Business and Finance

Charter Communications cut its losses in the first quarter, while managing to reverse a long decline in customers subscribing to cable TV.

The company, by far the largest Internet and TV provider in St. Louis, reported a loss of $94 million, or 95 cents per share. A year earlier, the company lost $110 million or 97 cents per share.

Charter is gradually becoming less of a cable TV company and more of an Internet service and phone provider. Still, cable TV provides the biggest piece of its revenue, and the slow drop off of cable video customers has long vexed the company.

That trend changed in the March quarter as Charter added 20,000 video customers, bringing the total to 4.16 million, compared to a loss of 24,000 in the same period a year earlier. That was the first quarterly video growth in five years, said CEO Tom Rutledge in an investor conference Tuesday.

Rutledge said the company has been improving the quality of its TV picture signal and the number of channels. It will be offering 100 high definition channels by mid-year, he said. It’s also been raising prices; about 40 percent of its video customers saw a 3 percent price increase recently.

Loss of video customers is common story in the cable TV business, which is facing more competition as telecom companies role out video services, such as AT&T’s U-verse, in a broader geographic area. Charter’s strongest competition is from satellite TV companies, Rutledge said. Internet streaming services, such as Netflix, aren’t a big factor in cable TV subscriber losses, he said.

“Our video competitors often offer more channels, including more HD channels, and typically only offer digital services which have a better picture quality compared to our analog product,” the company said in a filing Tuesday with the SEC. Charter offers both analog and digital services. People using older TVs without a digital converter box receive an analog signal.

Despite the rise in customers, revenues from video dropped 2 percent, in part because fewer people are paying for premium channels or using its pay video-on-demand service.

Overall, Charter’s revenue grew 3 percent as demand for Internet and phone service increased. Charter added 141,000 residential Internet customers compared a 90,000 gain a year earlier. It added 31,000 phone customers, up from 24,000 last year.

While making money on its basic operations, Charter remains burdened by $12.8 billion in debt and faces continuing costs to upgrade its systems.

Source

Apply today for no-hassle payday loans and cash advance no faxing. Get the money you need faster than the speed of sound. No credit checks. Fast Approval.

Don’t panic yet. The government reported Friday that the economy got off to a tepid start this year, but that doesn’t foreshadow a repeat of the near-standstill that happened in 2011.

“The economy is firmly on a growth trajectory,” said Sung Won Sohn, an economics professor at California State University’s Smith School of Business. “The first-quarter slowdown will be temporary.”

Still, the January-March report was discouraging.

Economists had expected gross domestic product _ the broadest gauge of economic output _ to expand at a 2.5 percent annual rate for the first three months of the year. Instead, the Commerce Department said it was 2.2 percent, mainly because of government budget-cutting and a slowdown in business investment.

And some of the January-March growth, meager as it was, probably came at the expense of the current quarter. An unseasonably warm winter pulled car buyers into showrooms earlier than usual.

The same was true for housing construction. That’s one reason it jumped at a 19 percent pace from January through March.

Economists doubt consumers can keep spending as freely as they did in the first three months of this year: an annual pace that was 2.9 percent faster than in the previous quarter and the fastest in more than a year. They probably can’t afford to. Americans’ after-tax income rose just 0.6 percent in the first three months compared with a year earlier. That was the puniest pay increase in two years.

People spent more in part because they socked away less. The savings rate fell to 3.9 percent of after-tax income. That was down from 4.5 percent. Economists worry that people won’t keep spending more unless their income grows.

Stock prices rose Friday despite the report of weaker growth. David Rosenberg, chief economist at Gluskin Sheff, said investors might have bid up stocks because they think the Federal Reserve is more likely to pursue another round of bond buying to stimulate the economy.

Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke “has created the impression that if the economy stumbles, he’ll be there to hold your hand,” Rosenberg said.

The lackluster first-quarter growth follows government reports that hiring slowed sharply in March and the number of people seeking unemployment benefits reached a three-month high.

With 12.7 million people unemployed, today’s economy needs much faster growth to boost hiring. Growth would have to be roughly 4 percent for a full year to lower the unemployment rate, now 8.2 percent, by 1 percentage point.

In 2011, a series of setbacks struck the economy. Gas prices rose sharply. An earthquake in Japan shuttered factories there and cut off supplies to U.S. manufacturers. A standoff in Washington brought the federal government to the brink of default, rattling investors and consumer confidence. And Europe’s debt crisis threatened to diminish U.S. exports and further spook investors.

The economy slowed to an annual rate of just 0.4 percent in the first quarter of 2011. Unemployment, which had been falling, rose again last summer.

But most economists think the U.S. economy is more resilient this year.

The job market, household finances and businesses are all in better shape than they were a year ago. Supplies are flowing freely. Political bickering has eased. And the fears about Europe have subsided at least temporarily.

“People are less concerned that the eurozone crisis could engulf the whole world,” says Nigel Gault, an economist with IHS Global Insight.

A 55-cent run-up in gasoline prices (to an average $3.83 a gallon) isn’t hurting as much this year. In part, that’s because drivers are getting used to paying more. And families’ finances are sturdier after another year of paying down debts.

In addition, some factors that held back growth in the first quarter aren’t expected to last. Businesses splurged on software and equipment at the end of 2011 because of an expiring tax break. That stole economic activity, in effect, from the first quarter. Companies will probably resume spending again later this year.

And economists say government spending will probably rebound _ or at least stop falling _ because state and local governments are collecting more tax revenue as their economies slowly recover.

“Their budget holes are getting a lot smaller,” says Jay Bryson, global economist for Wells Fargo.

Most of all, the job market is stronger than it was last year. Unemployment has fallen from 9.1 percent in August to 8.2 percent in March. The economy has added nearly 1.9 million jobs over the past year. More hiring is creating more pay and more spending _ a cycle in which hiring and consumer spending reinforce each other and grow.

Economists note that Friday’s report isn’t the final word on first-quarter growth. It is just an initial estimate. The government will revise the figures in May and again in June.

Then in July, the growth figures will be tweaked yet again. That’s when the government will revise its estimates of growth from 2009 through the first quarter of this year.

The picture could look brighter after the revisions. Two months ago, the government revised income and savings for the second half of last year. It showed Americans had earned and saved more than previously thought. That meant they had more money to spend.

Some economists expect a similar revision this year because job gains suggest that incomes might be higher.

This was the 11th quarter since the Great Recession officially ended in June 2009. The fastest rate of economic growth has been 3.9 percent in the first quarter of 2010. Normally, a much bigger bounce would follow a deep recession like the one the United States sank into in December 2007.

When the economy emerged from the recession of 1981-1982, for instance, growth hit an 8 percent annual pace for four straight quarters in 1983 and 1984.

The gross domestic product measures the output of all goods and services produced in the United States, from cars to electricity to manicures. GDP growth drives job creation, pay, corporate profits and stock prices.

As disappointing as the first-quarter numbers were, the U.S. economy still looks a lot stronger than most of the rest of the developed world. It’s expected to grow perhaps 2.5 percent for the full year.

By contrast, Britain’s economy will only grow 0.8 percent and Japan’s about 2 percent, according to forecasts from the International Monetary Fund. Things are even worse in Europe. The 17 countries that use the euro as their currency are expected to see growth shrink 0.3 percent.

“Growth is an increasingly rare commodity in the global economy,” says Jason Conibear of Cambridge Mercantile, which specializes in trading currencies. “But the US has got it.”

Source

Please remember that a payday loan is a rather expensive line of credit. Much like taking something to the pawn shop.

A potential $4.3 billion deal between the Boeing’s defense unit and the Brazilian government that has bounced on and off the table for years is back in play.

And a Boeing Co. official said this week that the company expects to learn by June if it finished atop the process that has pitted aerospace makers from three nations in a bid to supply state-of-the-art fighter jets to the Brazilian Air Force.

Tom DeWald, the regional director for Latin American business development is optimistic that Boeing will prevail.

“There’s no question the Air Force down there loves our product,” he said.

Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon is expected to remind Brazilian officials of that fact when he visits the country on a trade mission later this month.

Should Boeing capture the bid, Brazil would eventually take possession of 36 F/A-18 Super Hornets along with a wealth of spare parts and other materials.

The Super Hornets would be designated “FX-2” fighter jets by the Brazilian Air Force.

The French aircraft manufacturer Dassault Aviation and Sweden’s Saab Defence and Security are the other two bidders.

DeWald said Brazil initially broached the prospect of replacing an already aging fleet of Dassault Mirage fighters in the mid-1990s.

An initial request for bids wasn’t floated until shortly after the turn of the 21st century.

After years of political wrangling, the arms sale competition re-surfaced in 2009 with Boeing, Dassault and Saab as the finalists.

For a country that last engaged in meaningful conflict on its own soil over a century ago, the move to bolster its Air Force has more to do with acquiring technology than adding firepower.

“The end game is for Brazil to develop their own abilities to produce, train, and maintain defensive aircraft systems from what they learn by purchasing these foreign aircraft. In essence, they want to create a South American defense industry base,” Michael Blades, senior aerospace industrial analyst with Frost & Sullivan in San Antonio, wrote in an email response to questions about the Boeing deal.

In a 2010 white paper prepared for the Brookings Institution, foreign policy analyst Kevin Casas-Zamora criticized the uptick in the purchases of military hardware by Brazil and other South American nations.

“The absolute increase in military expenditure, and of acquisitions in particular, hinders the region’s economic and political development. Even the security benefits of such expenditures are debatable at best,” Casas-Zamora wrote.

A deal would, however, bode well for the thousands of local employees of the Boeing Defense, Space and Security unit who build that fighter jet, not to mention countless suppliers here and throughout the U.S.

The company’s 2010 contract to supply 124 fighters to the U.S. Navy is expected to wind down around mid-decade. Likewise, the clock is ticking on a 2011 pact to provide 84 military aircraft to Saudi Arabia. Production on the Saudi contract could run through 2020 if not beyond.

But looming Pentagon budget cuts and the Pentagon’s shift toward unmanned aircraft darken the long-term prospects for continued fighter production in Hazelwood.

For those reasons alone, Blades says much rests on Boeing’s ability to wrest the contract with Brazil.

“If they don’t take advantage of foreign military sales avenues that are open to them they are facing limited growth,” he said. “And if they let other companies like Dassault or Saab (in the case of the Super Hornet) make sales to countries like Brazil not only do they lose growth prospects they strengthen those foreign competitors.”

Source

UPDATED at 9:40 a.m. with St. Louis activity.

Apple’s latest iPad drew die-hard fans to stores in the U.S. and nine other countries Friday, many of whom lined up for hours to be among the first to buy one.

The third version of the iPad went on sale at 8 a.m. local time, with 25 other countries getting it a week later. The new model, at prices starting at $499 in the U.S., comes with a faster processor, a much sharper screen and an improved camera, though the changes aren’t as big as the upgrade to the iPad 2.

“I don’t think it’s worth the price but I guess I’m a victim of society,” Athena May said in Paris.

About 450 people lined up outside Apple’s Ginza store in downtown Tokyo. Some had spent the night sleeping outside the store. In Madison, Wis., people brought reclining lawn chairs for naps, while a few played games on older iPads.

Customers also gathered outside the two St. Louis-area Apple stores before they opened Friday. At the Galleria store, about 100 people were waiting when the store opened at 8 a.m., a sales specialist said.

“It was a party atmosphere,” said the specialist, who requested her name not be revealed because company policy does not allowed her to be quoted in the media.

The Galleria store opened two hours early to accommodate the anticipated rush of customers to buy the new iPad. An early opening also was scheduled for Saturday.

Apple customers also showed up early at the store at West County Center, a store representative said.

In London, Dipak Varsani, 21, got in line at 1 a.m. Thursday and said he was drawn by the new device’s better screen.

“You’ve got clearer movies and clearer games,” he said. “I use it as a multimedia device.”

In Hong Kong, a steady stream of buyers picked up their new devices at preset times at the city’s sole Apple store after entering an online lottery.

The system, which required buyers to have local ID cards, also helped thwart visitors from mainland China - Apple’s fastest growing market - who have a reputation for scooping up Apple gadgets to get them earlier and avoid sales tax at home. A release date in China has not yet been announced.

Kelvin Tsui, a 26-year-old hospital worker in Hong Kong, was allowed to buy two and planned to sell the second to make money.

Two years after the debut of the first iPad, the device’s launch has become the second-biggest “gadget event” of the year, after the annual iPhone release. Customers could have ordered iPads ahead of time to arrive at home Friday, but many came out in person for the atmosphere.

“People always stop to talk to us,” Harry Barrington-Mountford, 22, said in London. “I am exhausted though, I have only had about 45 minutes of sleep.”

Christos Pavlides got to a downtown Philadelphia store at 10 p.m. Thursday and was the first in line. He already owns the two previous iPad models and several iPhones and figures the new iPad was next.

Despite competition from cheaper tablet computers such as Amazon.com Inc.’s Kindle Fire, the iPad remains the most popular tablet computer. Apple Inc. has sold more than 55 million iPads since its debut in 2010.

For some customers, standing in line was the only chance to get a new iPad on Friday. Apple quickly ran out of supplies it set aside for advance orders. The company was telling customers Thursday to expect a two- to three-week wait for orders placed through its online stores. Some buyers feared even longer waits.

Tim Bryant of the Post-Dispatch contributed to this report.

Source

The price of oil is lower Wednesday, after the government reported that supplies rose last week, as analysts expected.

Gasoline pump prices continued to climb, rising to a national average of $3.811 per gallon.

Benchmark crude fell by 61 cents to $106.10 per barrel in New York. Brent crude, used to price oil imported by U.S. refineries, fell 6 cents to $126.16 per barrel in London.

The Energy Department said that supplies increased by 1.8 million barrels last week payday advance lenders. Gasoline supplies fell by 1.4 million barrels as refineries sold off remaining stockpiles of winter gasoline blends. Supply levels were near analysts’ estimates.

The government also says energy demand remains weak. Demand dropped 5.4 percent for oil and 7.2 percent for gasoline compared with the same week last year.

Source

Higher oil prices are affecting U.S. growth but are currently not a reason to think the economy will stall, a top Federal Reserve official said on Thursday.

“It pushes people not to spend. This is one of the factors affecting consumer confidence and consumer spending,” John Williams, president of the San Francisco Federal Reserve Bank, said in a question-and-answer session after a speech in Honolulu.

“Given where oil prices have gone, it’s part of the story for (expectations of) modest growth.”

However, a severe supply shock in the Middle East would have a more negative impact if it sent prices sharply higher, he said.

Williams, a voting member this year on the Fed’s policy-setting panel, has supported recent moves by the U.S. central bank to bolster what he has termed as a “lackluster” economic recovery.

For more news on the Fed, see

For more news on the U.S. economy

Read more

The European Central Bank is considering using its bond holdings to bolster Greece

Standard & Poor

World stock markets were mostly higher Friday following signs of progress in debt-plagued Europe _ a successful bond sale in Italy and the naming of a new leader in Greece.

Benchmark oil rose to $98 per barrel while the dollar slipped against the euro and the yen.

European shares posted gains in early trading. Britain’s FTSE 100 rose 0.6 percent at 5,472.80. Germany’s DAX rose 0.9 percent at 5,919.99 while France’s CAC-40 added 0.8 percent to 3,087.77.

Wall Street was also poised for gains, with Dow Jones industrial futures 0.1 percent higher at 11,869 and S&P 500 futures rising 0.2 percent to 1,239.30.

The gains in Europe were in line with trading earlier in the day in Asia.

Japan’s Nikkei 225 index closed up 0.2 percent to 8,514.47, a day after the index fell to a five-week closing low of 8,500.80.

Hong Kong’s Hang Seng gained 0.9 percent to 19,137.17 and South Korea’s Kospi added 2.8 percent to 1,863.45. Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 rose 1.2 percent to 4,296.50. Mainland China’s Shanghai Composite Index rose marginally to 2,481.08.

Investors were calmed by news that Greece _ which is struggling to pull back from the brink of bankruptcy _ had named Lucas Papademos, a respected economist, as its new prime minister on Thursday.

Another sign of stability came after Italy was able to borrow $6.8 billion at lower interest rates than analysts expected. On Wednesday, Italy’s 10-year bond yields shot up alarmingly, stoking panic in financial markets that the country was heading toward a Greece-style debt crisis.

Confidence was also boosted by the prospect of economist Mario Monti replacing Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi, who has been viewed as an obstacle to meaningful economic reform.

“Europe still dominates and there are still huge concerns, but Greece has a new prime minister and Italy has a new prime minister in the wings, and everyone is much more aware of the seriousness of the nature of what is confronting Europe,” said Andrew Sullivan, principal sales trader at Piper Jaffray in Hong Kong.

Traders have fretted that debt troubles in Italy and Greece could blow up into a massive liquidity crisis and lead to a global financial meltdown.

The European Union warned Thursday that the grouping of 17 nations that use the euro common currency could slip back into recession next year. The European Commission predicted the euro countries will grow a barely perceptible 0.5 percent in 2012 _ much less than its earlier forecast of 1.8 percent.

Europe has already bailed out Greece, Portugal and Ireland _ but Italy is a much larger economy and its mountain of debt _ $2 faxless cash advance.6 trillion (euro1.9 trillion) _ is far too massive for the continent to cover.

Sullivan said economic data next week on the world’s No. 1 economy will be closely watched.

“If any of that data comes out bad, it’s probably going to put Asia into more of a downturn. If there’s bad data out of the U.S. and more out of Europe, we can see Asia taking another step down,” Sullivan said.

Hong Kong-based ERA Mining Machinery Ltd. shot up 19.7 percent after U.S.-based Caterpillar Inc. said it was seeking to buy the Chinese maker of mining machinery for as much as $886 million. ERA designs, builds, sells and supports equipment for underground coal mining in China.

In Seoul, technology shares jumped. LG Electronics gained 6.4 percent and Samsung Electronics was up 5.1 percent. Shares of SK Telecom Co., South Korea’s top mobile carrier, rose 3.1 percent after the company offered to buy a controlling stake in Hynix Semiconductor, Yonhap News Agency reported.

India’s privately owned Kingfisher Airlines dropped 12.7 percent after the carrier was forced to cancel dozens of flights as pilots and crew called in sick after their October salaries were delayed.

In New York on Thursday, the Dow Jones industrial average rose 1 percent to close at 11,893.86. It plunged 389 points Wednesday after Italy’s borrowing rates soared and talks in Greece to name a new prime minister broke down.

Positive economic data from the U.S. also boosted hopes that the world’s No. 1 economy would avoid a new recession.

The Labor Department reported that the number of people applying for unemployment benefits in the U.S. fell to 390,000 last week _ the fewest since April. The data suggested layoffs are easing and that the economy grew slightly better over the summer than estimated.

The S&P 500 index gained 0.9 percent to 1,239.70. The Nasdaq rose 0.1 percent to 2,625.15.

In currency trading, the euro rose to $1.3653 from $1.3581 late Thursday in New York. The dollar fell to 77.34 yen from 77.66 yen.

Benchmark oil was up 30 cents at $98.08 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The contract rose $2.04, or 2.1 percent, to finish at $97.78 on Thursday.

Source

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez tossed a softball overhand with gusto Thursday, said his latest medical checks have been stellar and ridiculed rumors that his health might have taken a turn for the worse.

Chavez said he is bouncing back vigorously from chemotherapy and gaining weight more than three months after he had surgery to remove a cancerous tumor from his pelvic region. He declined to say what type of cancer he was diagnosed with.

“You want me to tell you more? What for?” Chavez said when asked about the cancer at a news conference. “Go to the hospital and ask any person who has cancer: … ‘What is it that you have? And what type is it?’ Isn’t there something morbid in that?”

“I had a tumor. Now, what do you want me to tell you? That I take the tumor and explain to you here what type of tumor it was and the causes?” Chavez said. “I’m not going to gratify you. A malignant tumor. What more do you all want? … I had it here, they extracted it.”

Chavez motioned to the area where he said the tumor was removed, indicating a vertical incision on his abdomen crossing his waist line. The president said he saw images of the tumor, which was about the size of a baseball, and he held up a baseball as he described the operation.

He reiterated that all of his medical checks have shown no sign of any resurgence of the cancer.

“My latest tests, all of them, have shown very positive results,” he said.

“Here I am. I’m not in my best shape,” Chavez acknowledged, saying that is to be expected after chemotherapy. But he also said he has been lifting weights and is recovering smoothly.

“I’m my own response. And the life I lead from now on, with the grace of God, will be the response, the new Chavez,” said the president, who is running for re-election in 2012.

Chavez dismissed a report in a U.S. newspaper, El Nuevo Herald of Miami, that cited anonymous sources saying he had been hospitalized and that his condition might be deteriorating. He read aloud portions of the report to journalists outside the doors of the presidential palace.

“They’ve got me on dialysis,” Chavez said with a laugh, denying it.

Chavez had been largely out of sight since returning from Cuba last week after a fourth round of chemotherapy that he has said would be his last.

He said in a telephone call broadcast on television earlier Thursday that he is taking steroids and other medicines as he recovers from the chemotherapy.

He said he is working at “half throttle” while the effects of the treatment pass.

“I’m going to completely get out of this soon,” Chavez said.

The 57-year-old leader said his body has coped well with chemotherapy and assured Venezuelans he will keep them informed.

“I would be the first … to communicate any difficulty in the process. None beyond the normal has come up,” Chavez said.

Chavez has provided regular updates on his condition since he announced in a prerecorded video aired June 30 that he had undergone surgery for cancer. He said later that the surgery to remove the tumor was performed June 20.

The president’s critics have complained that he has kept secret some key details about his illness.

Chavez said he has provided ample information. He reiterated that his tumor had been “encapsulated” when it was removed and it hadn’t affected his colon or organs.

“I had cancer, in a ball that was removed,” Chavez said, holding up the baseball.

Later, he pitched a softball to his foreign minister outside the palace, smiling and throwing his weight behind each toss.

Source