Airbus gains a bit in race for orders
Pacific Northwest
Boeing
With 141 orders last month, Airbus slightly narrowed Boeing’s lead in the annual sales race.
Airbus’ gross order total through the end of September, announced Tuesday, stands at 854 jets. Boeing booked 132 orders in September for a gross order total of 903. In the first three-quarters of 2006, a record sales year, Boeing had only 736 gross orders.
The gap between the two aviation-manufacturing giants is greater when changes to previously booked orders are accounted for. Boeing’s net-order total after sales cancellations and substitutions is 893, while Airbus has 791 net orders. (The latter figure, which Airbus does not provide, can be calculated indirectly from cumulative order totals.) Boeing is chasing the 2006 record annual net-order total of 1,044.
Boeing also holds an advantage in that 54 percent of its orders are for the more-expensive wide-body jets, compared with just 39 percent of Airbus’ tally.
The recent British Airways wide-body order - 24 Boeing 787 Dreamliners and 12 Airbus A380 superjumbo jets, worth a total list price of about $8.2 billion - is not yet included in either order book.
Expeditors
Flurry of trading as firm joins index
Expeditors International shares amounting to a 4.4 percent stake traded in one transaction Tuesday as the manager of cargo shipments was added to the Standard & Poor’s 500 index.
The 9.5 million-share block was valued at $490.3 million, or $51.86 a share. Expeditors, based in Seattle, had about 213.1 million shares outstanding as of Aug. 6, according to Bloomberg News data.
Expeditors replaced TXU, the Texas power producer being purchased by Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. and TPG, in the S&P 500 Tuesday. Money managers tracking the gauge are expected to purchase the company’s shares, giving them a boost.
Expeditors gained $1.95, or 3.9 percent, to $51.86 Tuesday. The shares have climbed 28 percent this year.
First Financial
Shares will start trading today
First Financial Northwest of Renton, parent of First Savings Bank Northwest, said it has sold $210 million in common shares as part of its planned conversion to a stock company.
The company said its borrowers and depositors approved the conversion Sept. 27, and it has received the necessary regulatory authorizations.
First Financial said it sold almost 21.2 million shares to current and former depositors at $10 per share. It also will contribute about 1.7 million shares to a new charitable foundation established by the bank.
The company’s stock will begin trading today under the symbol FFNW.
Pacific Northwest
Microsoft
4 of 6 patches labeled “critical”
Microsoft issued six security patches in a regular update Tuesday.
The software maker gave four of the security updates its most urgent “critical” rating.
Within that group, Microsoft used a single update to fix several separate flaws found in different versions of the Internet Explorer Web browser, including the most recent, IE7.
That patch blocks any attempts by attackers to put fake content into the address bar of a Web browser - a technique used in phishing scams.
The three other “critical” patches also help keep hackers from breaking into users’ computers to steal information or install malicious software.
One fixes a problem with Kodak Image Viewer used on computers that run Windows 2000 or that were upgraded from Windows 2000.
Another fixes a flaw in the way news groups are handled by Outlook Express and Windows Mail. The third protects users of Microsoft Word 2000 and 2004 and Office for Mac 2004 from malicious Word documents.
Nation and World
NBC
$925 million seals Oxygen Media deal
NBC Universal on Tuesday said that it was acquiring Oxygen Media for $925 million in hopes of bolstering its relationship with women.
The deal demonstrates just how important the company’s cable channels have been to the overall health of NBC Universal, particularly since NBC broadcast network’s prime-time fortunes plummeted. Cable channels, including USA Network and Bravo, have become among the most profitable of NBC’s assets.
The sale enables Oxygen’s founders, which include Oprah Winfrey and Mercer Island billionaire Paul Allen, to cash out of their investment in the cable channel, which was launched in 2000 with high hopes of becoming a destination for women.
Alcoa
Profit inches up; short of forecast
Aluminum producer Alcoa said Tuesday its third-quarter profit edged up more than 3 percent, helped by the sale of its stake in China’s largest aluminum maker. But the results fell short of Wall Street expectations.
Net income for the period ended Sept. 30 grew to $555 million, or 63 cents per share, from $537 million, or 61 cents per share, during the same period last year. The results were limited by charges linked to planned asset sales and restructuring, higher petroleum and energy costs, and other expenses.
Revenue fell to $7.39 billion from $7.63 billion during the year-ago period due to the exclusion of the company’s soft-alloy extrusion business as a result of a joint venture, lower metal prices, a seasonal downturn and weakness in North American markets.
Analysts polled by Thomson Financial had predicted earnings of 65 cents per share on $7.40 billion in revenue.
Alcoa released the financial results after markets closed. the company’s shares rose $1.42, or 3.7 percent, to close at $39.72, then gained 26 cents in after-hours trading.
“Microblogging” Jaiku is purchased
Internet search leader Google said Tuesday that it has bought Finnish startup Jaiku, which makes a mobile-phone application people can use to send short messages about where they are and what they’re doing.
The concept is known as “microblogging.”
Terms of the acquisition weren’t disclosed.
Google thinks Jaiku’s technology can help develop new ways to use mobile devices, according to a note posted Tuesday on Google’s blog by Tony Hsieh, a product manager for the company.
Google shares soared to a new high of $623.78 Tuesday, before falling back to $615.18, up $5.57 for the day.
Part of the reason for Tuesday’s share surge is that Lehman Brothers raised its price forecast to the highest on Wall Street and predicted the dominant Internet search-engine operator will soon introduce its own mobile telephone.
Google’s phone may be “simple,” “low priced” and designed to run software over the Internet, Lehman analyst Douglas Anmuth wrote. His share-price estimate, which he increased Tuesday by 17 percent to $714, is the highest among 39 analysts covering Google.
Honda
CR-V production may be doubled
Honda may double North American production of its compact CR-V, the best-selling sport-utility vehicle in the U.S., as demand for large, truck-based SUVs fades, according to two analysts.
CR-V sales jumped 44 percent this year to 167,223 through September, eclipsing Ford’s Explorer, the U.S. leader in 14 of the past 15 years, at 108,535. Honda wants 80 percent of the autos it sells in the U.S. to be made in North America, meaning a shift in CR-Vs, now mostly imported.
“They’ll push for more production as quickly as possible,” said analyst Catherine Madden, an analyst for Global Insight.
Honda and Toyota are expanding North American production as U.S.-based General Motors, Ford and Chrysler close plants to adjust to shrinking U.S. sales.
U.S. gasoline prices that reached a record $3.227 a gallon in May have made efficient small SUVs such as the CR-V and Toyota’s RAV4 more appealing.
SEC
Clear exec-pay info needed, SEC says
Federal regulators on Tuesday urged companies to better explain how they reward top executives after reviewing compensation data from 350 of the nation’s largest public companies and finding the information incomplete and riddled with jargon.
In their report, the regulators directed companies to tell investors more about how and why they reached decisions about pay. They suggested that companies offer shareholders additional analysis, charts and graphs to illustrate their decisions.
Officials at the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) said they raised most of their questions about performance targets that companies use to evaluate the work of top executives. Agency officials are asking businesses to be more specific about how they analyze an individual’s work and targets they use to award raises, bonuses and stock options.
John White, director of the SEC’s corporation finance division, encouraged lawyers and boards of directors to remember that the ultimate consumers of pay data are not chief executives but a company’s shareholders, according to a copy of his remarks provided to reporters.
The SEC did not single out specific companies for praise or criticism. Rather, agency officials said they will continue to review the filings of the 350 businesses.
Once their study is complete, regulators will make public their correspondence with companies.
Compiled by Seattle Times business staff, The Associated Press, Los Angeles Times Washington Post News Service, and Bloomberg News