May 2, 2008 - Universal Detection Technology (OTCBB: UDTT), a developer of early-warning monitoring technologies to protect people from bioterrorism and a provider of counter terrorism training and solutions, announced today that in its efforts to supply more comprehensive CBRN solutions, the Company is initiated the sales and marketing on credit card sized radiation dosimeters. The new product is UDTT's RADView(TM) PD Dosimeter badge, a lightweight credit card size radiation dosimeter incorporating a self-developing radiochromic film to provide visual measurement of absorbed radiation dose. The film develops a distinctive and characteristic color upon exposure to ionizing radiation, becoming progressively darker in proportion to absorbed dose. RADView PD dosimeters are unaffected by brief exposures to sunlight or normal room light. The films are water-resistant, tissue equivalent, energy independent and dose-rate independent. The badges do not require calibration, maintenance, or any electronics or batteries. Under most conditions, the dosimeter can be worn for one year before replacement. A quick visual observation of a RADView PD dosimeter allows anyone to assess the absorbed dose. "This distribution deal expands the range of products we offer to the First Responder Community and is a positive step in our efforts to become providers of complete CBRN detection technologies. The RADView dosimeter is a reliable and tested product that can be used by police, firefighters, emergency medical staff, assessment personnel, remediation crews or any practice with potential duties at an emergency site," said Jacques Tizabi, CEO of Universal Detection Technology.
May 2, 2008 -- Viacom Inc. (NYSE: VIA | news | PowerRating | PR Charts ) today reported financial results for the first quarter ended March 31, 2008. During the first quarter of 2008, revenues increased 15% to $3.12 billion with double-digit growth in both the Media Networks and Filmed Entertainment segments. Operating income also grew double digits versus a year ago, up 29% to $567 million. Excluding the impact of Media Networks restructuring charges in the first quarter 2007, adjusted operating income rose 14% in the first quarter of 2008. Net earnings rose 33% to $270 million with diluted earnings per share (EPS) of $0.42. On an adjusted basis, diluted EPS grew 29% to $0.44 in the first quarter of 2008. The adjusted results exclude a $0.02 per share reduction related to a non-cash impairment of a minority investment in the first quarter of 2008 and the Media Networks restructuring charges taken in the first quarter of 2007. Adjustments are detailed in the Supplemental Disclosures tables at the end of this release. Sumner M. Redstone, Executive Chairman of Viacom, said, "Viacom entered 2008 at an aggressive pace, delivering strong results in the first quarter. We continue to unlock new value in our businesses as we create innovative ways for our audience to engage with our unparalleled entertainment brands. I am more confident than ever that we have the right strategies and the best management to deliver on our commitment to grow shareholder value over time." Philippe Dauman, President and Chief Executive Officer of Viacom, said, "Content creation is our central mission and our ongoing investments in programming are paying off as we see our television ratings continue to improve. Successful new programming across our networks during the first quarter included MTV's Randy Jackson Presents: America's Best Dance Crew, TV Land's High School Reunion and BET's Iron Ring among others, which joined new seasons of several proven audience favorites. Audiences are also responding to our digital content, which is moving beyond our own branded sites through smart distribution deals with leading online and mobile partners. Already this year, we took a significant step to advance our casual gaming strategy as Nickelodeon prepares to add approximately 1,600 new online games to its growing portfolio. Additionally, our Rock Band video game is continuing its successful tour and is emerging as a valuable long-term franchise. We expect to further that success with the upcoming release of Rock Band on the Wii home video game system and our launch in Europe.
May 2, 2008 - American Tower Corporation (NYSE: AMT | news | PowerRating | PR Charts ) today reported financial results for the first quarter ended March 31, 2008. Jim Taiclet, American Tower's Chief Executive Officer stated, "We experienced another strong quarter as demand remained robust for our tower space across all three of our current geographic markets: the United States, Mexico and Brazil. We believe that these demand levels are supported by longer-term trends, including our customers' efforts to continually improve voice network quality and the increasing success and pervasiveness of wireless data. We anticipate these trends to create an environment that is positive for the tower industry, and in particular, we believe that the quality of our asset base, our scale, and our proven ability to operate these assets will allow us to capture a significant share of the potential opportunity. "Our strategic and financial initiatives have enabled us to opportunistically expand our footprint with attractive acquisitions, as well as raise incremental liquidity on favorable terms. We added 265 new communications sites in our existing markets in the first quarter, primarily through acquisitions, with strong initial returns and prospects for additional growth. In addition, we entered into a build-to-suit program in India for approximately 200 towers. Our ability to access the capital markets at attractive rates was demonstrated in the first quarter as we raised an incremental $325 million term loan, of which a significant portion is fixed at an interest rate below 4%. We remain committed to continuing to explore opportunities to add quality assets to our portfolio in our existing markets as well as in new geographies and we remain focused and disciplined in achieving our return criteria while maintaining an appropriate financial profile."
May 2, 2008 - Nortel(1) Networks Corporation (NYSE: NT | news | PowerRating | PR Charts ) announced its results for first quarter 2008, which demonstrated continued progress against the Company's turnaround strategy. Strong operational progress in margins combined with steady revenue growth kept Nortel on track to meet full year goals. Results were prepared in accordance with United States enerally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) in U.S. dollars. "Nortel had a strong first quarter, driven by the completion of a contract in our LG-Nortel joint venture and continued improvements in gross and operating margins. Nortel's operating margin, a critical measure of our plan's traction, expanded for the seventh consecutive quarter year over year, recording a 512 bps improvement to 4.7 percent," said Mike Zafirovski, Nortel president and chief executive officer. "We expect to achieve our full year guidance and we continue to make sold progress against the strategy to turn around the company. Our relentless focus on execution and our determination to deliver value to customers is strengthening the foundation upon which to build our performance over the balance of 2008 and beyond."
May 2, 2008 - Apartment Investment and Management Company (Aimco) (NYSE: AIV | news | PowerRating | PR Charts ) today announced results for the first quarter 2008. In accordance with Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP), all previously reported share and per share data has been adjusted to take into account the special dividend declared on December 21, 2007, and paid on January 30, 2008, which resulted in the issuance of approximately 4.6 million additional shares of Aimco's Class A Common Stock. Net loss attributable to common stockholders for the quarter was $38.8 million, compared with net income of $8.9 million for the first quarter 2007. Lower results were due to a number of items, including $15.4 million of lower gains on dispositions of real estate and other and a $42.2 million nonrecurring gain on extinguishment of debt in the first quarter 2007. These items were partially offset by higher property net operating income of $3.8 million, higher investment management income, net of tax, of $2.2 million and lower dividends on preferred stock due to the redemption of the Class W Cumulative Convertible Preferred Stock on September 30, 2007. Earnings per share (EPS) attributable to common stockholders was a loss of $0.43 on a diluted basis, compared with income of $0.09 per share in the first quarter 2007.
May 2, 2008 - Solei Systems, Inc. (PINKSHEETS: SOLI | news | PowerRating | PR Charts ) announced today that their stock is now up and trading on the Pink Sheets. The stock is now quoted under ticker symbol "SOLI". Filings are complete at PinkSheets.com. From this point Solei will continue on toward becoming a fully reporting Company and a senior exchange listing. "It has been a process, but we are now ready to go on the Pink Sheets. We expect to become fully reporting and move onto a senior exchange within the next few months," said Paul Spivak, CEO of Solei Systems, Inc. "Our Company is already profitable and we expect to be able to start announcing a number of contracts in the near future. Our products are unique; some are the only one of their kind in the world. Response so far has been excellent and we expect rapid growth of our Company over the next few months and into the next few years as well," Mr. Spivak concluded.
Weekly Recap - Week ending 02-May-08 There were five trading sessions this week, but for the most part it ended up being a three-day work week. That's because things didn't get really interesting for market participants until Wednesday. Sure, there was the news Monday that Mars is going to buy Wrigley (WWY) for approximately $23 billion and the news Tuesday that Mastercard (MA) had a blowout quarterly earnings report, but that, and other items like the FDA shooting down a new cholesterol drug from Merck (MRK), led to a James Bond-like trade in that the indices were shaken, but not stirred. The stirring action was reserved for the latter part of the week, which brought the Q1 GDP report, the FOMC meeting and the April employment data. In addition, it also brought some noteworthy movement in the dollar and some volatile activity in the commodity arena. If there was a theme to be identified beneath the action, it was one of reassurance. Specifically, there was reassurance that the economy isn't nearly as bad off as has been advertised. That said it's important not to confuse the message here. The economy isn't very good right now, but clearly, the recession so many alarmists have been talking about remains quiescent. To begin, first quarter GDP was up 0.6%, driven by a 1% increase in personal consumption expenditures. Contrary to popular belief, the consumer continues to spend in the face of rising gas prices, falling home prices and declines in payrolls. Importantly, the trends in personal spending, business investment and net exports suggest real GDP growth for the second quarter should be close to flat, but that is without the fiscal stimulus. The latter will provide a meaningful boost to consumer spending that should lead to real GDP growth in the range of 1% to 2%. In brief, things are shaping up in such a way that there won't be a decline in real GDP for any quarter this cycle. The Fed appears to be feeling better about the economy's prospects, too. After cutting the fed funds rate Wednesday another 25 basis points to 2.00%, it issued a directive that was different in tone from prior directives. In particular, the directive omitted a prior reference to the idea that "downside risks to growth remain." The Fed's statement acknowledged some indicators of inflation expectations have picked up, yet it stuck with its view that it expects inflation to moderate in coming quarters.
Overall, the Fed's directive implied it would now be in a wait-and-see mode and that the rate-setting committee would act in appropriate fashion to incoming data. However, in removing the downside risk phrase, the Fed left the impression that it would like to believe it is at the end of its rate-cutting cycle. The stock market was in rally-mode ahead of the Fed decision and got an added boost shortly after the headlines hit the wires. In striking fashion, though, it sold off sharply late in the day and ended Wednesday in negative territory. The knee-jerk explanation was that there was disappointment in the directive and the idea that the Fed didn't sound more hawkish on inflation. That explanation didn't fly with us seeing that the inflation-sensitive back end of the Treasury curve rallied after the decision. Other probable causes for the sudden turn of events included the inability of the S&P 500 to hold above a key technical resistance point at 1400 and month-end selling activity. Whatever the case may have been, Thursday's trading action quickly confirmed that we were right to be skeptical of the mainstream excuse for the selling. On Thursday the S&P 500 jumped 1.7% while the Nasdaq Composite soared 2.8%. Huge gains in the financial and technology sectors powered the advance, as did a noticeable drop in commodity prices that were impacted by a strengthening dollar. For the week the dollar index advanced 1.0% while the CRB Commodity Index, which tracks 19 different commodities, slipped 2.3%. The CRB Index had been down as much as 5.0% for the week at its low on Thursday. Oil prices, which nearly hit $120 per barrel last Friday, dipped to $110.30 on Friday before rallying back sharply to close the week at $116.32. Gold prices, meanwhile, fell 3.6% to $862.10 per ounce. The dollar's strength was rooted in the assumption that the Fed is likely done with cutting interest rates. The Fed showed Friday, though, that it isn't done with its efforts to improve liquidity to ease the pressures in some term funding markets. It raised the amounts available for depository institutions at its biweekly Term Auction Facility from $50 billion to $75 billion and said it will now accept AAA/Aaa rated asset-backed securities at its Term Securities Lending Facility Auctions.
Market participants seemed pleased with the Fed's announcement, but their focus Friday was primarily on the April employment report, which was better than expected on most fronts. Nonfarm payrolls declined 20K (consensus -75K), the unemployment rate fell to 5.0% from 5.1% (consensus 5.2%), hourly earnings rose just 0.1% (consensus 0.3%) and the average workweek dipped a tenth of a point to an expected 33.7 hours. The nonfarm payroll decline is statistically insignificant on a base of 137.8 million workers, but it was quite significant in that it indicated there hasn't been a deterioration in payroll trends, which is what is typically seen in recessions. There has been a 260K decline in nonfarm payrolls the last four months or an average of 65K. In the 2001 recession nonfarm payrolls declined 281K in the month of April alone. Like the message we conveyed earlier, this employment report is not indicative of a strong economy. Still, in the context of eradicating the worst economic fears, it was very supportive. The stock market made a nice move in the wake of the jobs report, but succumbed to some week-end selling interest that pared its gains considerably. Nonetheless, the market ended Friday's session higher to close out what technicians will see as a breakout week with the S&P 500 ending above 1400 and at its highest level since January.
--Patrick J. O'Hare, Briefing.com
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