Online Trading News

Bebe Stores Inc. (Nasdaq: BEBE)reported fourth quarter profits today taht caused a buying spree.  The earnings came in at $22.1 million, or $.24 per share.  This is an increase of 13% over last years fourth quarter of $19.5 million or $.21 per share.  On top of the earnings news investors were excited to find out the Bebe will be paying a dividend of $.05 on September 29th. Shares of Bebe closed Thursday at $18.45 and have so far today gained over 22% to prices over $22 per share.

Shares of Escala Group (Nasdaq:ESCL) jumped to $6.40, up 44.14%.  The company, which sells collectibles, announced June’s sales hit a record high and was led by Escala’s Nutmeg Sales which had $1.5 million in revenue, but also saw increases in Greg Manning Auctions as well as John Bull Stamp Auctions making June’s total $6.4 million.  Escala has a long established collectible stamp business that sells stamps and other collectibles all around the world.

Late yesterday, news broke that Openwave(Nasdaq:OPWV) recieved a subpoena for information about its options valuation.  Supposedly employee stock options were being valued at dates when the share prices were at lows instead of the actual date of issuance. 

Today the company lowered it earnings estimates.  Competition from the free phone browser Opera has put heat on the openwave software.  Shares of the Openwave fell 33% to $7.67 in trading today.  Shares have fallen from prices in the low $20s since April.

2007 may be brighter for Openwave.  More users are using their cellphones to browse the internet and the company has continued to attract new clients and increase revenues.

Both companies specialize in mail advertising.  Advo(NYSE:AD) Primarily sends targetted direct mailings, while Valassis(NYSE:VCI) mainly sends out newspaper inserts.

Immediatly following the news shares of ADVO leaped.  So far today the company has grown 47%, up to $35.77 per share.  The biggest benefit of the buyout will be cost savings.  The companies are very similar and it is estimated that the combined company could save as much as $40 million per year.

 The acquistion requires Valassis to pay $1.175 billion in cash as well as acquire $125 million in debt, and closes in three to four months.  Shares of Valassis dropped more than 15% to $19.62 today, signally that investors believe the deal favors ADVO.

Shares of Blue Dolphin (Nasdaq:BDCO), a company searching for oil in the carribean gained 28%.  The company explores possible oil fields and operates offshore oil rigs as well as two oil piplines and a third pipeline on the way. Recently there have been sturggles, Blue Dolphin has spent a great deal of effort looking for oil and has not found significant reserves.  A few days ago Blue Dolphin entered into an agreement where its Galveston 350 will be used by a client for over 11 months.  On top of this high oil prices have made Blue Dolphin hot.  The company had huge momentum today driving prices near $5.80/share.

Yahoo’s (Nasdaq:YHOO) main page has been down selectively from 8:30pm to 9:40pm today. Other users reported Yahoo.com and Yahoo Publisher Network YPN have been slow throughout the day as well. While this may be nothing, it could possibly be a sign that Yahoo is making changes to its sites. For a company with revenues this large this is significant news. Last year Yahoo had $5.2 billion in revenue if that revenue was truely based on Yahoo’s network of sites being up 10 minutes of being down amounts to about $10,000 in lost revenue. In the wake of news that Google has been making huge capital investments, it may be possibly that Yahoo has been doing the same and today was a necessary step in the process to make things run better in the future.

However the fact that it happened during peek surfing hours suggests it is just as likely that Yahoo has not been keeping up with demand for bandwidth. If this is true the site may see much slower loading time in the future. YPN has thousands of webmasters displaying Yahoo ads on their sights. When these ads load slowly the webmasters are likely to switch to competitive ads, the most popular competitor being Google’s Adsense program.

Iran announced today that the country will begin rationing oil.  The stated reason for this was because of budgeting constraints.  However Iran’s oil capacity has been hard to estimate in the past and it is possible that the country is simply trying to manipulate oil prices or is actually depleting its reserves.

Both Kerr-McGee (NYSE:KMG) and Western Gas Resources (NYSE:WGR) had stock rallys upon recieving the news.  Shares of Kerr-McGee jumped 36.24% to $68.54 and Western Gas’s stock gained 46.00% to $59.74.  Both companies are heavily into oil production.  Western Gas is invloved in the natural and liquid oil process from exploration, drilling, treatment to transportation.  Kerr-McGee produces oil and natural gas as well and also produces industrial chemicals which require the production of heavy minerals as well as forest products.

Oracle (Nasdaq:ORCL), a company with a stock price that has been stagnant for years has some big news. The company’s recent strategy to acquire its competitors has proven dominant. For the quarter ending may 31st, Oracle’s profits grew 27% from last year to $1.3 billion. The company reported increased revenues across the board. The largest growth came from business applications which grew at an almost insane $83% to $641 million from last year’s $350 million.

The news came after Oracle closed trading for the day. Previously Oracle had estimated earnings would be around this figure, which is most likely why traders downgraded Oracle’s stock price a very un-oracle-like -1.38% to $14.33. Oracle’s CEO Larry Ellison expressed that he believed continued acquisitions had potential to keep the company growing 20% per year.

European telecom giants Nokia(NYSE:NOK) and Siemens(NYSE:SI) have planned a merger to create a new company evenly owned by the companies. The board of the new company will be controlled by Nokia, most likely by the majority of Nokia’s board and some of Siemens’ board. The reason for the merger has been credited to research and developement. The two companies recognized that they are repeated a huge amount of the same R&D. The research savings from this merger is estimated to be above $1.5 billion per year. The merger will also help the companies compete with the recent merger between Alcatel(NYSE:ALA) and Lucent(NYSE:LU). Nokia also has large cash reserves that may lead to future acquisitions, or other changes in control of companies.

In anticipation of the event Circuit City’s share price has increased from about $27.5 a share on Monday to $29.5 on Friday.  Earnings estimates range from $.04 to -$.01 per share, with the average at $.01.  Circuit CIty has has outperformed estimates the last three quarters.  This season, Circuit City’s weakest, is likely to be a big change from last years first quarter which resulted in a -$.07 per share loss.