Business news in brief

— QUOTE OF THE DAY

“When you start looking at the total cost of ownership, the plug-in hybrids are still more expensive than a battery-electric vehicle or one with a small gasoline engine.” Dave Hurst, an analyst at Pike Research in Berkley, Mich. Article, 1D

Firm gets cash for biodegradable bag

Fayetteville-based cycleWood Solutions Inc. has won a $150,000 grant from the National Science Foundation to develop a biodegradable bag that could replace disposable shopping bags currently in use by retailers.

Many shopping bags are made up of high-density polyethylene and are not biodegradable, making them expensive to recycle, according to a release.

The grant money - issued through the federal Small Business Innovation Program - will be used to develop a product called the XyloBag, which is biodegradable and can be composted. The bags blend lignin, an organic polymer commonly derived from wood with a biodegradable material, according to the release. The XyloBag will degrade in about five months.

CycleWood Solutions, founded in 2011 by Nhiem Cao, the company’s president and chief executive officer, and Kevin Oden, is located in the Arkansas Research and Technology Park in Fayetteville.

  • John Magsam

U.S. Treasury bill rates at 3-week low

WASHINGTON - Interest rates on short-term Treasury bills fell in Monday’s auction to the lowest levels in three weeks.

The Treasury Department auctioned $32 billion in three-month bills at a discount rate of 0.065 percent, down from 0.075 percent last week. Another $28 billion in six month bills was auctioned at a discount rate of 0.105 percent, down from 0.120 percent last week.

The three-month rate was the lowest since three-month bills averaged 0.040 percent on Dec. 17. The six-month rate was the lowest since 0.090 percent, also on Dec. 17.

The discount rates reflect that the bills sell for less than face value. For a $10,000 bill, the three-month price was $9,998.36 while a six-month bill sold for $9,994,69. That would equal an annualized rate of 0.066 percent for the three-month bills and 0.107 percent for the six-month bills.

Separately the Federal Reserve said Monday that the average yield for one-year Treasury bills, a popular index for making changes in adjustable rate mortgages, edged down to 0.15 percent last week from 0.16 percent in the previous week.

  • The Associated Press

Iran oil revenue dips 45%, report says

TEHRAN, Iran - A senior lawmaker says Iran’s revenues from oil and gas exports have dropped by 45 percent because of sanctions over its suspected nuclear program.

It was a clear admission that the sanctions are having an effect on Iran’s economy, but Iran refuses to reign in its program.

Gholam Reza Kateb, head of the parliament’s budget committee, says oil income has dropped 40 percent in the last nine months. He was quoted by the semiofficial ISNA news agency. Banking sanctions caused the additional 5 percent drop.

Iran is under U.N. sanctions and Western oil, banking and trade restrictions over its refusal to halt uranium enrichment, which is a potential pathway for nuclear weapons development.

The U.S and its allies believe Iran of may be aiming to produce nuclear bombs, a charge Tehran denies.

  • The Associated Press

Toyota pushes back plan for China

BEIJING - Toyota Motor Corp. pushed back plans to make China its third million-unit market until after this year as Asia’s biggest carmaker waits for anti-Japan sentiment to subside and demand to return to normal.

Toyota forecast in September that China sales would reach 1 million in 2012. The company said Monday it expects deliveries in to China to rise about 7 percent to 900,000 vehicles in 2013 after they fell 4.9 percent last year. Sales in December dropped 16 percent to 90,800, the sixth straight monthly decline, the company said in a text message.

Toyota and other Japanese automakers have increased discounts and extended guarantees to win back customers after violent demonstrations broke out in cities across China in September over a territorial dispute between Asia’s two biggest economies. Honda and Nissan also reported annual sales declines in the country Monday.

Toyota sold 840,500 vehicles in China last year, the first annual drop based on company figures stretching back to 2002.

  • The Associated Press

Hawaiian Airlines buying Airbus jets

Airbus SAS has won a tentative $2.8 billion order from Hawaiian Airlines for A321neos that can fly from the islands to the western U.S. coast, dislodging Boeing Co. as the carrier’s only supplier for single-aisle jets.

Completing the order depends on reaching an agreement with pilots and flight attendants for operation of the new aircraft type, Honolulu-based Hawaiian Holdings Inc. said in a statement. The catalog value for the order includes 16 jetliners from 2017 to 2020 and rights to purchase as many as nine more.

Airbus’s win underscores the advantage gained by offering wingtips, which it calls “sharklets,” to boost the flight range of single-aisle jets. The 8-foot-high tips add roughly 115 miles to current models. The neos, which offer newer engines and include wingtips as a standard feature, can fly an additional 517 miles.

  • Bloomberg News

Apple users download 40 billion apps Apple Inc.’s customers have downloaded more than 40 billion applications from the company’s App Store, with almost half occurring last year as use of the iPhone and iPad surged.

More than 2 billion apps were downloaded in December, a record, Cupertino, Calif.-based company Apple said Monday in a statement. Apple, with now more than 775,000 apps available for its iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch devices, said it has paid more than $7 billion to the developers of those applications.

Apple is counting on apps to help woo consumers who are choosing software for an increasing array of lower priced tablets from competitors, including Google Inc., Amazon.com Inc. and Microsoft Corp. Apps can also help the iPhone compete against feature-laden phones from Samsung Electronics Co. and Nokia Oyj.

Shares of Apple slipped 0.6 percent to $523.90 at the close in New York, a third straight day of declines after a 31 percent increase last year.

  • Bloomberg News

Business, Pages 22 on 01/08/2013

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