HMV expects profit for the fiscal year ended April 25 to come in “towards the upper end of market expectations” despite “challenging conditions” at retail, CEO Simon Fox said Wednesday as the company provided preliminary results for the fiscal year ended April 25. HMV expects to post pre- tax profit of about $74 million to $93 million for the year, it said. The results were “driven by strong trading” at the firm’s HMV U.K. and Ireland business, which Fox said “continues to benefit from initiatives to transform the business, and from maximizing the opportunities arising from competitors exiting the market.” Woolworths was the most prominent U.K. retail rival to exit the market during the past year. Comparable store sales at stores in the U.K. and Ireland rose 4.3 percent in the 16 weeks ended April 25 and 1.9 percent for the year, HMV said. The company still has “much to do,” but Fox said he remained “confident” that HMV’s “transformation plan remains on track to increase efficiency, revitalize our core business and establish new channels to market.”
The International Trade Administration has issued preliminary results of administrative reviews for ball bearings and parts thereof from France, Germany, Italy, Japan, and the United Kingdom for the period May 1, 2007 through April 30, 2008.
Telecom merger and acquisition activity nosedived 32 percent year-over-year in 4Q08, Ovum said in a study released Monday. The fourth quarter saw 129 deals, down from 192 a year earlier, the research firm said. Only four deals were worth more than $1 billion, down from 10. “The financial market turmoil resulted in the acceleration of some deals, but uncertainty was the dominant factor,” said Matt Walker, Ovum’s principal analyst. “While this uncertainty lasts, there is incentive to sit and wait, until expectations and valuations stabilize. Preliminary analysis of 1Q09 results confirms this view, but finds activity picking up in some areas.” Takeover activity should stir again in late 2009, particularly among vendors, Ovum said.
The International Trade Administration has issued antidumping duty orders on 1-hydroxyethylidene-1, 1-diphosphonic acid (HEDP) from China and India.
At the start of a planned long hearing on whether to impose a preliminary injunction against the sale of RealNetworks’ RealDVD technology for copying disc content, the federal judge hearing the case repeatedly expressed interest Friday in whether the digital copies could themselves be copied. A lawyer for Real, Leo Cunningham, told U.S. District Judge Marilyn Patel in San Francisco that the copies can be played but not copied themselves. “The safest time in the life of a DVD” would be after copying by RealDVD, because unbroken AES-128 encryption is added, said Cunningham’s colleague Don Scott. The most vulnerable time, he said, is when the disc comes out of the packaging, protected only by the original DVD CSS technology, broken years ago. RealDVD, as a download or embedded in a CE device, would allow the owner to copy a DVD onto a hard drive and play the copy on as many as five registered devices. A lawyer for the Hollywood studios, Bart Williams, said RealDVD does enable viral copying, because owners of Real’s technology could pass around a borrowed or rented disc indefinitely for copying. The studios and the DVD CSS’s licensor, the DVD Copy Control Association, contend that marketing RealDVD would violate the Digital Millennium Copyright Act’s ban on circumventing copy-control technology and the terms of the CSS license agreement. The studios argue that Real set out to deprive them of their right to control copying of their works. The DVD CCA contends that RealDVD clearly violates the purpose and terms of the licensing agreement and the specifications it incorporates. RealNetworks’ position is that it has abided by the agreement, whose anti-copying provisions, it says, are narrower than the association portrays. It argues that RealDVD wouldn’t violate the DMCA, either, and the studios are actually trying to use copyright as leverage to illegitimately exclude competitors like Real from a separate, new market of enabling consumers to exercise fair use by managing their DVD collections and making backup copies. The sale of RealDVD has been blocked by a temporary restraining order since October. Patel has set aside Tuesday and Wednesday for the rest of the injunction hearing.
At the start of a planned long hearing on whether to impose a preliminary injunction against the sale of RealNetworks’ RealDVD technology for copying disc content, the federal judge hearing the case repeatedly expressed interest Friday in whether the digital copies could themselves be copied. A lawyer for Real, Leo Cunningham, told U.S. District Judge Marilyn Patel in San Francisco that the copies can be played but not copied themselves. “The safest time in the life of a DVD” would be after copying by RealDVD, because unbroken AES-128 encryption is added, said Cunningham’s colleague Don Scott. The most vulnerable time, he said, is when the disc comes out of the packaging, protected only by the original DVD CSS technology, broken years ago. RealDVD, as a download or embedded in a CE device, would allow the owner to copy a DVD onto a hard drive and play the copy on as many as five registered devices. A lawyer for the Hollywood studios, Bart Williams, said RealDVD does enable viral copying, because owners of Real’s technology could pass around a borrowed or rented disc indefinitely for copying. The studios and the DVD CSS’s licensor, the DVD Copy Control Association, contend that marketing RealDVD would violate the Digital Millennium Copyright Act’s ban on circumventing copy-control technology and the terms of the CSS license agreement. The studios argue that Real set out to deprive them of their right to control copying of their works. The DVD CCA contends that RealDVD clearly violates the purpose and terms of the licensing agreement and the specifications it incorporates. RealNetworks’ position is that it has abided by the agreement, whose anti-copying provisions, it says, are narrower than the association portrays. It argues that RealDVD wouldn’t violate the DMCA, either, and the studios are actually trying to use copyright as leverage to illegitimately exclude competitors like Real from a separate, new market of enabling consumers to exercise fair use by managing their DVD collections and making backup copies. The sale of RealDVD has been blocked by a temporary restraining order since October. Patel has set aside Tuesday and Wednesday for the rest of the injunction hearing.
The International Trade Administration has issued its final results of the antidumping duty administrative review of certain cut-to-length carbon quality steel plate products from Korea for the period of February 1, 2007 through January 31, 2008.
The International Trade Administration has initiated a countervailing duty investigation to determine whether manufacturers, producers, or exporters of polyethylene retail carrier bags in Vietnam receive countervailable subsidies.
The International Trade Administration has initiated antidumping duty investigations to determine whether imports of polyethylene retail carrier bags (PRCBs) from Indonesia, Taiwan, and Vietnam are being, or are likely to be, sold in the U.S. at less than fair value.
Verizon Wireless asked the FCC for another 60 days to complete the sale of 105 markets it agreed to divest when it acquired Alltel last year. But to win approval for its request, Verizon Wireless needs sign-off by a very different commission than the one that approved the merger in November. Two of the three current commissioners, Michael Copps and Jonathan Adelstein, expressed deep reservations about the deal at the time of its approval.