Earnings growth this year to be twice what wall street analysts had expected. Just what spiced ham needs, Peanut Butter. Spam maker hormel foods is buying the skippy Peanut Butter business from unilever. Hormel is paying 700 million for skippy. The deal continues hormels expansion beyond its meat business, which includes spam, and the jennieo turkey store brands. Investors like the recipe, hormel shares rallied 3. 7 . Volume more than tripled with shares breaking out to an all time high. The deal will add to earnings this year. Hormel also gets Faster International growth. Skippy is the top selling Peanut Butter in china. Unilever shares fell modestly, down 0. 8 , but it remains less than a dollar off its most recent high. All of the five most actively traded Exchange Traded products were lower. The emerging markets fund led the losers, down 0. 7 . And thats tonights market focus. Susie it ended up being a Merry Christmas after all for the nations retailers. A number of chains reported
To grow the economy, especially as they struggle with less take home pay, and worries about their jobs. While there are signs of improvement in the economy, the Unemployment Rate rose in january to 7. 9 . So what is the current state of the economy . Erika miller talked to two experts with different views. Reporter it may seem strange to many investors that the stock market can be hovering at five year highs, when the economy is so weak. But whats fueling the rally is not the current situation, its hope. Weve taken out some of the downside tail risks. So, were feeling like although its not going to be a boomy year, at least it will be a year where we can reasonably expect that the economy will continue to, you know, make progress. Reporter he expects there will be a continued slow, but steady, fall in the Unemployment Rate. In addition, the Housing Market recovery is spreading. Weve seen a pickup in household formation. So, more people are moving out of homes, starting new families and
Minimum wage to 9 an hour, up from 7. 25. The plan was unveiled in the president s state of the Union Address last night. And today it rekindled a nationwide debate of whether the measure would help or hurt workers and businesses, and the economy. Darren gersh reports. Reporter supporters of a higher minimum wage increase point to studies showing little impact on employment after the pay at the bottom of the job market goes up. One reason is that employers may actually come out ahead when they are forced to pay workers more. Productivity and Job Satisfaction improve and turnover falls. So employers get to reap the benefits of lower hiring and firing costs, lower turnover costs. Hiring and firing is actually very expensive to companies, so if you pay people a little higher wage, they have more job stability. Thats actually good for everyone. Reporter of course, were talking about economics, which means there are other studies that show a minimum wage hike is most likely to hurt those wh
Below 600 in afterhours trading. A rare earnings miss was the reason. The lower than expected numbers came just days after all the hoopla over apples launch of the new ipad mini. Apple earned 8. 67 a share, eight cents below estimates. Revenues came in higher than expected, almost 36 billion. On top of that earnings disappointment, the company gave a less rosy forecast for the future. Suzanne pratt takes a closer look. Reporter wall street called this a throwaway quarter for apple. After all, the iphone 5 was only available for one week during the period, and the newly launched ipad mini has yet to hit stores. Still, apple sold nearly 27 million iphones during june throughseptember quarter, well more than expected. Experts say apples biggest problem was that it couldnt make enough iphones. Iphone 5 is going to continue to be an absolutely huge product. One thing iphone 5 has that the tablets dont is subsidies. Because iphone is sold be carriers, you can get that upfront price down to 1
To compromise the Capital Position of the bank in any way. Reporter also today, ten major banks, including bank of america settled claims they abused the foreclosure system, seizing defaulted homes without proper paperwork. The banks agreed to fix those abuses two years ago, with a casebycase review of foreclosure practices. But that just wasnt moving fast enough, and proved too costly. Bring in todays deal the banks will pay a total of 8. 5 billion. Three billion of that will go to homeowners hurt by the banks; the rest, five billion to assistance programs like loan refinancing, for homeowners who are struggling. It helps current homeowners and its going to help the marketplace at the margin. You know, the con, if there is one, is the fact that well never, it will make it less likely now that well ever get a full accounting of the foreclosure irregularities that existed. And how widespread were they, what were the types of irregularities and what were the full dollar amounts. Reporter