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NEW YORK – Amazon.com Inc. says its fourth-quarter profit rose nine per cent and beat analysts' forecasts.

Amazon had called the holiday season its "best ever," and its earnings report today backed up the idea that it is not being hurt by cutbacks in consumer spending.

The Seattle-based online retailer said its quarterly profit was US$225 million, or 52 cents per share paydayloans.com.

That was better than the 39 cents per share expected by analysts polled by Thomson Reuters.

Revenue rose 18 per cent to $6.7 billion, exceeding analyst estimates for $6.4 billion.

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Pfizer Inc.’s $68 billion bid to buy rival drug maker Wyeth might lower blood pressure among its executives, who are trying to deal with flat revenue and competition from cheaper generic drugs.

Whether the acquisition will reduce stress in Chesterfield, one of Pfizer’s major research sites, remains to be seen.

That’s because Pfizer, seller of blockbuster drugs including Lipitor and Viagra, is on a serious cost-cutting kick. On Monday, the world’s biggest drug maker said it intends to cut 10 percent of its global work force, or about 8,000 jobs, as it moves to acquire Wyeth. The cuts will span sales, manufacturing, research and development and administration. New York-based Pfizer also wants to cut its manufacturing sites from 46 to 41.

The Wyeth deal will give Pfizer access to diverse products ranging from Advil to Robitussin. Its sales will immediately grow by about half. Its top rank in the beleaguered pharmaceutical industry will be solidified.

With many new drugs under its umbrella, the deal "gives Pfizer more shots on goal," said Linda Bannister, senior health care analyst with Edward Jones in Des Peres. That is important in the pharmaceutical industry because it is hard to predict which new drugs will hit it big.

But the impact in the St. Louis region is uncertain. Pfizer employs about 1,200 people at a Chesterfield research center that churns out protein-based, injectible or inhalable "biologic" drugs — which the company has said it wants to emphasize. Biologics are made from living sources such as animal or plant cells. Pfizer already sells three such drugs — an inhaled form of insulin and two growth hormones — that were developed partly in Chesterfield. Wyeth, based in Madison, N.J., also has biologic products.

Pfizer acquired the Chesterfield property and a biotech drug-development operation when it bought Pharmacia Inc. in April 2003. The local complex is growing, with the addition of a new $200 million research center that is nearly complete and a separate $50 million expansion. The company expects the local work to stay on track.

"No change," said Pfizer spokesman Rick Chambers. "We’re still moving forward with those."

Other details are more opaque. It is unclear how many workers, if any, will be released in Chesterfield as part of the 8,000 layoffs. Pfizer did not give local numbers.

"It’s really too soon to know what changes or opportunities might emerge" from the deal, Chambers said. It will take perhaps six months or more for the deal to close, he noted. "We’ll be pursuing an integration process as part of that."

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Scientists and technicians at the Chesterfield facility have undergone uncertainty before payday loan. Pfizer announced plans to build a new research building in Chesterfield in April 2004. But then Pfizer sailed into rough waters, partly because of two drugs developed in Chesterfield. The company pulled the arthritis drug Bextra from the market in 2005 after the drug was linked to increased risk of heart attack and stroke. Sales of a related blockbuster drug, Celebrex, also slumped.

In the midst of an effort to cut $4 billion in annual costs by 2008, Pfizer managers asked local governments for tax incentives to keep the $100 million-plus project rolling. (The budget would eventually grow to $200 million). The public money came, and crews got to work.

Now, in the wake of the Wyeth announcement, "It’s difficult to predict what will happen in St. Louis," said Bannister. One thing is definite, she said, "This merger is going to result in layoffs and plant closings" across the combined company.

It is an extremely challenging time for big drug makers such as Pfizer, which has annual revenue topping $48 billion and more than 80,000 employees worldwide. New and tighter regulations seem probable. Also, Pfizer’s pipeline of new drugs has not been as fruitful as might have been hoped.

But if the deal goes through — regulatory approval is expected — Pfizer will be able to tap Wyeth’s medicine cabinet of vaccines, including a promising treatment for Alzheimer’s disease, which is in the final phase of testing.

Will the deal work? Analysts offered mixed assessments.

Pfizer’s growth outlook has improved with the acquisition, said Bannister. "We believe, over the long term, the company is going to be better-positioned," she said.

Several analysts say the deal goes a long way toward fixing one of Pfizer’s main challenges: a heavy reliance on cholesterol fighter Lipitor, which supplies about a quarter of the company’s sales. But the drug’s patent protections expire in 2011, and Lipitor will face tough competition from generic drugs. Pfizer was looking for ways to protect itself.

The deal is "business school 101," said Steve Brozak, president of San Diego-based WBB Securities LLC. Meaning the combined company can use layoffs to increase its combined profits even if sales are stagnant. But, he said, that doesn’t mean sales will grow faster.

"True innovation requires risk-taking," said Brozak. But the health care research industry — including Pfizer — is the most risk-averse in memory, he said. That does not bode well for the company, even with the Wyeth deal.

"The only shot you’ve got at going out there and increasing your revenue," he said, "is by coming out with something really novel."

jmcwilliams@post-dispatch.com | 314-340-8372

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Oil prices closed moderately higher Thursday, recovering from earlier losses, as rising stock prices vied with concerns about anemic energy demand.

Light, sweet crude for March delivery rose 12 cents to settle at $43.67 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

Earlier in the session, oil plunged $3.80, or 6%, after the government said the nation’s supplies of crude and gasoline expanded much more than expected last week.

But crude regained ground in afternoon trade as investors took their cues from the stock market, where the major indexes pared losses despite a flurry of grim economic and corporate news.

"The stock market cut its losses and as it did, crude oil came back almost to break even," said James Cordier, founder of commodity brokerage OptionSellers.com.

Cordier added that Thursday’s rebound is partly due to "a great deal of participation by hedge funds that are looking for a home for money."

"The stock market is questionable at best," he said. "And crude looks cheap right now, even though the fundamentals are bearish."

EIA: In its weekly inventory report, the Energy Information Administration said the nation’s supplies of crude oil rose 6.1 million barrels in the week ended Jan. 16, while supplies of gasoline grew 6.5 million barrels.

Analysts were expecting both crude and gas stocks to have grown 1.9 million barrels last week, according to a survey by energy research firm Platts.

The inventory data highlighted concerns about waning demand for energy. As the global recession drags on, demand for crude and gasoline has faltered and the price of oil has cascaded from last year’s all-time high of $147 a barrel.

"The demand scenario continues to be poor," said John Kilduff, energy analyst at MF Global in New York. "The market structure is continuing to encourage gains in storage."

Supplies of distillates - used to make heating oil and diesel fuel - rose 800,000 barrels last week, according to the EIA report. That surprised analysts who had forecast a decline of 2.25 million barrels in distillate supplies.

Demand for distillates, meanwhile, rose last week to 4.08 million barrels per day from 3.65 million barrels per day in the previous week.

But the uptick in demand for distillates was due to increased heating oil consumption during last week’s "Arctic blast" and not a reflection of higher demand for diesel, Kilduff said payday loan.

At current levels, distillate supplies are 10% higher than they were a year ago. And during the "dead of winter," when demand for heating oil is usually at its peak, the 800,000 barrel increase is "telling about where this industry is in terms of demand," Kilduff added.

Overall, the nation’s swelling stockpiles of oil and gas are "emblematic of the current state of affairs in the economy, which is pretty bleak," he said.

This week’s report, which is normally released on Wednesday, was postponed until Thursday due to the observance of Martin Luther King Jr. Day on Monday.

Economy: A spate of weak economic data from the United States and China, two of the world’s largest oil consumers, also weighed on the market.

The U.S. Labor Department said weekly claims for unemployment rose to a 26-year high last week, rising 62,000 from the previous week to 589,000.

In addition to the weak reading on the labor market, the government said new home construction and building permits both tumbled to record lows in December.

The Commerce Department reported housing permits fell 10.7% from November to an annual rate of 549,000 in December. Housing starts fell 15.5% from November to an annual rate of 550,000.

In another sign of how global the current financial crisis is, China’s National Bureau of Statistics said Thursday economic growth in the country fell to a 6.8% annual rate last quarter, dragging down the pace of expansion for all of 2008 to a seven-year low of 9%.

Gas: For consumers, however, Thursday’s inventory report is "good news," Kilduff said. The oil and gas supply glut "will help keep a lid on gas prices a bit longer than we expected."

Retail gas prices, which plummeted along with crude oil, have been inching higher over the last nine days.

The national average price for a gallon of regular gas increased two tenths of a cent overnight to $1.85, according to a survey by the American Automobile Association.

Meanwhile, a separate report from the Department of Transportation showed Thursday that Americans drove 12.9 billion fewer miles, or 5.3% less, in November 2008 compared to the same month a year earlier. 

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The Bank of England’s rating among British voters plummeted in the past month on mounting unease about its handling of the financial crisis, an opinion poll by PoliticsHome.com showed.

The approval score for the U.K. central bank in a daily survey of 5,000 people dropped 15 points to minus 15 percent since December, the Web site said in a statement today. Since the data began in April last year, the bank’s rating was at zero, meaning it had drawn neither a strong positive nor negative approval rating.

“A 15-point drop for the Bank of England over just a month is very significant,” Freddie Sayers, editor of PoliticsHome, said in an e-mail. “Many people in Britain didn’t have an opinion either way about the bank until the recent spate of headlines, and its reputation seems to be forming as a negative rather than a positive.”

Governor Mervyn King, who will deliver his first speech of the year today, has overseen a drop in the benchmark interest rate to the lowest in the bank’s three-century history. Deputy Governor John Gieve said on Jan. 16 that reductions in interest rates, tax cuts and bank rescues have yet to take their full effect on the British economy as the recession deepens.

“Instead of seeing the bank as coming in to rescue the financial mess, people seem to be viewing it as part of the problem,” Sayers said no fax payday advance.

British Police

PoliticsHome tracks the approval rating of various public institutions including the British Broadcasting Corp. and the monarchy. The percentage with a negative impression from its daily survey of 5,000 adults is subtracted from the percentage with a positive impression to calculate an overall net approval rating. No margin of error was given.

The police, with an approval rating of minus 2 percent, now has a higher score than the central bank, PoliticsHome said. Parliament’s rating is minus 42 percent, and British business and businessmen scored minus 31 percent.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown yesterday authorized the Bank of England to buy 50 billion pounds ($73 billion) in assets and the Treasury to guarantee hundreds of billion pounds of securities hurt by turmoil in financial markets. The measures build on October’s 50-billion pound bank recapitalization program, which included a 250 billion-pound bank credit line.

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Iraq may be a major danger zone, but when it comes to safety habits here at home, Americans regularly go AWOL.

Nearly three-quarters of respondents to a recent survey said they clean their inner ears with Q-Tips. More than half don’t regularly wear sunscreen.

A Consumer Reports survey, available in the February issue of the magazine, found that Americans engage in lots of risky behavior, the consequences of which can include skin cancer, fatal road accidents and loss of limbs.

Driving habits were a problem area — 53 percent of those polled said they talk on a cell phone without a hands-free device while driving, while half don’t come to a complete halt at stop signs and 69 percent admit to speeding on highways online instant cash advance. Nearly half said they speed on local roads. A quarter admitted they don’t always fasten their seat belts.
Americans also are putting themselves at risk for a tumble, with 61 percent saying they don’t have a rubber mat at the bottom of the tub, while more than a third said they left items on the stairs.

There is some good news, however: Almost 90 percent said they don’t usually have a beer while using a power tool or lawn mower, and 87 percent don’t text and drive.

The random survey polled 1,001 U.S. adults by telephone in October.

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U.S. government debt is heading toward bubble territory and investors should prepare to exit, or risk seeing those assets lose up to a fifth in value, French bank Societe Generale () said on Tuesday.

U.S. Treasuries — a $5-trillion-plus asset class of which foreign investors, notably major international players such as sovereign wealth funds, own half — could rally further in the near term as headline inflation rates look set to dip into negative territory by March-April.

“That will be good for bonds in the very short term,” Alain Bokobza, head of pan-European equity and cross-asset research at Societe Generale, told a briefing for investors in Frankfurt, Germany’s banking capital.

But Treasuries would suffer down the road from the issuance of bonds required to finance U.S. government spending programs intended to revive the economy, notably President-elect Barack Obama’s approximately $800 billion stimulus package.

“If we look ahead, fiscal policy will once again become a very big driver of government bond markets,” said Michala Marcussen, head of strategy and economic research at Societe Generale Asset Management (SGAM).

“If there’s one place where there is a bubble, it is U.S. Treasuries … At some point I think it will blow,” she said.

In such a scenario, yields, which move in the opposite direction to prices, would rise paydayloans.

If U.S. 10-year Treasury yields returned to “normal” levels around 4 percent to 4.5 percent, from below 2.5 percent today, investors stand to lose 15 to 20 percent of the value of those bonds, Bokobza said.

U.S. 10-year bonds are the global fixed-income benchmark.

BEWARE INFLATION

The planned massive injection of funds into the world’s largest economy would also lead to price pressures, and inflation — a negative for fixed-income investors — would accelerate once the crisis subsides and growth recovers.

“Obviously today we are in a deflationary environment but as we come out of the crisis I think we will have a more inflationary environment,” Marcussen said.

“As investors, it is very dangerous to believe that inflation will be low,” she added.

SGAM’s multi-asset portfolio currently has 32 percent in fixed income, 55 percent in equities, 7 percent in cash and 6 percent in alternative assets.

“For the moment, cash is king … paper with a government signature is king,” Bokobza said, referring to the elevated risk aversion that has characterized financial markets since the collapse of U.S. investment bank Lehman Brothers () in mid-September. 

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China’s exports probably fell the most in a decade in December amid a deepening global recession, making it more likely extra measures will be implemented to stimulate growth.

Shipments from the world’s fourth-largest economy dropped 5.3 percent from a year earlier after tumbling 2.2 percent in November, according to the median forecast of 16 economists surveyed by Bloomberg News. The customs bureau may release the figures as early as today.

Consumer confidence has tumbled to a 15-year low in Europe, China’s largest market, as the global economy grapples with the most severe downturn since the Great Depression. Profits have slumped at manufacturers with operations in China, such as Hon Hai Precision Industry Co., the world’s biggest contract maker of electronics.

“Exports won’t recover any time soon because of deeper recessions in major economies,” said Xu Pingsheng, an economist at the State Information Center in Beijing. “It’s almost certain the contribution exports make to growth this year will be zero or even negative,” said Xu, who expects shipments to fall as much as 17 percent in 2009.

China has increased rebates as incentives for sales abroad every month since October, pledged more export loans, and stalled its currency’s gains to aid exporters. The Chinese currency advanced just 0.5 percent against the dollar in the second half of last year from a pace of 6.6 percent in the first six months, according to Bloomberg data.

Still, growth in exports to the U.S. eased to 9.6 percent in the first 11 months of 2008 from 15.2 percent a year earlier, as demand for made-in-China shoes, clothes and plastic products fell, the customs bureau said in a report on Jan. 4.

‘Withering’ Demand

The expansion of total imports and exports may slow to less than 5 percent this year as “withering external demand imposes a strong constraint” on China’s overseas sales, the bureau said, estimating trade may have grown about 18 percent in 2008.

Shanghai Haixin Group Co., a Chinese textile exporter, said last month it may post its first annual loss since listing in 1994 because orders from overseas declined.

“Export growth of 20 percent to 30 percent is unlikely to return in the next few years because the biggest source of demand, U fast cash no credit check.S. consumers, are changing from spending to saving,” said Yuwa Hedrick-Wong, a Singapore-based economic advisor at MasterCard Inc. “China will face unprecedented challenges in terms of looking for new sources of economic growth.” Export growth averaged at 30 percent annually between 2003 and 2007, government data show.

Stimulus Package

China on Nov. 9 announced a 4 trillion yuan ($585 billion) investment package until 2010 and lowered the benchmark lending rates five times since September to spur domestic demand and make up for weaker exports, which account for one fifth of the nation’s expansion.

Still, economic growth may slip to as little 5 percent this quarter, almost half the 9 percent pace reported in the third quarter, according to Citigroup Inc. The World Bank expects 7.5 percent growth in 2009, the smallest gain in almost two decades.

“It will be very difficult for the government to achieve its ‘protecting-8-percent’ target if recessions in major economies extend,” said Xu from the State Information Center, an affiliate of the top economic planning agency, the National Development and Reform Commission.

China needs growth of at least 8 percent to create enough jobs for the 20 million workers entering the urban workforce annually and ensure social stability. The nation will face a “grim” job situation this year as the economy cools, labor minister Yin Weimin said on Nov. 26.

Almost half of China’s toymakers shut their businesses in the first 11 months as overseas shipments plunged, according to customs data. In 2008 more than 10 million migrant workers had lost their jobs as of the end of November, Caijing Magazine reported Dec. 17, citing an unidentified labor ministry official.

Imports may fall by 20 percent in December from a year earlier, according to the economists surveyed by Bloomberg. That will result in a trade surplus of $34 billion for last month.

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Spain’s inflation rate fell to its lowest in almost a decade in December as oil prices slid from a July peak and weak demand encouraged retailers to cut prices.

Consumer prices gained 1.5 percent from a year ago, using the European Union’s calculation method, compared with 2.4 percent in November, the Madrid-based National Statistics Institute said today in an initial estimate. That was the lowest since January 1999 and compares with a median forecast of 1.8 percent in a Bloomberg News survey of six economists.

Daniele Antonucci, an economist at Merrill Lynch in London, said the Spanish data indicated that euro-region inflation, due to be released tomorrow, could come in lower than the 1.8 percent forecast.

“If you combine this with the reduction in Germany of three-tenths of a percentage point, and also in Belgium, and now in Spain, there’s a risk inflation will moderate more than expected,” he said. “A lower headline rate now looks likely, in fact.”

The combination of the credit crunch and the collapse of a construction boom has pushed Spain into its first recession since 1993. With the global slowdown stoking concern about deflation across the world economy and crude oil prices 68 percent below their July peak, the European Central Bank has room to cut interest rates no fax cash advances.

The Frankfurt-based bank has already lowered its benchmark rate by 175 basis points since early October to 2.5 percent.

Retail Sales

Spain’s economy contracted for the second consecutive quarter in the last three months of 2008, the Bank of Spain said Dec. 30, while retail sales have fallen every month for a year.

Energy and food prices were the main reason for the slowdown in inflation, but weak demand probably also played a role, Antonucci said.

“There are also downward pressures because the economy is in recession, the fourth quarter was probably worse than the third quarter and we expect several quarters of negative growth in 2009,” he said.

No breakdown is given for the inflation figures until final data on Jan. 15.

Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero said Dec. 18 that the inflation rate would be 1 percent “at most” in 2009, a year when the International Monetary Fund expects the Spanish economy to shrink at least 1 percent.

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