Morgan Stanley
The investment bank earned $617 million during the last three months of 2009 on profits from its investment- banking and retail-brokerage businesses.
The results gave Morgan Stanley its second straight profitable quarter after a year of losses. The bank earned 29 cents a share on $6.8 billion in revenue. That was less than analysts’ expectations of 36 cents on $7.8 billion in revenue, according to Thomson Reuters.
Investment banking, which makes up the bulk of Morgan Stanley’s business, has been one of the few healthy segments in the struggling financial industry.
EBay
The company’s fourth-quarter profit more than tripled, largely because of the sale of its Skype telecommunications business. The report exceeded analysts’ expectations.
EBay, which runs online auctions and e-commerce sites, earned $1.36 billion, or $1.02 a share, in the quarter that ended in December. That compares with $367 million, or 29 cents a share, in the year-ago quarter. Revenue rose 16 percent to $2.37 billion.
Starbucks
Caffeine lovers visited more often — and spent more money when they did — during its fiscal first quarter, the world’s largest coffee chain said Wednesday, more than tripling its profit.
The Seattle company earned $241.5 million, or 32 cents a share, for the three months that ended in late December. During the same period a year ago, when the recession was in full force and Starbucks was closing stores and laying off workers to cut its costs, its profit was $64.3 million, or 9 cents a share. Revenue rose 4 percent to $2.72 billion.
AMR
The parent of American Airlines ended 2009 with a loss, and now it’s fighting to avoid losing a valuable partner in Asia this year.
American chief executive Gerard Arpey said Wednesday he would try to block rival Delta from forming an alliance with American’s longtime partner, Japan Airlines.
AMR said Wednesday it lost $344 million in the fourth quarter and nearly $1.5 billion for all of 2009. Quarterly revenue fell 7.4 percent to $5.06 billion.
Sallie Mae
The student lender reversed its year-ago loss and posted a fourth-quarter profit Wednesday but missed Wall Street expectations, partly on losses related to the sale of its mortgage-purchased-paper business.
SLM earned $309 million, or 52 cents a share, in the period. That compared with a loss of $216 million, or 52 cents a share, last year.
