QUOTE OF THE DAY
“The brains are going to be flying back and forth between Auburn [Hills] and Italy.”
Richard Hilgert, Morningstar analyst, on Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV’s dual headquarters in Michigan and Turin Article, 1D
Knight carrier assessing acquisitions
Knight Transportation continues to evaluate acquisition options, its CEO said during the company’s fourth quarter earnings call Wednesday.
Kevin Knight stopped short of mentioning Van Buren’s USA Truck by name, however, something he did during a third-quarter call with investors. The Phoenix-based carrier has a $300 million line of credit in place if the deal takes place.
“We continue to be active on the acquisition front, though we have no updates at this time in this area,” Knight said as he discussed the company’s fourth quarter. Knight Transportation reported fourth-quarter profit of $20.1 million, or 25 cents per share, for the final three months of 2013, up 12.7 percent compared with the same quarter of 2012, when it earned $17.7 million and 22 cents per share. Profit rose 8.1 percent to $69.3 million for all of 2013, and Knight reported $969.2 million in revenue for the year.
During the fourth quarter, Knight spent $1.2 million on additional “legal and professional expenses,” a majority of which the firm said were spent on items “related to acquisition activity and resolving various nonrecurring litigation claims.”
Knight, which owns 1.3 million shares of USA Truck stock, is ranked No. 31 on Transport Topics’ list of largest for-hire carriers in the United States and Canada. USA Truck, which has yet to report its fourth-quarter results, ranks No. 52.
Shares of Knight were trading between $20.55 and $21.07 on Wednesday, ending the day at $20.78.
New, floating-rate U.S. notes sell fast
The Treasury’s first sale of a new debt security in 17 years was met Wednesday with robust demand as investors sought the $15 billion in floating-rate notes as an alternative money-market security.
The first U.S. floating-rate notes were sold with a high discount margin of 0.045 percent, the Treasury Department said after the auction.
“The sale came extraordinarily well,” said Jim Vogel, head of agency-debt research at FTN Financial in Memphis. “The floaters are money-market yields without the headaches. From the beginning the floaters have had ‘winner’ stamped all over it. And the securities came at the perfect time.”
The last time the Treasury introduced a new security - 10-year inflation-indexed notes - was in January 1997.
Holder vows hunt for hackers of Target
WASHINGTON - Attorney General Eric Holder said Tuesday that the Justice Department was committed to finding the hackers behind the Christmas-season theft of credit-card data from millions of Target customers.
Holder’s remarks before the Senate Judiciary Committee were the first official confirmation that the Justice Department was investigating the data theft.
“We are committed to working to find not only the perpetrators of these sorts of data breaches, but also any individuals and groups who exploit that data via credit card fraud,” Holder said.
Officials have said hackers in eastern Europe inserted malicious computer code into the in-store systems where Target consumers swipe their credit and debit cards and enter their personal identification numbers.
The theft, over Thanksgiving weekend and into the following weeks of Christmas deals, involved the credit- and debit-card data of as many as 40 million Target customers, and personal information, such as phone numbers and addresses, of as many as 70 million more.
Beretta to build gun plant in Tennessee
NASHVILLE, Tenn. - Italian gun-maker Beretta said Wednesday that it is building a new manufacturing and research facility in Tennessee.
The $45 million plant in the Nashville suburb of Gallatin is projected to create 300 new jobs.
The family-owned company has operated in Italy since 1526. Beretta makes a variety of firearms, ranging from hunting shotguns to the U.S. armed forces M-9 pistol.
Several states began wooing Beretta from Maryland after the company raised objections to a wide-ranging gun-control measure enacted there last year. Company officials said Wednesday that have reached capacity in Maryland, requiring the expansion elsewhere.
Beretta said it plans to complete the facility this year.
Horse meat found in Dutch plant’s ‘beef’
AMSTERDAM - The Dutch Foods and Wares Authority says it has “preventatively” blocked all shipments from a Dutch slaughterhouse after investigators found horse meat in four shipments that were labeled as beef products.
The agency did not identify the slaughterhouse, other than saying it was in the eastern province of Gelderland.
The agency has blocked the movement of all 690 tons of meat in the slaughterhouse’s freezers and refrigerators until Feb. 3, to give the slaughterhouse’s management time to trace all meat shipments between Jan. 1, 2012, and Jan.
23, 2014.
If the company cannot produce satisfactory documentation about where the products went, the slaughterhouse’s meat will be recalled, the agency said.
- The Associated Press
Greek bank deposits’ rise first in 4 years
Greek bank deposits rose 1.1 percent in 2013, the first annual increase since Greece triggered the euro-area debt crisis in 2009.
Deposits rose to $222 billion in December, from $220 billion in November, the Bank of Greece said Wednesday in a statement on its website. Deposits are 31 percent below their peak of about $325 billion in September 2009.
“There’s been a slight increase in confidence, and some people have returned their money,” said Tassos Anastasatos, an economist at Eurobank Ergasias SA in Athens.
“However, I wouldn’t expect the kind of outflows since the beginning of the crisis to return unless the climate really improves, and that requires that we go on to a new deal for debt relief and the economy goes onto a path of sustainable growth.”
Greek bank lending to households and business declined at an annual 3.9 percent rate, compared with a 3.8 percent drop in November, the central bank said in a separate statement.
- Bloomberg News
Business, Pages 26 on 01/30/2014