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To: mishedlo who wrote (52464)	2/2/2006 6:57:59 PM
From: shades	Respond to of 110194

=DJ NEWS WRAP: Electronic Arts FY 3Q Net Down 31% To $259 Mln I want holographic 3d games - immersed in my environment - I am tired of all this 2d stuff - when are they gonna get with the program? Nintendo tried with 3d mario tennis - but it was only monochrome color and low rez - today we can make it 32 bit color and high rez - imagine putting on your VR goggles and going down the maze of twisty passages feeling like you were there SAN JOSE, Calif. (AP)--Electronic Arts Inc. (ERTS) offered more insight Thursday into the effects of the current transition to next-generation game consoles, reporting significantly lower profits that missed already downgraded expectations. Only one day after it laid off several hundred workers, the world's largest video-game publisher said its fiscal third-quarter net income was $259 million, or 83 cents a share, for the three months ended Dec. 31. That marked a 31% drop from the year-earlier period, when the company posted a profit of $375 million, or $1.18 a share. Revenue fell to $1.27 billion, down 11% from $1.43 billion in the prior year. Excluding certain items, the Redwood City, Calif.-based company said it would have earned $268 million, or 86 cents a share, compared with $391 million, or a $1.23 a share, a year ago. On that basis, EA significantly missed already downgraded expectations. Analysts polled by Thomson Financial were expecting earnings of 90 cents a share on revenue of $1.26 billion - the lowered consensus after the company warned in December its results would fall "well below" earlier targets. Company shares fell 2.2%, or $1.18, to close at $53.58 on the Nasdaq Stock Market, ahead of the report. In late-session trading, the stock gained 1.5%. EA, as well as its smaller rivals, have all been stung in recent months with slower sales - a cyclical and typical result during a transition to next-generation gaming consoles. In this case, analysts say, consumers are delaying video-game purchases in anticipation of the upcoming release of Sony Corp.'s (SNE) PlayStation 3, or until they can get Microsoft Corp.'s (MSFT) newly released Xbox 360, which is scarce. EA laid off several hundred employees this week - 5% of its global workforce of 6,500 - saying the move would help cut costs and shift resources amid changing business strategies and the revenue-slowing transition to new gaming machines. (END) Dow Jones Newswires February 02, 2006 16:54 ET (21:54 GMT)

To: mishedlo who wrote (52464)	2/2/2006 7:02:22 PM
From: shades	Respond to of 110194

=DJ NEWS WRAP: Amazon.com 4Q Net Drops 43% On Yr To $199 Mln . SEATTLE (AP)--Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN) said fourth-quarter earnings fell 43% in the all-important holiday season versus the year-earlier period when the company had a big one-time gain. For the three months ended Dec. 31, the Internet retailing giant said its net income was $199 million, or 47 cents a share, compared with $347 million, or 82 cents a share in the year-earlier period. The Seattle company said the most recent results included a one-time tax benefit of $38 million. In the last three months of 2004, Amazon said it recorded a $239 million one-time tax gain from losses incurred in previous years. Net sales for the three-month period were $2.98 billion, up 17% from $2.54 billion in the fourth quarter of 2004. The company said sales would have been up by 22% if not for the unfavorable, $121 million impact of changes in foreign exchange rates. Shares in Amazon.com fell $1.24, or 2.8%, to close at $42.74 Thursday on the Nasdaq Stock Market. The results were released after the market closed. In after-hours trading, shares dropped an additional 9.9%. (END) Dow Jones Newswires February 02, 2006 16:40 ET (21:40 GMT) Copyright (c) 2006 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.- - 04 40 PM EST 02-02-06

To: mishedlo who wrote (52464)	2/2/2006 7:30:46 PM
From: shades	Respond to of 110194

=DJ NYSE's Plans Questioned By Floor Broker Group >AX Mish - john henry is getting replaced by the MACHINE - what will he go to ITT tech and train to do now? By Gaston F. Ceron Of DOW JONES NEWSWIRES NEW YORK (Dow Jones)--As the New York Stock Exchange nears the final corner toward its planned acquisition of Archipelago Holdings Inc. (AX), the exchange faced renewed criticism of the deal from a group that represents floor brokers at the Big Board. The public-comment period runs out Thursday on rules proposed by the NYSE in connection with its acquisition of Archipelago, a Chicago exchange operator that runs an electronic marketplace. Some of the organizations making comments, including the Securities Industry Association, the Wall Street trade group, have asked the SEC to extend the deadline for comments, but so far the agency hasn't said if it will do so. After the comments are in, the SEC is expected to review them; if the deal is cleared, the NYSE has said the transaction could close as early as this month. In the meantime, the exchange came under fire again from the Independent Broker Action Committee, an alliance of NYSE floor brokers and member firms. At the exchange, floor brokers represent customer orders on the trading floor. In a statement Thursday, the IBAC said it was submitting a second comment letter to object to "potential regulatory conflicts" that could arise from the merger. Specifically, the IBAC says it's concerned that the NYSE's regulatory duties may be compromised by the for-profit status of the merged company, to be known as NYSE Group Inc. "There'll be the overarching profit motive which will influence NYSE Regulation," said Marc Powers, an attorney at Baker Hostetler who represents the IBAC. To mitigate any potential conflicts, the NYSE is planning to house the regulatory entity in a not-for-profit operation that will be kept separate from the Big Board's business functions. Seeking to please the SEC, the NYSE recently agreed to staff the regulatory unit's board with a majority of independent directors who aren't affiliated with NYSE Group; an additional three directors will come from the independent directors of NYSE Group, while the final director will be Richard Ketchum, who runs the regulatory operation. Nevertheless, the IBAC doesn't think the plan goes far enough and wants the regulatory arm to be "completely spun off," said Powers. At the same time, the IBAC once again criticized the NYSE's current plans for a "hybrid market." This system would add more automation to NYSE trading while preserving a role for the traditional trading floor. There are some in the marketplace who think that the NYSE's move to more fully embrace electronic trading is long overdue in an age of increased automation of the buying and selling of stocks. At the same time, while the hybrid market plan does have supporters on the floor, there are also those who fear that it may be a first step toward an increasingly electronic NYSE where the floor could become less relevant, potentially imperiling the livelihoods of the floor brokers and auctioneer "specialists" who work there. Powers said the hybrid market could "disadvantage" floor brokers, whom he said serve an important role representing investors. In its statement, the IBAC criticized the hybrid market's technology. Richard Adamonis, a spokesman for the NYSE, said the Big Board doesn't comment on comment letters sent to the SEC. Generally, he said that a pilot program for the hybrid market has recently expanded to 80 stocks "and specialists and brokers are actively engaged in the process, which includes continuous rollout of new technology and functions as well as extensive training, discussion, and information distribution." -By Gaston F. Ceron, Dow Jones Newswires; 201-938-5234; gaston.ceron@dowjones.com (END) Dow Jones Newswires February 02, 2006 15:19 ET (20:19 GMT)

To: mishedlo who wrote (52464)	2/2/2006 7:52:23 PM
From: shades	Respond to of 110194

Is food doing better? DJ Benihana 3Q EPS 30c Vs 20c>BNHNA DJ Darden: Jan. Olive Garden Same-Store Sales Up About 8%

To: mishedlo who wrote (52464)	2/2/2006 7:54:04 PM
From: shades	Respond to of 110194

=DJ MUNI WATCH: NYC Taps Into Tobacco Vein With $1.4B Bonds . By Stan Rosenberg A DOW JONES NEWSWIRES COLUMN NEW YORK (Dow Jones)--New York City Thursday moved to free up an estimated $100 million or more of capital for its general fund by tapping into a cash vein existing in older municipal tobacco bonds. Underwriters for the city's TSASC, Inc. - an acronym for Tobacco Settlement Asset Securitization Corp. - priced $1.4 billion of that entity's new bonds in order to refinance two higher-rate deals sold in 1999 and 2002. This "refunding" of the outstanding debt allowed the Big Apple to get rid of TSASC's older bond indentures - legal documents governing issue specifics - which forced the city to keep certain surplus funds in a bondholder reserve instead of for its own purposes. The bond covenants called for those reserves, representing part of the cash flow from annual payments made by major tobacco manufacturers under a 1998 Master Settlement Agreement with 46 states, to be trapped under certain circumstances. One of them was a downgrade in the corporate credit rating of any of the four original participating manufacturers to below investment grade. A 2003 downgrade of Reynolds American Inc.'s (RAI) R.J. Reynolds & Co. debt to Ba1 by Moody's Investor Service triggered that requirement, forcing TSASC to reserve up to 25% of outstanding bond principal for bondholders. That was money beyond what was needed to pay interest on the bonds, meet early retirement provisions and pay other expenses. Since the Reynolds downgrade, New York City had been looking at ways to eliminate the trapping requirement and decided last month on refunding the older bonds, said Raymond J. Orlando, TSASC's Director of Investor Relations. The market for municipal tobacco bonds has improved sharply since being shocked in 2003 by a $10.1 billion trial court award in a class-action lawsuit against Altria Group Inc. (MO) unit Philip Morris USA. That award was thrown out late last year by the Illinois Supreme Court, but not before muni long-term tobacco bonds had zoomed to yields of about 8.40%. The market effectively was closed to new offerings until last year. A Department of Justice attempt to recover $280 billion in profits in a racketeering case against cigarette manufacturers was thwarted last February by a U.S. appeals court ruling. A decision is pending from Florida's Supreme Court on an appeals court's overturning a $145 billion verdict against major cigarette manufacturers in another class-action lawsuit. Two major lawsuits challenging the validity of the MSA also are still in the courts, but they could take years to resolve. "People are substantially more comfortable with tobacco," said Ron Fielding, lead portfolio manager for the more than $22 billion in municipal bond funds offered by Oppenheimer Funds, Inc. Fielding planned to buy some of the bonds. Yields on TSASC's latest issue ranged from 4.83% for bonds scheduled to mature in 2022 to 5.35% for bonds with a 2042 maturity, but all of the bonds have accelerated, or "turbo," maturities that shorten their average lives. The 2022 bonds, for example, are expected to be redeemed by 2014 and so have a projected average life of 4.7 years. The 2042 bonds would be redeemed by 2033 and carry a 20.4-year projected average life. Underwriters led by Bear, Stearns & Co. Inc. said the issue was oversubscribed. The securities, rated triple-B by Standard & Poor's and Fitch Ratings, offered about 50 basis points more yield for long-term bonds than other comparably rated municipal paper, Fielding said. Underscoring the market's improvement, "in March of 2003, you would have been talking about 250 to 300 basis points," he said. Another factor that he saw working in the deal's favor was that municipal bond investors last month had to scramble if they wanted to buy bonds. January was a "very thin month" for new issuance, "particularly in New York State," Fielding said. New long-term tax-exempt bond volume last month fell almost 21% from January 2005 to $17.8 billion, the lightest month since September 2001, according to data provider Thomson Financial. (Stan Rosenberg, a veteran observer of the municipal bond industry, writes about issues and trends in the muni market for Dow Jones Newswires.) -By Stan Rosenberg, Dow Jones Newswires, 201-938-2143; stan.rosenberg@dowjones.com (END) Dow Jones Newswires

To: mishedlo who wrote (52464)	2/2/2006 7:54:55 PM
From: shades	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 110194

=DJ China to Benefit As Private Equity Soars In Asia . By Marietta Cauchi OF DOW JONES NEWSWIRES NEW YORK (Dow Jones)- China is expected to be the prime beneficiary from private equity investment after the total allotted to Asia soared sixfold last year. According to London-based research firm Private Equity Intelligence Ltd. 33 new funds committed to the region raised a total $15.8 billion last year. This compares with just $2.5 billion raised by 12 funds in 2004. Funds raised are aimed at every sector - from hi-tech to manufacturing and industrial - and at every stage in the investment cycle. For example, Texas Pacific Group (TPG.XX) affiliate Newbridge Asia IV, which raised $750 million, plans later-stage investments and buyouts in a number of sectors including healthcare, consumer products and financial services, while IDG Ventures, an early investor in China, just raised $250 million in its IDG China Emerging Technology Fund. However, entrants to the market must be prepared to invest resources in learning about and navigating a very different political, economic and legal system. For example, a business can only sell what it makes - and not goods manufactured by others. Foreigners seeking to exploit the Chinese market have used various methods to get around this from buying in components and assembling them into one product to buying an almost finished product and just screwing a few things on that, says Seung Chong, Hong Kong-based lawyer with White & Case LLP. "One of our western clients even bought in a liquid raw material - to which nothing could be added - and said that the very process of keeping it in a liquid form amounted to manufacture, qualifying the company to sell it," he adds. White & Case, which has been in China since 1978 and has offices in Shanghai, Beijing and Hong Kong, acts for both private-equity firms and public companies wanting to do business in the region. It's also finding that the proportion of Chinese clients is growing as local businesses expand overseas. Outward-bound business is attracting other foreign players such as Washington D.C.-based Darby Overseas Investments, an emerging markets investment firm owned by Franklin Resources Inc. (BEN). Darby has been investing mezzanine finance - debt with equity rights attached - in China-related businesses for more than five years and, like many, started buying into Hong Kong-domiciled companies with operations in mainland China. "It was less risky and more comforting to investors because Hong Kong has a more established legal and judicial system and the stock market is more developed than the one in Shanghai or mainland China," says Richard Frank, Darby's chief executive. But foreign investors are starting to invest directly in Chinese companies, and a number of the large buyout shops have established offices there. Carlyle Group LP (CAY.XX), for example, with offices in Beijing, Shanghai and Hong Kong, was involved with two of the top ten deals in China since 2001. In December Carlyle shelled out $400 million for a 24.9% stake in China Pacific Life Insurance Co., having just two months earlier acquired an 85% stake in Xugong Group Construction Machinery Co Ltd. for $375 million. Carlyle concedes that it isn't easy doing business in China. "It takes patience, local knowledge and commitment to complete deals. The China Pacific Life deal took three years to complete," says spokeswoman Katherine Elmore-Jones. Darby is now pursuing companies domiciled in China with a strategy intended to reduce domestic risks. Just last November the firm partnered with Chinese bank China CITIC Bank in a deal which involves Citic screening midsize corporate clients as suitable investment candidates for Darby. "The idea is that our team in Hong Kong will then conduct its own due diligence on the selected companies prior to investment and work together with Citic analyzing and supervising the companies until they are sold," says Darby's Frank. Unlike Darby's previous investments in China, which focused on infrastructure like water treatment, telecommunications and power, in 2004 it invested $84.6 million for a 20% stake in Meiya Power (MPC) - one of the largest power companies in China. The Citic partnership will also focus on Chinese manufacturing and exporting companies. "There are lots of Chinese exporters that have already made a start in Europe or the U.S. but need expansion capital to grow their businesses," says Frank. So far, exits from Chinese investments have been few and far between - just eight in the last few years, according to research firm Dealogic. Three of the eight have been public offerings, including Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp. (SMI), taken public in March 2004 by Goldman Sachs Capital Partners and Oak Investment Partners LP on the New York Stock Exchange, raising $1.8 billion. The other five exits were all trade sales - there have been no secondary buyouts as yet, said Dealogic. -By Marietta Cauchi; Dow Jones Newswires; 201-938-2129; marietta.cauchi@dowjones.com (END) Dow Jones Newswires February 02, 2006 16:08 ET (21:08 GMT)