plus 4, Wall Street gains on retailers' holiday data - Yahoo Finance

Wall Street gains on retailers' holiday data - Yahoo Finance
Netflix Rallies on Takeover Rumor - Yahoo Finance
Integrys to sell wholesale electric marketing business - Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Car showrooms are reborn as places to play, learn - Katu.com
Israel Expands Al-Quds Settlements - Islam Online

Wall Street gains on retailers' holiday data - Yahoo Finance

Posted: 28 Dec 2009 08:44 AM PST

By Chuck Mikolajczak

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Wall Street edged higher on Monday as retailers' shares rose on data pointing to an improved performance for the key holiday shopping season while rising commodity prices boosted the natural resource sector.

Sales at U.S. retailers rose 3.6 percent for the period from November 1 to Christmas Eve, data from MasterCard Advisors unit SpendingPulse showed. Macy's Inc (NYSE:M - News) climbed 2.5 percent to $18.00 and the S&P Retail index (Chicago Options:^RLX - News) added 0.6 percent.

Amazon.com Inc (NasdaqGS:AMZN - News) rose 1.9 percent to $141.05 after it said customers bought more e-books than physical books for the first time ever on Christmas Day.

"This game of chicken that went on between retailers and shoppers, it looks like the retailers won," said Stephen Massocca, managing director at Wedbush Morgan in San Francisco. "They held out, there weren't deep discounts prior to Christmas, and people actually came in and bought the merchandise, so that bodes well."

The Dow Jones industrial average (DJI:^DJI - News) advanced 17.08 points, or 0.16 percent, to 10,537.18. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index (^SPX - News) gained 1.27 points, or 0.11 percent, to 1,127.75. The Nasdaq Composite Index (Nasdaq:^IXIC - News) gained 6.31 points, or 0.28 percent, to 2,292.00.

Volume was expected to be light in another holiday-shortened week. The S&P 500 is up nearly 25 percent for the year, and investors are carefully placing bets to make sure they don't erode profits.

U.S. oil futures rose 1.2 percent, or 95 cents, to $79.00 a barrel, after hitting its highest intraday level since Nov 23, and boosted energy shares. The PHLX Oil Service index (Philadelphia:^OSX - News) rose 0.8 percent.

Airline stocks fell as the United States tightened airline security after a Nigerian man smuggled explosives aboard a transatlantic flight and attempted to blow up the plane.

AMR Corp (NYSE:AMR - News), the parent of American Airlines, lost 3.6 percent to $7.85, while Delta Air Lines Inc (NYSE:DAL - News) dropped 3.6 percent to $11.35. The NYSE Arca Airline index (AMEX:^XAL - News) shed 1.1 percent.

(Reporting by Chuck Mikolajczak; Editing by Jan Paschal)

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Netflix Rallies on Takeover Rumor - Yahoo Finance

Posted: 28 Dec 2009 08:44 AM PST

The DVD and streaming video company – Netflix Inc (NasdaqGS: NFLX - News) rose 1.41% and closed at $56.89 amid rumors that it might be taken over by Amazon.com Inc (NasdaqGS: AMZN - News). Netflix has surged more than 6% following its buy out rumor.

Other potential acquirers for Netflix assets may be Apple (NasdaqGS: AAPL - News), Blockbuster (NYSE: BBI - News), Wal-Mart Stores (NYSE: WMT - News), Google (NasdaqGS: GOOG - News), Microsoft (NasdaqGS: MSFT - News), Comcast (NasdaqGS: CMCSA - News), CBS (NYSE: CBS - News) and Sony (NYSE: SNE - News). We expect the stock to surge higher and get back to its recent high.

Year-to-date, Netflix shares are up 90.5%, outperforming the peer group as well as the S&P 500 on the back of better-than-expected earnings. Netflix outperformed the Zacks Consensus Estimate profit of 45 cents per share in the most recent quarter (third quarter of 2009).

The company announced a 44.9% increase in non-GAAP net income to $32.1 million or 55 cents per share in the quarter, up from $22.1 million or 36 cents per share in the same quarter a year ago.

The increase in profitability is attributable to better subscription services and a larger number of customers signing up for the company's DVD-by-mail program. Netflix has a strong subscriber base, which will benefit Amazon.

NetFlix ended the quarter with a subscriber base of approximately 11.1 million, representing a 28% year-over-year growth and 5% sequential growth. Of the total subscribers at quarter-end, 98% were paid subscribers, while the remaining 2% were free subscribers.

Gross subscriber additions in the quarter represented a 43% year-over-year growth and a 13% quarter-over-quarter growth. Net subscribers rose by 510,000 in the quarter compared to an increase of 261,000 a year earlier.

We are impressed by the company's debt free balance sheet. Netflix is sitting on $155.5 million in cash and short-term investments. Moreover, the company increased its fourth-quarter and full-year guidance.

Netflix also has plans for international expansion of its online streaming service in the second half of 2010, and expects to announce a partnership with a consumer-electronics firm in late 2009. With strong customer and earnings growth, we recommend the shares of Netflix as Neutral.

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Integrys to sell wholesale electric marketing business - Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Posted: 28 Dec 2009 07:54 AM PST

Dec. 27, 2009 | An early morning blaze destroyed the Menomonee Falls mansion owned by Latasha Jackson, a child-care provider under criminal investigation after receiving millions of dollars from the taxpayer-financed Wisconsin Shares program.

Fire officials said the call came in at 5:17 Sunday morning. No one was at the home, located on Goetz Court, at the time of the blaze, and no firefighters were reported injured. An agent from the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives was called in to assist the investigation.

Jackson, 32, was the subject of a Journal Sentinel story that outlined how she reaped nearly $3 million from the Wisconsin Shares program - and bought a Jaguar convertible and built the 7,600-square-foot house with an indoor swimming pool and indoor basketball court - while, for 10 years, regulators ignored red flags indicating she was scamming the system. The story sparked a wave of taxpayer outrage and led to a sweeping crackdown on sketchy child-care providers. Within weeks, state regulators cut public funding to about 130 child-care providers suspected of cheating the program.

Menomonee Falls Fire Chief Jeff Hevey said Jackson, who also goes by her married name, Latasha Wilder, was out of town and that he spoke to her Sunday morning.

"I spoke to them on the phone and let them know their house was a total loss," Hevey said. "They were devastated by the news." »Read Full Article

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Car showrooms are reborn as places to play, learn - Katu.com

Posted: 28 Dec 2009 08:37 AM PST

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) - With hard times in the auto industry and car dealerships closing around the country, the gleaming showrooms that once featured next year's models are becoming this year's new store, restaurant, school, day care center or yoga studio.

In Lane County, Ore., Joe Softich from Catholic Community Services helps erect shelves and unload boxes for a new food bank warehouse inside a former auto showroom. In Tulsa, Okla., teenagers at Northside Christian Church skateboard in what was once a showroom's auto service center.

Students on the campus of the Columbus College of Art & Design in Ohio can learn in a space where evidence of automaking's proud past is still visible in the exposed concrete pillars, sturdy tile floors and ascending spiral vehicle ramp.

Architects and historians say the shock that American automakers could go bankrupt has combined with depressed real estate values and enthusiasm for green energy to bring a unique level of interest to reusing showrooms.

People are reducing their reliance on cars to save money on gas and shrink their carbon footprint; they are renovating showrooms because relying on recycled water or solar energy makes it cheaper to renovate than to build new.

"If you look historically at the times when we've had these big shifts in (building) use, they've coincided with societal shifts," said Erin Rae Hoffer, an architect on staff at Boston-based Autodesk.

The number of franchised new car dealerships in the U.S. was already slipping before the auto company bankruptcies, but 1,900 dealerships have closed since January 2008. U.S. auto sales fell to a 26-year low of about 10 million this year, compared with 17 million over most of the previous decade.

As part of its deep restructuring, General Motors Co. has said it will cut 2,400 dealers from its 6,000-dealer network by next fall. Chrysler Group LLC slashed 789 dealers in June. Responding to backlash from dealership owners, Congress passed a bill this month to give dealers a stronger arbitration process to challenge the automakers' decisions.

Many showrooms are still being torn down, observers say, but developers are not so quick to bulldoze the finer buildings before exploring other uses.

The transformation of the boxy, windowed space at Golden Bridge Yoga Studio in Los Angeles has been achieved with the smell of wafting incense, prayer flags draped from the walls and percussive Eastern rhythms. At NEO on Locust in St. Louis, long white tablecloths, stylish backlighting and tinkling champagne glasses turn a similar square space into a classy wedding venue.

Built to sustain thousands of pounds of moving weight, the showrooms are especially sturdy, naturally lit and often ideally located in high-traffic areas.

"There's more likelihood that they're going to be kept now than there was 10 or 15 years ago," said Andrew Wolfram, an architect at Perkins + Will who sits on the San Francisco Historic Preservation Commission. "There's an overall trend toward reuse (of old buildings), and there's also a sense that these particular buildings now have more value."

The same happened to Victorian-style homes that are now prized but were demolished by the thousands in the 1950s because they were seen as old-fashioned and fussy, he said.

The art school in Columbus invested $8.3 million in its new Design Studios on Broad in the longtime Byer's Chrysler showroom that began as Columbus Oldsmobile in 1919.

Ventilation ducts to an old coal-fired furnace became windows bringing in cost-free natural light. Layers of insulation and reflective white coating were added to the roof. Body shops became classrooms. The showroom will soon become a gallery.

Looking at all that cement can be a bore, said 22-year-old fashion design student Irina Burdak, who takes classes in the building. But she loves all the windows a former showroom provides.

"Sometimes you take a break, and you can look out the windows and see the city. I really like that," said Burdak, who was born in the Ukraine.

When the auto industry was young, the expansive windows were a way to draw people in, teasing passers-by with a view of dozens of makes and models of new cars.

Rows of elegant downtown showrooms - including Chicago's Motor Row and Cincinnati's Race Street - developed around the country in the 1900s.

Chief Deputy Sean Donovan, 61, of the Hamilton County, Ohio, Sheriff's Office, came to love Race Street so much in downtown Cincinnati after spending time there as a boy that he bought an old showroom building to house his wife's law office. He's developed a wine business at the street level.

"There was a time when cars were art," he said. "It was a big deal. You got dressed up and went out to buy a car. Not like today."

Steve Xiao, manager of the Hua Xing Asia Market in Ypsilanti, Mich., said the former showroom that is now his grocery store had something else going for it: The price was right.

"We were really interested when we heard they were selling and moving somewhere else," he said. "The first year, the price was too high. When we finally bought it, it had been on the market almost two years."

Len Love, who owned a small, independent auto dealership in Tampa, Fla., was staring down the opposite side of that equation. As he watched the steady decline of car sales at Love's Auto, he had a build-it-and-they-will-come moment.

"I was sitting in the office every day and literally no money was coming in the door. Nothing. Not a dime. Not one penny," he said. "That day I was standing in the showroom and said, 'Well, it feels like a nice little bar in here."'

Love rented a catering unit, taught himself to cook and started Artifacts restaurant.

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Israel Expands Al-Quds Settlements - Islam Online

Posted: 28 Dec 2009 08:44 AM PST

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Israel will build 692 new housing units in three settlements in occupied Al-Quds. OCCUPIED JERUSALEM – Striking yet a new defiance note, Israel invited on Monday, December 28, tenders to build hundreds of new settlement units in Al-Quds (occupied ...