Wendy’s Co. said Monday that a key measure of earnings dropped 30 percent in the fourth quarter, as charges for selling Arby’s offset the effects of a jump in revenue.
More visitors, who spent more on each visit, helped push revenue up 5.6 percent. So did higher prices. The company also credited the remake of its premium cheeseburger, Dave’s Hot `N Juicy, during the fall.
But Wendy’s has also been undertaking a much broader remodeling effort. In the past couple of years, it’s tried to work over its entire menu, introducing new salads, fries and desserts to attract customers who thought the menu had grown stale. It’s expanding into breakfast again after a failed attempt a few years ago. It’s growing internationally and just opened a restaurant in Japan, a change from its previous focus on domestic operations. It’s also remodeling restaurants.
Income from continuing operations fell to $4.3 million in the last three months of the year, down from $6.1 million a year ago. The company didn’t report what net income was on the basis that’s usually reported in regulatory filings. Wendy’s said it would report full results on March 1, but didn’t give the reason for that decision.
On a per-share basis, adjusted earnings were 4 cents, in line with the expectations of analysts polled by FactSet. That number excluded one-time charges like costs for selling Arby’s over the summer and writing down the value of some of its assets. However, Wendy’s did report that its per-share earnings would have been 1 cent if the one-time charges were included.
Revenue climbed to $615 million from $582.6 million a year earlier. The latest figure narrowly beat the $613 million predicted by analysts.
Revenue at restaurants open at least a year climbed 4.4 percent in North America, the highest number in nearly 8 years. That’s a key measure of a company’s health because it strips out the effect of newly opened or closed stores.
Its shares fell 11 cents, or 2.1 percent, to $5.10 in morning trading.
Emil Brolick, who became CEO in September, said the company is “making progress on re-establishing Wendy’s as the quality leader and innovator” in fast food. He’s spoken before about how he’s keenly aware of growing competition from fast-casual burger chains like Five Guys and Smashburger, and his goal is to attract customers who want a higher-end fast food.
Wendy’s managed to increase its profit margin to 15 percent from 14 percent, thanks to the revenue increases. However, like other restaurants, it’s still facing higher costs for some of its ingredients, including beef.
The chain is also still feeling the effects of its combination with Arby’s. The marriage was short-lived, beginning in the depths of the financial crisis in fall 2008 and ending this summer when Wendy’s sold Arby’s to a private-equity firm, saying it wanted to focus on the Wendy’s brand. Since then, it’s installed Brolick, a Yum Brands veteran, as CEO, and moved its headquarters back to Dublin, Ohio, from Arby’s home base in Atlanta. Wendy’s said Monday it spent nearly $46 million over 2011 to break up with Arby’s, including severance costs for some employees and retention bonuses for others.
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The head of AT&T on Thursday suggested that the company might sell its directory business, which employs more than 500 people in St. Louis.
The company also reported a $6.68 billion loss for the December quarter, fueled largely by a $4 billion cancellation charge paid after the failure of its planned purchase of T-Mobile.
But the loss also included a non-cash charge of about $2.9 billion to reflect the falling value of its directory business, which includes the Yellow Pages phone book and its Internet incarnation.
AT&T expects earnings per share to grow by a mid-single-digit percentage in 2012, a bit lower than analysts had expected.
In a morning conference call with analysts, AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson labeled the directory business as underperforming.
“That’s one area that we’re going to obviously take a very hard look at, and while I don’t want to give any indication on M&A activity, it’s one of these areas that we’re going to have to decide, do we keep it, do we restructure it, as we move forward,” he said. M&A means mergers and acquisitions, the buying and selling of companies.
AT&T declined to give any further details on the directory business presence in St guaranteed high risk personal loans. Louis, or the company’s intentions. It also declined to say how many people the business employed locally.
However, that business employs 575 union members in St. Louis, plus management personnel, said Jim Kolve, executive vice president of Communications Workers of America Local 6300. The local workers handle sales, accounting, customer service and part of production, working on both the print director and the Internet.
AT&T’s directory business is the most profitable in the industry, said analyst Juli Niemann of Smith Moore & Co.
“This was a cash cow feeding tons into the company,” she said.
The phone company might use money from the sale to fund upgrades of its phone system and build its video business.
“They have big debt and an underfunded pension,” Niemann said. “They need the cash.”
The directory business is part of AT&T’s Advertising Solutions unit, which reported quarterly revenue of $781 million versus $926 million a year earlier.
Associated Press contributed to this report
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Former U.S. Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers said the U.S. economy is not yet at
Ever since oil was discovered in the North Sea off the British coast in December 1969, the Scottish National Party claimed it for Scotland.
Now in power and closer than ever to a referendum on whether to break from the U.K. after more than 300 years, the SNP government in Edinburgh led by Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond is counting on tax revenue from the oil industry as a key pillar of the economy along with financial services.
Opening arguments are to resume today in the trial of three former Nortel Networks Corp. senior executives accused of fabricating profits to trigger multi-million dollar bonus payouts.
Chief prosecutor Robert Hubbard is expected to continue laying out the Crown
China and the United States have pledged during a visit by Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner to cooperate on boosting the global economic recovery, but Chinese backing for U.S. sanctions on Iran’s oil industry appeared unlikely.
China buys almost one-third of Iran’s oil exports and has rejected the U.S. sanctions as a tool to rein in Tehran’s nuclear program. That sets Washington up for a public setback if the government of the world’s second-largest economy refuses to cooperate.
Geithner was expected to make the U.S. case for sanctions in meetings Wednesday with Premier Wen Jiabao, Vice President Xi Jinping _ who is in line to become China’s next leader _ and Vice Premier Li Keqiang, another rising star.
Geithner met with his counterpart, Vice Premier Wang Qishan, on Tuesday night. He said he told Wang that the two sides “share so many important interests, and among those are increasing our cooperation on global economic issues.”
China’s official Xinhua News Agency said China and the United States pledged to further cooperate to boost the global economic recovery, and quoted Wang as saying the world economic situation is still “very complex and grim.”
Wang also called on the United States to loosen export controls of high-tech products to China, one of China’s complaints about the countries’ trade relationship. U.S. critics, meanwhile, say Chinese currency controls keep the yuan undervalued and give its exporters an unfair advantage, distorting trade at a time when Washington and other governments are under pressure to bring down unemployment.
China’s trade surplus with the United States widened 24.2 percent to $17.4 billion in December, according to data released Tuesday.
Geithner also is due to visit Tokyo, another major buyer of Iranian oil, for talks after he leaves Beijing on Thursday morning.
China has criticized U.S. sanctions on Iran, approved by President Barack Obama on New Year’s Eve, as improper and ineffective. Beijing supported U.N. sanctions on Iran’s nuclear program but says action should be multilateral.
The sanctions would target Tehran’s oil industry by barring financial institutions from the U.S. market if they do business with Iran’s central bank.
China’s oil imports “have nothing to do with the nuclear issue,” a Chinese deputy foreign minister, Cui Tiankai, said Monday.
“We should not mix issues with different natures, and China’s legitimate concerns and demands should be respected,” Cui said.
Analysts in Beijing said China has no reason to go along with the sanctions. “China does not want to be seen as helping the U.S. when China’s own interest is concerned,” said Wang Lian, an Iran expert at Peking University’s School of International Relations.
He said Chinese opposition might be reinforced by Washington’s latest military strategy report published last week. It singles out Beijing as a power with the potential to affect the U.S. economy and security.
Industry analysts say that even if China agreed, it would face formidable challenges in trying to replace Iran as an oil source.
China’s fast-growing economy is the world’s biggest energy consumer and imports half its oil. Some 11 percent comes from Iran, or about 600,000 barrels per day in November, according to energy market analysts Argus Media.
Still, Geithner’s trip might not be wasted, because Washington is only starting a campaign to promote its sanctions, Peking University’s Wang said. He said China might face pressure to cooperate if other governments agree to comply.
“The U.S. is not wasting their efforts,” Wang said. “Pressuring China is what they can do, but it is fairly difficult to get China to stand on their side.”
The Hyundai Elantra edged out the Ford Focus and Volkwagen Passat Monday to win the 2012 North American Car of the Year award.
The prestigious industry award was announced at the start of the North American International Auto Show in Detroit, which hosts media previews this week and opens to the public on Saturday.
The Land Rover Range Rover Evoque won the North American Truck of the Year, beating the BMW X3 and Honda CR-V.
Jaguar Land Rover North America President Andy Goss said it’s a tremendous honor and humbling for the company, which has had finalists but never a winner in the 19th annual independent awards program.
“We’re going to market the hell out of this,” said a smiling Goss on a stage above the four-cylinder sport-utility vehicle. The U.S. is the world’s largest Range Rover market.
Fifty automotive journalists voted on the winning vehicles from a group of finalists, and the vehicles must be all new or substantially changed to be eligible. Organizers accept no advertising, though automakers capitalize on the marketing value of the honors low interest rate personal loans.
John Krafcik, Hyundai’s North American CEO, said the award won’t help the compact’s sales much because the company already is selling as many Elantras as it can make at its factory in Montgomery, Ala. But the award should help solidify the brand’s image in the eyes of the American public, especially in the highly competitive compact car segment.
“It should be helpful for our brand going forward,” he said.
The company is looking at ways to boost production at the Montgomery plant, but Krafcik said Hyundai plans to focus on maintaining quality at the factory before deciding on any increases.
Hyundai sold more than 186,000 Elantras last year, nearly a 41 percent increase over 2010 figures.
Volatile markets and shaky economic times have made Americans hungrier than ever for financial advice, and Larry Swedroe is happy to oblige.
It may not be the advice they expect, however. Rather than telling you how to react to the latest news out of Europe or Washington, Swedroe wants you to tune it out. Especially, he says, you should ignore the experts who predict that the news will be good or bad for the stock market.
He’s just published his 11th book on investing, but Swedroe is no market guru. If anything, he’s an anti-guru. By the time you read about an event, he says, its implications are already reflected in the price of everything from stocks to bonds to crude oil. No one prognosticator can know more than millions of market participants.
“When they’re right, they attribute it to their genius,” Swedroe says. “When they’re wrong, they blame bad luck. There are no clear crystal balls, only cloudy ones.”
In the new book, “Investment Mistakes Even Smart Investors Make,” Swedroe lists 77 common errors, several of which are especially dangerous during turbulent times. Being swayed by popular opinion is mistake No. 6, and paying attention to the experts is No. 10. If you try to time the market in any way, you’re guilty of No. 49.
Swedroe’s advice is so simple that it’s difficult for most people to follow. You should invest in low-cost index funds, diversify across asset classes and be cognizant of tax considerations.
“It’s not just buy and hold,” he explains. “It’s buy and hold, tax-manage, rebalance and if anything happens like a birth or death in the family or an inheritance, then revisit your investment plan. People think buy and hold means do nothing, and it’s more than that.”
Swedroe criticizes brokerage firms, mutual funds, hedge funds and even the financial media because he thinks they prey on investors’ weaknesses. Mistake No. 29, for example, is believing that actively managed funds can beat the market, and No personal loans for bad credit. 53 is working with a commission-based adviser.
Swedroe is research director at Clayton-based Buckingham Asset Management, which works on a fee-only basis and puts its clients’ $3.5 billion of assets into index-like funds.
The firm had just $11 million of assets when Swedroe joined in 1994, and his books have helped Buckingham grow. He insists, though, that they’re written to educate, not market a service.
Indeed, there’s no hard sell here. Swedroe says he’s happy if a do-it-yourself investor follows his methods, or even if a reader chooses a competing firm that embraces the same principles.
Swedroe’s books do get repetitive; “Rational Investing in Irrational Times,” published in 2002, was also organized as a collection of common mistakes. (Back then, he tallied only 52 errors.)
Each volume, though, adds new research and examples, and Swedroe says he’ll keep evangelizing as long as he can think of new ways to spread his message. He had thought “Investment Mistakes” might be his last book, but he’s now working on a shorter, breezier primer for people with brief attention spans.
Swedroe figures that his books have sold almost 200,000 copies combined, a respectable but not huge following.
What’s most rewarding, he says, is hearing from readers such as a doctor who used to day-trade and obsess over his investments. His wife was threatening to leave because he had little time for her or their small child. Reading a Swedroe book saved his marriage.
That’s why this anti-guru is so passionate about his message. It’s not just about money, he says, it’s about life.
Credit card rewards are the new social currency.
Citibank customers can now use Facebook to pool their rewards points online.
The bank on Tuesday launched a Facebook application that lets users team up to use their points, whether it’s for charity, a group gift or a personal goal. Citi says it’s the first bank to offer such a feature.
The app builds on a service Citi introduced last year that lets customers transfer points to one another on the bank’s homepage. After getting feedback, executives decided to expand the rewards sharing capability and offer it through social media.
“Now we’re delivering it to where customers are every day,” said Ralph Andretta, who heads Citi’s loyalty programs and co-branded cards.
Andretta noted that customers will have far more flexibility with their points, whether it’s to help a friend fly home from college or team up for a big-ticket reward. The company is giving away 2,500 free rewards points to each of the first 4,000 customers to sign up.
To get started, customers download the ThankYou Point Sharing App, which is linked on Citi’s Facebook page at http://www payday loan.facebook.com/citibank.
Customers can then start a rewards pool by naming a recipient and explaining its purpose. The recipient of the points maintains control of any contributions, so it’s best if you know and trust that person.
Pool recipients must be individuals and cannot be an organization, even if the intended goal is a charitable donation.
Users can promote their goals by sharing links on their Facebook pages or privately inviting other Citi customers to contribute. Donors can see the total number of points a cause has amassed.
The app can collect personal information from Facebook profiles. But Citi says it does not share any customer account information with Facebook.
The program isn’t only for credit card holders either. Citi checking account customers can also earn ThankYou points. Citi introduced its lineup of ThankYou credit cards last year.
Manufacturing in India and China improved in December, a sign the world
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