-year adjusted profit forecast.

The acquisitive drugmaker said it now expected an adjusted profit, which it calls cash earnings, of between $5.55 and $5.85 per share, up from its previous forecast of $5.45 to $5.75.

The company earned $405.2 million, or $1.30 per share, on an adjusted basis in the first quarter, a rise of 12 percent from $360.3 million in the same quarter last year.

Total revenue jumped 25 percent to $1.07 billion. Product sales rose 38 percent, driven by robust growth in Poland, Russia, Brazil, South East Asia and South Africa.

"Our emerging markets business performed extremely well in the first quarter," the company said on Thursday.

Valeant said its net loss widened to $27.5 million, or 9 cents per share, from $12.9 million, or 4 cents per share, a year earlier as expenses increased 4 percent, mainly due to the integration of Medicis Pharmaceuticals Corp.

Valeant has been on the acquisition trail since its 2010 takeover by Biovail Corp, which assumed the Valeant name.

It has favored segments where patients often pay out of pocket, such as opthalmology and dermatology -- a strategy that cuts its exposure to cost-sensitive insurers.

However, a proposed merger of Valeant and Actavis Inc , the third-largest global generic drugmaker, was put on hold recently after the companies failed to agree to the terms of a deal, a source familiar with the situation told Reuters last week.

Actavis, formerly known as Watson Pharmaceuticals, on Thursday reported an adjusted quarterly profit that beat market estimates, helped by several new products, and the company raised its earnings forecast for the full year.

Actavis said on Wednesday it bought the global rights to Valeant's antibiotic vaginal gel for about $55 million.

Valeant on Thursday reiterated its revenue forecast of $4.4 billion to $4.8 billion for the year.

Valeant shares closed at C$74.28 on the Toronto Stock Exchange on Wednesday.

(Reporting by Bhaswati Mukhopadhyay in Bangalore; Editing by Saumyadeb Chakrabarty)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/valeant-posts-bigger-loss-costs-rise-102326467.html

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Thursday, May 2, 2013

Tablets with Windows RT see slow sales, IDC says

NEW YORK (AP) ? Microsoft is seeing slow sales of a version of Windows designed for thin and light tablets, even as the tablet market as a whole is growing, a research firm reported Wednesday.

Researchers at IDC said manufacturers shipped 200,000 tablets running Windows RT, the special version of Windows for iPad-style tablets, in the January to March period. That's down from about 900,000 shipped in the fourth quarter.

Microsoft Corp. launched Windows RT in October, along with the Surface tablet. The software runs on a few tablets from other manufacturers as well. Windows RT is designed to run on phone-style chips, of the kind used in the iPad, rather than PC-style chips, which tend to use more energy and require bigger batteries. Using Windows RT means the tablets can be thinner and lighter, but it also means regular Windows programs won't run on Windows RT. That's caused some confusion and limited the appeal of Windows RT, analysts say.

Microsoft's larger Surface Pro tablets, which run standard Windows 8, did better in the quarter. IDC didn't specify how many, but it's at least 700,000 based on the figures provided.

Microsoft has said it plans to release a series of smaller tablets in coming months, apparently to compete with Apple's iPad Mini and Amazon.com Inc.'s Kindle Fire. Windows RT is the likely software choice for the tablets.

Meanwhile, the global tablet market more than doubled to 49.2 million units, according to IDC's estimate. That means nearly two tablets were sold for every three PCs, a record level.

Apple Inc. remained the largest maker of tablets, but its market share shrank to 39 percent, the lowest yet. Samsung Electronics Co. is cementing its position as the second-largest maker of tablets, with 18 percent market share, according to IDC.

Microsoft's market share was 1.8 percent, with 900,000 Windows RT and Windows 8 tablets shipped. It's at No. 5, behind AsusTek Computer Inc. and Amazon.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/495d344a0d10421e9baa8ee77029cfbd/Article_2013-05-01-US-TEC-Tablet-Sales/id-937dd544eea143fe95590b3a96bb962c

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Jennifer Lopez to Perform on American Idol Season Finale

Source: http://www.thehollywoodgossip.com/2013/05/jennifer-lopez-to-perform-on-american-idol-season-finale/

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New Kenyan lawmakers vote themselves free luxury car perk, worth $60,000

Barely a fortnight into their jobs, Kenya?s new lawmakers have forced through a change to their salary that includes a perk of $60,000 for a luxury car.

Under a review of legislators? earnings agreed in Kenya before the March national elections, salaries were agreed to be cut from $120,000 a year to $75,000, and perks including interest-free loans for vehicles and houses were to be scrapped.

The measures were necessary because under a new constitution that made structural changes including a new senate, the older wages for public servants were predicted to be unsustainable.

But part of those cuts are already being reversed. Kenyan budgetary officials were this week forced to backtrack and agree that the 416 new legislators will each be handed $60,000 for a new car.

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Rates for mileage driven while on official business have also almost doubled, to between $2 and $3.70 a mile, depending on the vehicle's engine size.

The move has been met with weary resignation ? and some anger ? among Kenyans who elected new members of parliament, hoping they might achieve a break from the pork and excesses of the past.

?Sometimes I wonder if we Kenyans are stupid truly to believe any new parliament will be different from the last one,? says Beatrice Mathenge, an office cleaner in Nairobi, Kenya?s capital. ?Each time they reach office, the very first thing they do is award themselves more salary. Meanwhile we are all struggling even to make ends to meet.?

Originally the lawmakers were to be offered loans of up to $82,000 to fund vehicle purchases, and to be repaid over five years at 3 percent interest.

Even though this interest rate is a fraction of the average 19 percent that Kenya?s commercial banks offer to account holders, members of parliament said they would not be able to afford to pay the loans back.

This was despite their salaries ? even at reduced levels ? being 42 times higher than an average Kenyan would expect to earn in a year. In March when announcing the lower pay, Sarah Serem, head of the salaries commission, said, ?We are trying to instill a sense of fiscal prudence by letting the MPs own and maintain their own cars or homes."

This week, one parliamentarian complained that Ms. Serem ?wanted MPs to go and buy cheap cars like a [Toyota] Probox,? a small Japanese station wagon popular with ordinary Kenyans.

?What type of car does she think we can buy with $60,000,? Mithika Linturi asked in Kenya?s Standard newspaper.

Financial analysts calculate that Kenya?s $5.5 billion public sector wage bill has doubled in the last four years and now consumes half of domestic revenue.

Legislators have also warned that they plan to enact new laws that will overturn the pay cut instituted by the salaries commission, and return their earnings to $120,000 a year or more.

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Fidelity Contrafund's Danoff frets over Apple rivals

By Tim McLaughlin

BOSTON (Reuters) - Fidelity Contrafund manager Will Danoff, the biggest active shareholder in Apple Inc, cut his stake in the iPhone maker 12 percent in the first quarter and cited "heightened concern" about increasing competition.

Danoff, whose $92 billion Contrafund has beaten 94 percent of peers over the past 15 years, is considered one of the most savvy stock pickers among mutual fund managers.

"Given our heightened concern surrounding the increased competition Apple was facing, we continued to trim our stake in the company during the period," Danoff said in a first-quarter overview.

Apple's shares have climbed nearly 10 percent in the last week since the company announced it would increase its dividend and share buybacks to $100 billion. On Tuesday, Apple issued $17 billion of bonds, the largest non-bank deal in history, to fund some of the increases.

But the stock remains off 37 percent since hitting an all-time high of $705.07 in late September. Apple's shares were down about $3.90, or nearly 1 percent, at $438.55 in late morning trading on Nasdaq.

Danoff said investors continue to express concern about the company's decreasing profit margins as well as increasing competition from device makers including Samsung Electronics Co Ltd.

He began trimming his Apple stake late last year, but had said he still found the stock to be relatively cheap and remained upbeat about the company's cash generation prowess. In January, for example, Danoff wrote that Apple was generating $1 billion of free cash flow per week, according to a Fidelity Viewpoints interview posted on January 16.

Contrafund owned 10.1 million Apple shares at the end of March, down from 11.56 million at the end of 2012, according to Boston-based Fidelity's latest disclosure.

Danoff was hardly alone in trimming his Apple position. Some 870 institutional investors pared their Apple holdings in the most recent reporting period, while 419 sold off their entire positions, according to Thomson Reuters data. That compared with 254 investors initiating Apple positions and 1,185 adding to existing holdings.

Contrafund held $4.5 billion in Apple stock at the end of March. Its largest holding was a $5.1 billion stake in Google Inc.

Contrafund returned 9.18 percent in the first quarter, underperforming the 10.61 percent advance of the S&P 500 Index. But over the past 15 years, Danoff has outperformed the S&P 500 by 3.3 percentage points per year.

Apple was the fund's largest detractor in the quarter, Danoff said in his overview. Still, he said he continued to believe that smartphones represent one of the most robust product cycles in the tech sector.

He also favors biotech companies, overweighting on Biogen Idec Inc, which is known for its multiple sclerosis drugs. That stock was the fund's single-largest contributor to relative performance during the quarter, rallying more than 30 percent on the approval of Tecfidera, an oral drug used for treating MS, Danoff said in his overview. Contrafund owned $1.7 billion worth of Biogen shares in the first quarter.

Overall, Danoff said he continued to find cheap stocks, particularly in relation to bonds, where blue-chip companies boast free cash flow yields of 5 percent to 7 percent. That is well in excess of the 1.65 percent yield on the 10-year Treasury bond.

Contrafund's largest weighting is in the tech sector, where Danoff is betting on companies that disrupt the software industry with cloud computing offerings. Danoff, for example, owned $610 million worth of Salesforce.com Inc at the end of the quarter.

(Additional reporting by Aaron Pressman in Boston.; Editing by Lisa Von Ahn and Maureen Bavdek)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/fidelity-contrafund-manager-worries-over-apples-competition-133752406.html

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