Caterpillar destroys estimates; DuPont beats the street; Housing starts decrease
By Mark Pason, at 9:12 am on October 20th, 2009And there off. . .DuPont (NYSE:DD) beat the street on cost-cutting measures, reporting Q3 earnings of $0.45 per share vs. estimates of $0.33 per share. Revenue declined to $6.16bb vs. last year’s number of $7.72bb. Year-to-date, DuPont reduced costs by $900mm. Caterpillar (NYSE:CAT) destroyed Wall Street’s numbers, reporting a drop in net income ($404mm vs. $868mm), but a healthy eps number of $0.64. Analysts predicted earnings per share to hover around $0.05. Are the numbers that good or are the analysts that bad?
Core PPI goes down 0.1% — Housing starts decreased 0.5% — Building permits decreased 1.2%.
The hedgies are happier, as hedge fund inflows actually increased in the third quarter of 2009. Although it’s only $1.1bb, hedge fund managers are happy to revers four quarters of money going in the opposite direction.
Invesco is buying Morgan Stanley’s (NYSE:MS) retail investment management business. They’re paying Invesco $1.5bb in stock and cash.
California is reviving the new-home buyer’s tax credit. The State Senate passed the bill by a 35-1 margin. The $10,000 credit now moves to the Assembly.
The National Retail Federation predicts U.S. consumers will spend 3.2% less this holiday season.
Yesterday, the NY Post reported that Carl Icahn may sue CIT (NYSE:NYSE) Icahn is trying to stop CIT from restructuring their debt. Good luck on this one Carl.
Cerebus, dusting themselves off from the Chrysler disaster, is inching towards taking the Freedom Group public. Freedom is in the guns and ammo business. Looks like a good move, since it’s all about gold and guns these days.
The New York Times posted an interesting article on the “thin line” between “insider trading and research.” Hedge funds strive for any bits of information, doing channel checks, following planes and tracking weather patters. The case against Raj Rajaratnam will change the way many invest. Email started to get used less and less. Now that the phones are being tapped, expect smoke signals from the streets of Greenwich.
