Global stocks mixed as Trump and Putin meet; oil falls

NEW YORK -- Global stocks were mixed on Monday as earnings season heated up with reports from major banks, while oil prices fell hard on worries about excess supply.

Markets kept one eye on a summit between US President Donald Trump's meeting with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin in Helsinki.

Trump's supportive posture towards Putin drew some sharp comments from the political world, but had only a "muted" effect on markets, as Briefing.com put it.

There was little pattern in global stock bourses, with London and Paris retreating and Frankfurt edging higher. US stocks finished mostly lower, although the Dow mustered a modest gain.

China's Shanghai stock index retreated after Chinese economic growth in April-June came in at 6.7 percent, in line with forecasts in an AFP survey and better than the government's annual target -- but a shade down from the previous three months' 6.8 percent.

Investors are girding for a heavy week of earnings and economic news, including two days of testimony from Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell beginning Tuesday.

Market watchers hope a strong earnings season will be the catalyst for stocks to move higher and shake off worries about trade wars and tightening monetary policy.

Banking shares were buoyed after Bank of America became the latest US company in the sector to report better-than-expected second quarter earnings behind lending growth and lower taxes.

Bank of America jumped 4.3 percent, while JPMorgan Chase and Citigroup both climbed close to four percent. Both JPMorgan and Citigroup had fallen on Friday after reporting solid earnings increases over the year-ago results.

Germany's Deutsche Bank also had a good session, winning 7.2 percent in Frankfurt after Germany's biggest lender far outstripped analysts' estimates of its earnings in the second quarter.

Deutsche is looking to project a refreshed, confident image to investors under new chief executive Christian Sewing, who replaced crisis firefighter John Cryan as head of the bank in April.

Oil prices, meanwhile, closed decisively lower on worries over excess supply, with analysts pointing to myriad factors, including reports the US may tap its Strategic Petroleum Reserve to lower prices, the return of Libyan oil exports following an outage and speculation the Trump administration could allow some exceptions to a ban on purchases of Iranian oil.

KEY FIGURES 2100 GMT (5 a.m. Tuesday in Manila)

New York - Dow: UP 0.2 percent at 24,064.36 (close)

New York - S&P 500: DOWN 0.1 percent at 2,798.43 (close)

New York - Nasdaq: DOWN 0.3 percent at 7,805.72 (close)

London - FTSE 100: DOWN 0.8 percent at 7,600.45 (close)

Frankfurt - DAX 30: UP 0.2 percent at 12,561.02 (close)

Paris - CAC 40: DOWN 0.4 percent at 5,409.43 (close)

EURO STOXX 50: DOWN 0.1 percent at 3,452.38 (close)

Hong Kong - Hang Seng: UP 0.1 percent at 28,539.66 (close)

Shanghai - Composite: DOWN 0.6 percent at 2,814.04 (close)

Tokyo - Nikkei 225: Closed for a public holiday

Dollar/yen: DOWN at 112.27 yen from 112.38 yen at 2100 GMT Friday

Euro/dollar: UP at $1.1712 from $1.1685

Pound/dollar: UP at $1.3237 from $1.3222

Oil - Brent Crude: DOWN $3.49 at $71.84 per barrel

Oil - West Texas Intermediate: DOWN $2.95 at $68.06 per barrel

source: news.abs-cbn.com

Nokia Solutions chairman to step down after Microsoft deal

HELSINKI - Nokia said the chairman of its networking equipment unit, Nokia Solutions and Networks (NSN), will step down following the sale of the Finnish company's mobile phone business to Microsoft.

Jesper Ovesen, who joined NSN in 2011 when it was still a joint venture between Nokia and Siemens, will continue for a while as an advisor after the mobile phone business is transferred to Microsoft, Nokia said on Monday.

Markets expect more details on the new management structure at Nokia and its equipment business to be announced after the deal is closed, which is expected to happen in the first quarter of 2014.

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com

Nokia disappoints with deep loss, slumping sales

HELSINKI - Nokia, which until recently was the world's biggest mobile phone maker, reported a much worse-than-expected second quarter loss Thursday as it presses on with a massive restructuring of its faltering business.

The Finnish company's continued strong cash position was meanwhile met with relief by investors, sending its stock soaring more than 15 percent after the announcement.

Nokia's chief executive Stephen Elop acknowledged in the earnings statement that the April-June period had been "a difficult quarter".

In the second quarter, Nokia posted a net loss of 1.41 billion euros ($1.74 billion), about four times their loss of 368 million euros during the same period a year earlier and more than double the loss anticipated by analysts.

Analysts polled by Dow Jones Newswires had expected Nokia to post a net loss of 654 million euros for the quarter.

Shipments of new smartphones failed to make up for dwindling overall sales, which fell 19 percent from the second quarter of 2011 to 7.54 billion euros, but nonetheless beat analyst expectations that the company would rake in merely 7.24 billion.

Nokia, which recently lost its ranking of 14 years as the world's biggest mobile phone maker, dramatically changed its strategy a year and a half ago when chief executive, Stephen Elop, warned it was "standing on a burning platform" and needed to immediately shift course.

The Finnish company's new strategy involved phasing out its Symbian smartphones in favour of a partnership with Microsoft.

That alliance has produced a first line of Lumia smartphones, which Nokia is counting on to help it survive in a rapidly changing landscape marked by stiff competition from RiM's Blackberry, Apple's iPhone and handsets running Google's Android platform.

The company said it had shipped four million Lumia phones during the quarter, stressing that it had surpassed expectations in the United States.

This did not however stop Nokia earlier this month from having to slash the price of its Lumia 900 by half to just $50 after only three months in stores. And Nokia's new flagship smartphone took a hit when Microsoft recently warned that existing Lumia handsets would not be able to run its Windows 8 upgrade.

Elop stressed though that the company believed an upcoming "Windows Phone 8 launch will be an important catalyst for Lumia."

Ari Hakkarainen, an analyst with Andalys OY, however insisted Thursday this was "hopeful thinking," pointing out that even with strong software, Nokia and Microsoft will have a hard time breaking into the media products market (offering TV shows, e-books and music) dominated by the likes of Apple and Google.

"Without the whole ecosystem they cannot catch up with the others," he said.

Strategy Analytics analyst Neil Mawston told Dow Jones Newswires: "Pretty much every arrow points in the wrong direction as it has for a long time," adding though that the slight uptick in the North America market was positive, as was the stabilisation of Nokia's feature phone sales.

The company itself acknowledged Thursday that it "expects the third quarter 2012 to be a challenging quarter in Smart Devices due to product transitions."

Nokia has issued three profit warnings in a little over a year, and last month it announced new big spending cuts and another 10,000 job cuts would be needed on top of the some 12,000 cuts already announced since the shift.

While the company is struggling, it still has a strong cash position, and although a dividends payment sent its net cash holdings down compared with the first quarter to 4.2 billion euros, it stressed it had more available money than a year ago.

This unexpectedly well-padded safety net sent its stock up 15.24 percent to 1.58 euros in early afternoon trading on the Helsinki stock exchange, which was up 0,97 percent.

That is still a far cry from the more than 8.0 euros investors were paying for each of its shares just before Elop announced the massive restructuring a year and a half ago.

The company, which in 2008 enjoyed more than 40 percent of the global mobile phone market, was already struggling to maintain its leading position when it entered the Microsoft partnership.

Nokia no longer provides its global market share figures, but has reportedly now seen the number drop below 20 percent.

source: interaksyon.com