Microsoft and Yahoo work out deal; Madoff speaks; Time Warner beats the Street
By Mark Pason, at 8:03 am on July 29th, 2009S&P Futures down -5.80 to 970.10 at 8am
Mister Softy a/k/a Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) and Yahoo! (NASDAQ:YHOO) finally make a deal. It’s a 10-year deal, not three as expected. Yahoo! will use Microsoft’s Bing search engine for all of its properties. Microsoft will pay Yahoo! through a revenue sharing agreement. Yahoo! gets 88% of search revenue generated for the first five years. There will be an 8:30am conference call. Stay tuned.
Time Warner (NYSE:TWX) beats the Street EPS number of $0.37. They reported $0.45 earnings per share. However, TWX did not meet Wall Street’s estimated revs of $7bb. Time Warner posted a $6.8bb revenue number.
Sprint Nextel (NYSE:S) posted a $0.13 per share loss, much worse than the expected loss of $0.02 per share.
The Chinese government has granted Sinopharm Holdings the right to list on the Hong Kong exchange. This follows the $7bb+ IPO of the China State Construction Engineering Corporation. Many pundits are warning of a China market bubble.
Mortgage Applications were flat, falling for the first time in four weeks. The 30-year fixed-rate mortgage hovers around 5.36%, much higher than the 4.6% rate in March.
Stations Casinos filed for Chater 11 bankruptcy protection last night. The firm just couldn’t reach a CIT like deal with their lenders.
KKR is planning to IPO retailer Dollar General. Meanwhile, there could be four IPOs in August, more than any other month.
Bernie Madoff gave a four-hour interview and he didn’t hold much back. The New York Post reports that Madoff didn’t give the SEC much credit and admitted his sons have not spoken to him or his wife, since the arrest on December 11th. The interview was conducted by Joseph Cotchett, a trial attorney.
