Corning, riding strong demand for its LCD glass, reversed a year-earlier $205 million first-quarter loss to post a $55 million profit as sales rose to $844 million from $746 million.
Hollywood Entertainment CEO Mark Wattles favors taking the company private through a management-led buyout (CED March 30 p8) to give it “greater operating flexibility” and eliminate “the constraint of the public market’s emphasis on quarterly earnings,” Hollywood said in a preliminary proxy statement filed Fri. at the SEC. The proxy was for a special shareholders meeting to be convened to vote on the proposed buyout. No meeting date is set, but Hollywood has said it expects the buyout to be completed by 3rd quarter and the proxy said the deal would be consummated soon after shareholders approve it.
Midway Games had its strongest U.S. videogame rental week in memory, Rentrak’s preliminary Home Video Essentials data for the week ended April 18 showed Thurs. Rentrak said Midway had 3 SKUs in the top 10, led by #1 NBA Ballers for PS2, which jumped 8 notches in its 2nd week available and earned an additional $307,509, for $476,452 to date. Midway’s other 2 SKUs were the Xbox version of NBA Ballers at #5 ($183,169 in the week, $265,971 to date) and The Suffering for PS2 at #9 in its 6th week ($146,259 and $574,133). Electronic Arts (EA) and Ubisoft each had 2 top 10 games. EA’s were Need for Speed Underground at #4 (up one in its 22nd week, $184,642 and $7.13 million) and Bond 007: Everything or Nothing at #7 (down 3 its 9th week, $171,314 and $2.39 million) -- both for PS2. Ubisoft’s were Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow for Xbox at #2 (down one its 4th week, $242,531 and $982,227) and Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six 3: Raven Shield for PS2 at #3 (down one, 4th week, $186,704 and $778,665). Rounding out the top 10 were Take-Two Interactive’s Mafia for PS2 at #6 (up 3 in its 12th week, $178,917 and $3.27 million), Tecmo’s Ninja Gaiden for Xbox at #8 (down 2 in its 7th week, $162,669 and $1.70 million) and Nintendo’s Pokemon Colosseum for GameCube at #10 (down 3 its 4th week, $141,174 and $615,174).
The International Trade Administration (ITA) has issued its preliminary results of the following antidumping (AD) and countervailing (CV) duty administrative reviews:
(BP has issued a new version of this ITT summary in order to correct the summary's BP Note listing the case numbers used for U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) purposes. This new version, with corrected text between the double asterisks (**), supercedes the original version issued in ITT's 04/02/04 news as 04040225.)
The International Trade Administration (ITA) has initiated antidumping (AD) duty investigations of bottle-grade polyethylene terephthalate (PET) resin from India, Indonesia, Taiwan and Thailand, and countervailing (CV) duty investigations of subject merchandise from India and Thailand.
The Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) has issued a notice announcing the availability of, and requesting public comment by May 7, 2004 on, its preliminary regulatory impact analysis (PRIA) of three interim final rules and one notice issued by FSIS on January 12, 2004 regarding additional protection measures in response to the detection of a case of Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE, also known as mad cow disease) in the U.S.
The International Trade Administration (ITA) frequently issues notices on antidumping (AD) and countervailing (CV) duty orders which Broker Power considers to be "minor" in importance as they concern actions that occur after an order is issued and neither announce nor cause any changes to an order's duty rates, scope, affected firms, or effective period.
Genesis Microchip gained a split decision, with International Trade Commission (ITC) initially finding that Taiwanese supplier MStar infringed one of 2 flat-panel display- related patents, the company said. The ITC, which still must issue a final ruling, found that MStar infringed a patent covering a method for scaling up an image in horizontal and vertical directions. But it rejected claims that MStar and fellow Taiwanese supplier Media Reality Technologies (MRT) violated another patent that pertained to the conversion of an analog signal into a form capable of driving a digital display, Genesis said. The ITC could potentially issue an order barring both the import of MStar display controllers into the U.S. and products containing them, Genesis said. Interim CEO Eric Erdman said: “We believe that our technology embodied in the winning patent is fundamental to providing low-cost scaling solutions for flat-panel monitors and entry-level flat-panel TVs.” The ITC is expected to issue a separate preliminary ruling in May on a complaint filed against MRT and Trumpion Microelectronics involving the scaling patent.
The ITA states that it has collapsed DSM and KISCO into one entity for purposes of this AD duty administrative review.