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PetSmart Inc. (NASDAQ: PETM) this morning trimmed its sales and profit forecast for the rest of the year due to weak consumer spending and warmer-than-usual weather. PetSmart now expects 17 cents to 20 cents per share for the third quarter, from a previous forecast of 21 cents to 23 cents earnings per share.
ConAgra Foods Inc. (NYSE: CAG) "voluntarily stopped production at the Missouri plant that makes its Banquet pot pies after health officials said the pies may be linked to 139 cases of salmonella in 30 states, including Wisconsin."
Oracle (NASDAQ: ORCL) yesterday announced it has agreed to acquire LogicalApps, a provider of automated Governance, Risk and Compliance (GRC) controls management solutions.
While many schools ban and confiscate Apple Inc.'s (NASDAQ: AAPL) iPods, some found a good use for them, The New York Times Reports -- to help bilingual kids with some difficulty understanding English. As for the iPhone, Piper Jaffray conducted a survey and found that 3% of teens already own an iPhone.
Hoping to capitalize on the social networking craze, eBay Inc. (NASDAQ: EBAY) has launched its own version of a social networking service today, Neighborhoods, and is promising other customer-friendly features by year's end.
Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) has bought Jaiku, an activity stream and presence sharing service that works from the Web and mobile phones.
There was much news on Sirius Satellite Radio (NASDAQ: SIRI) and XM Satellite Radio (NASDAQ: XMSR) yesterday and the shares surged after a Citigroup analyst Eileen Furukawa estimated the transaction's likelihood of closing at greater than 60%. The merger, she said, could produce up to $7 billion in cost savings. She has upped XM's price target to $19.50 from $15. The market, however, still gives the deal only a 24% chance of passing regulatory muster. SIRI shares closed up 3.77% and XMSR shares up 6.87%.
Disney (NYSE: DIS) is planning to open a resort in Hawaii [subscription required]. While its 21 acres of hotels and villas seem large by most standards, it is no where near the scale of the company's big theme parks. According to The Wall Street Journal, "Disney's theme-park operation has been hatching plans to expand its reach by building smaller attractions and resorts."
Disney already has a cruise ship business. Building its large theme parks has been expensive, although they bring in huge sums of money. According to the company 10-Q, the theme park business did $2.9 billion in revenue during the June quarter.
And, that is Disney's dilemma. A big theme park is expensive to build and operate, but the revenue potential clearly reaches into the billions of dollars. Projects like the one in Hawaii may be less expensive to open, but how much money can they bring the company? Even if the company has a dozen of them, the impact is likely to be fairly modest.
Management resources end up being an issue as well. Taking top talent to oversee a large park location that brings in hundreds of millions of dollars probably is a good use of executive time. Going to Hawaii to supervise a small location may be fun, but it also may be a waste of precious manpower.
By the end of the year, Disney (NYSE: DIS) is going to ditch its mobile phone service. Basically, the company wants to rethink things.
Despite its mega brand, Disney realized that the competitive environment is extremely tough. Interestingly enough, it was last year that the company closed its ESPN mobile service (and took a charge for $30 million).
I talked to Daniel Neal, CEO and Founder of kajeet. His company has a popular cell service for kids. So how can this company succeed whereas mighty Disney has failed?
"At kajeet, we've set out to prove that there is a formula for success in focusing on a cell phone service for kids. Our singular focus is to super-serve our tween and teen customers with a totally customizable pay-as-you-go wireless service that addresses their unique mobile technology needs. Instead of building our own handsets, content or stores, We purposefully developed strong relationships with established partners that greatly appeal to our customers."
Or, perhaps a better approach for Disney is just to buy kajeet.
Cisco Systems Inc (NASDAQ: CSCO) and Haier Group, China's largest manufacturer of appliances, have agreed to work together on home networking in China and international markets, according to the Wall Street Journal.
India's Wipro Limited (NYSE: WIT) has received a five year, $130M contract from British utility Thames Water to provide integrated IT services, reported the Economic Times.
This summer was a very profitable one for box offices nationwide, with four movies grossing over $300M, and at least another nine grossing over $100M -- signaling in a big way the resurgence of the movie industry, which had been struggling for the last few years.
The four big $300M+ winners of the summer were Sony Corporation (ADR) (NYSE: SNE) 'sSpider-Man 3, which grossed $336M in the U.S., Viacom, Inc (NYSE: VIA)'s Paramount's Shrek the Third, which grossed $320M, Transformers, also from Paramount, which grossed $311M, and The Walt Disney Company (NYSE: DIS)'s Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End, which grossed $308M.
Three of the four were third installments of well established big-budget franchises, so their success is hardly shocking, but the Transformers success clearly marks the start of a new blockbuster franchise (the release date of the sequel has been announced -- June 26, 2009). The robot-action extravaganza, which was directed by Michael Bay, was definitely a surprise, as I remarked in my summer movie preview that Transformers "has flop written all over it... there cannot possibly be enough substance in a story about alien robots that transform into vehicles to make this a hit with the general public." I was wrong -- very wrong. The movie killed at the box office, grossing over $330M on a $150M budget, and prompting a re-release on IMAX, which opened last week.
CBS Corp. (NYSE: CBS) is in need of a solid new hit. While CBS has consistently been America's "most-watched network" for several years, the trend may be in danger. Perennial ratings powerhouses such as the CSI franchise, Two and a Half Men and Survivor are getting a little long in the tooth and may only have a few years left before fickle viewers tire of them.
Meanwhile, fall season has started off slowly for the venerable network, as two of its returning drams ... the two-year-old James Woods vehicle Shark and the procedural drama Cold Case -- beginning its fifth season -- saw sagging ratings. At 10:00 p.m. Eastern, Shark attracted an all-time low of 11.5 million viewers, roughly 6 million less than Without a Trace drew when it premiered in the same time slot last year.
12.3 million viewers tuned in to Cold Case, airing at 9:00 p.m., down from the fourth-season premiere, which drew 17.6 million households. Next week, the competition builds as Walt Disney's (NYSE: DIS) ABC Network premieres Desperate Housewives and Brothers and Sisters.
For the night, CBS took second place, behind General Electric's (NYSE: GE) NBC Network, which won the night easily with Sunday Night Football.
Walt Disney Co. (NYSE: DIS) has a unit called the Disney Institute. It trains workers and management from other companies and government agencies. Recent customers include Miami International Airport, General Motors Corp. (NYSE: GM), IBM (NYSE: IBM), and the IRS.
The corporate culture at Disney of emphasizing customer service and attention to detail "are transferable across industries, across cultures, and across different sizes and shapes of organizations," the head of the Institute told The New York Times. A typical trainer at the organization has averaged 10 years with Disney.
But, operating the training company may be be in Disney's best interests.
Disney's revenue in the June quarter was over $9 billion. The parks and resorts segment brought in $2.9 billion. Most of the company's "trainers" for consumer services undoubtedly come from this unit. Does it really benefit the company to move managers from such an important business so that they can train people at other companies.
The revenue from Disney Institute is not material enough to show up in the Disney 10-Q.
Why is Disney training management at other companies? There probably is not a good answer for that. And, it is a bad idea. It takes resources away from a critically important part of the company.
Disney-ABC Television Group, a division of Walt Disney Co. (NYSE: DIS), and AOL, a unit of Time Warner Inc. (NYSE: TWX) have announced the availability of full-length episodes of popular primetime shows on AOL Video. The shows will be available via a co-branded version of ABC.com's broadband player and starting next week will feature ABC's new fall lineup of programming.
Additionally, the two companies will team to offer select short-form programming from ABC through an embedded short-form player, which will debut on AOL later this year and will include both original and derivative content from ABC. Here is part of the programming that will be offered the day after their broadcast premieres:
MOST NOTEWORTHY: The U.S. media sector, oil services, MercadoLibre and Horsehead Holdings were today's noteworthy initiations:
Credit Suisse initiated coverage of the U.S. media sector with a Market Weight rating, shares of The Walt Disney Company (NYSE: DIS) with an Outperform rating and shares of Time Warner Inc (NYSE: TWX) and Viacom Inc (NYSE: VIA.B) with Neutral ratings.
MercadoLibre Inc (NASDAQ: MELI) was initiated by American Technology with a Buy rating and $45 target, as the firm believes the e-commerce growth opportunity in Latin America is still in its infancy. Shares were also started at Pacific Crest with an Outperform rating and $37 target, as the firm believes the company should benefit from strong secular growth and company-specific drivers. MercadoLibre was also initiated at JP Morgan with an Overweight rating and at Merrill Lynch with a Buy rating and $35 target.
Friedman Billings expects Horsehead Holding Corp's (NASDAQ: ZINC) EBITDA to increase even in a declining commodity environment and believes the company is well positioned to gain market share. Shares were started with an Outperform rating and $27 target also added to the firm's Top Pick List.
After looking through some web postings internally, there was a very interesting article regarding Time Warner Inc. (NYSE: TWX) that can be indirectly inferred to Time Warner Cable Inc. (NYSE:TWC) and all units of the media conglomerate. The article "For Time Warner, a time to break up?" is available on the CNNMoney.com website, but is really a FORTUNE Magazine article. FORTUNE and CNN are both properties of Time Warner Inc.
The article is basically predicting that Jeff Bewkes will soon replace Dick Parsons as the Chairman & CEO of the parent company. It also points to a recent anvil weighing on the transition -- the sagging stock price of Time Warner. The truth is that the first real wave of the transition took hold in 2006 when the company separated Time Warner Cable and used financial leverage to buy back billions of dollars worth of stock. That buyback did continue, but 2006 was the year the buyback was felt the most as the stock rose nearly 50% from its lows.
While the article does not call for major changes, it notes how Time Warner produces more cash flow than its rivals, although News Corp. (NYSE: NWS) and Walt Disney Co. (NYSE: DIS) have outperformed as stocks. The article goes on to mention that Bewkes has noted that other media break-ups may not be yielding much upside, and that he agrees with Parsons for now that the combined entity is worth more than the pieces as unaffiliated entities.
Regardless of the many twists and turns in the article, this seemed odd coming out of FORTUNE. I laid out my own scenario where the company could float a portion of AOL as a tracking stock, a scenario that still seems quite likely. Rather than an entire spin-out of the cable assets, it seems to me that the media giant should at least maintain a large stake (if not an outright 50% plus 1 vote majority) in the cable company, and that any analyst calls to the contrary are misplaced. It is easy to call for break-ups in a bull market to unlock more value, but there are many more defensive and stabilizing strategies for a giant to weather harder times.
For the second time in three years, The Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences, which hands out those coveted little gold Oscar statues, has selected satirist Jon Stewart to fill the nerve-wracking position of host. Stewart hosted the grand affair in 2006 and earned mixed reviews ... some said his particular brand of humor failed to connect with the target audience, while others thought it not biting enough.
I thought Stewart was far-and-away the best part of that particular year's broadcast, with the possible exception of Three 6 Mafia's live performance of the Oscar-winning "It's Hard Out Here For a Pimp." (Click here for a look at Stewart's monologue from the 2006 Oscar broadcast.) Last year, comedienne and daytime talk-show host Ellen DeGeneres assumed the thankless task.
An Associated Press report indicates that producer of the Oscar telecast, Gil Cates, described Stewart as smart, quick and funny, not to mention a great guy. (He failed to add that it will be intriguing to have an expert in political satire hosting during an election year). The liberal long-time host of The Daily Show has taken home 9 Emmys for the "fake" news show and has previously served as master of ceremonies for the Grammy awards and Saturday Night Live, not to mention Elmopalooza.
Always ready with a witticism, the diminutive Stewart noted that he was honored to be asked for a repeat performance, because the third time, after all, is the charm. The Oscars ceremony, the 80th of its kind, will be held February 24th at the Kodak Theatre in Hollywood. They will be televised on Walt Disney's (NYSE: DIS) ABC Network, which has a contract with the Academy through 2014.
Although he is currently taking a cautious view on the overall market, Nate Pile, the editor of Nate's Notes, believes that eBay (NASDAQ: EBAY) and Walt Disney (NYSE: DIS) warrant accumulation for those with a long-term investment view.
As to the stock market and economy, he notes, "I'm concerned that the Fed really is stuck between a rock and a hard place. Yes, the market has responded favorably since the Fed's decision to cut the discount rate. But I believe we ought to be more concerned than excited by the Fed's action." Why? He notes, "Whenever the Fed does something 'clever or unexpected,' it is rarely because they think everything is going according to plan."
Meanwhile, the advisor says, "We have looked at our recommended stocks to focus on those that have shown strong relative strength despite market turmoil. We believe this is one of the best indicators for evaluating appreciation potential for once overall market conditions have turned more favorable."
The New York Times [registration required] reports that The Walt Disney Compnay (NYSE: DIS) is changing its policy towards the Chinese toy manufacturers that license its brands. Thanks to numerous recalls of Mattel Inc.(NYSE: MAT) toys made in China, Disney will no longer cash its licensing checks from toy makers while looking the other way on quality matters.
Now, worried about the potential damage to its brands, Disney will inspect the toys made in the likeness of its characters. Disney's tests will focus on 2,000 toymakers and 65,000 products each year. Disney's Product Integrity Office, which oversees safety programs throughout the company, including in its theme parks, is deciding how often the tests will occur.
In an effort to stem the flow of weaponry into Iraq, the Pentagon is planning to build its first base near the Iraq-Iran border, reported the Wall Street Journal (subscription required).
Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. is expected to make concessions with the investment banks putting together $24B in debt for its purchase of First Data Corporation (NYSE: FDC), something it had previously been unwilling to do, reported the Wall Street Journal.
The Bush administration wants to limit the role of Fannie Mae (NYSE: FNM) and Freddie Mac (NYSE: FRE) in the home mortgage crisis, but a number of Democrats, led by New York Senator Schumer, want to increase the authority of both firms by loosening growth constraints, and increase the size of mortgages they can buy in high cost areas, reported the Wall Street Journal.
While the Nasdaq Stock Market Inc (NASDAQ: NDAQ) said it extended the deadline earlier this week, the "self-imposed deadline" for an LSE bid passed without a single firm bid, reported the Financial Times (subscription required).
OTHER PAPERS:
The U.K. Times reported that Russian state-controlled energy company Gazprom (OTC: GZPFY) considered making a rival $5B offer for business news company Dow Jones and Company Inc (NYSE: DJ), according to a source.
The New York Times reported that after three separate recalls of Mattel Inc (NYSE: MAT) toys, Disney (NYSE: DIS) said it would begin testing toys featuring Disney characters, including ones already on store shelves.
Walt Disney Co. (NYSE: DIS) will begin to safety test toys made based on its characters. The move is novel because Disney had until now relied on manufacturers such as Mattel Inc. (NYSE: MAT) to make sure that the products its licenses were safe.
Disney, though, can no longer afford to count on others to defend its brands and reputation.
The move is deeply humiliating, especially to Mattel because it sends the signal that Disney cannot trust the large toy company. The New York Times was told by Andy Mooney, the chairman of Disney's consumer products division that "It sends the message that we are looking over their shoulders." Disney's tests will focus on about 2,000 toy makers and 65,000 products each year.
The Disney testing may turn out to be no more than window dressing to get its shareholders and customers to believe that it can police a huge industry which involves factories all over the world, especially in China, and tens of thousands of retail outlets.
But Disney feels it need to do something to protect its brands, even if it is almost entirely symbolic.
More profit warnings: 
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CBS Corp.
For the second time in three years, The Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences, which hands out those coveted little gold Oscar statues, has selected satirist Jon Stewart to 
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