LGF, GOOG, BIDU, LYG, BBY, BHI, BJS, PALM Popular Stocks
U.S. stocks were lower Friday at 2:47PM EDT, as the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 47 points to 10732, the Standard & Poor’s 500 dropped 6 points to 1160 and the Nasdaq Composite Index down 18 points to 2373.
Carl Icahn swooped in with a $574 million hostile bid for Lions Gate Entertainment Corp. (NYSE:LGF, $6.05, +$0.08, 1.34%) Friday. Icahn is offering $6 a share, amending a previous offer to buy 13.2 million shares at the same price.
According to Bloomberg, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said, Google (NASDAQ:GOOG, $559.95, -$6.45, -1.14%) will pull its search operations in China is a judgment only the company can make based on its best interests. Baidu (NASDAQ:BIDU, $570.30, +$5.64, 1.00%) controls more than 50 percent of the Chinese search market to Google’s roughly 30 percent.
Lloyds Banking Group PLC (NYSE:LYG, $3.71, +$0.30, 8.82%) issued a buoyant business update. Lloyds “will be profitable on a combined businesses basis in 2010,” helped by “strong” earnings in the first 10 weeks of the year, the company said today in a statement.
Best Buy (NYSE:BBY, $41.09, +$0.64, 1.58%) was upgraded to buy from neutral at Goldman Sachs, as sales look to improve this year. The firm raised its 2010 EPS estimates to $3.33 per share and upped its price target to $47.
Baker Hughes Inc. (NYSE:BHI, $47.62, -$1.75, -3.54%) and BJ Services Co. (NYSE:BJS, $21.65, -$0.71, -3.18%) adjourned their meetings until the end of the month, as both sides continue to see antitrust approval for the sale of BJ Services to Baker Hughes.
Shares of Plam Inc. (NASDAQ:PALM, $4.12, -$1.53, -27.07%) fell after the handheld device maker’s latest quarterly report raised questions about the its turnaround effort. The company sees fourth quarter revenue falling short of $150 million, while analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters had anticipated revenue of $306 million.