By Jeff Sanford
(July 25 – 16:30 ET) – As if announcing a $2 billion contract with British Telecom to upgrade the core of the U.K.’s national network wasn’t enough; Nortel also released earnings this afternoon.
In a late afternoon earnings call, Nortel said it expects to grow revenue more than 40% over the next year, up from the previous estimate of 30% to 35%. This is on top of reporting earnings of 18¢ a share, as analysts were expecting about 15¢ a share.
Nortel stock traded between $116.25 and $122.90 today, finally closing at $120.75. Look for a jump tomorrow morning as well.
The good news sent the TSE 300, which had started out strong but fell back over lunch, back into the black. The 300 composite index finished up 83.62 points to close at 10,867.10.
The action in the rest of the market was fairly flat. The industrials sub-index was the biggest mover at 1.52%. None of the other sub-indices moved more than 1%, except for pipelines, which was up 1.08%. Declining issues outnumbered advancers, 580 to 464. Total volume was 136 million.
Petro Canada announced today that high oil prices have done wonders for its business. The second-largest oil company in Canada announced a profit of 95¢ a share, compared to 24¢ a share last year at this time. Nevertheless, Petro-Can stock was down 35¢ to $27.20.
Financial stocks also did well today, with BMO, National, TD and Bank of Nova Scotia all up.
Bombardier finally shed some of that steady gain it’s been on over the last few sessions. Investors were stepping in to scoop up profits as its stock closed down 20¢ at $23.55.
The CDNX lost 8.88 points today to close at 3,360.77.
The Canadian dollar closed at US68.14¢. That was down slightly from yesterday. Commentators attributed it to nervousness over Alan Greenspan’s speech this morning, though the actual text was fairly innocuous. Some of the action could also be attributed to oil settlement day, the day when domestic oil exporters convert U.S. dollars received as income into Canadian dollars.
In the U.S., the NASDAQ composite erased some of the loss from yesterday as strength in the chip sector pushed it up 48 points to close at 4,029.57.
Also doing well was Sun Microsystems, which hit a new 52-week high. Cisco and Motorola also did well. Even so, the market was narrow as advancers outnumbered decliners at a ration of 21 to 18.
The Dow was up on the day as well. It closed at 10,699.97, a gain of 14.85 points. It had been up as much as 64 points in intra-day trading. The S&P 500 put on 10.18 points to close at 1,474.47.