Buyback

ATLANTA -- The reason the parents of one of the victims of the Columbine High School massacre were in Atlanta yesterday seemed obvious: Attending a gun buyback, they represented the families of the slain students.But their reason went deeper. Vonda Shoels, mother of Isaiah Shoels, said that by making the trip at the request of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, she and her husband, Michael, were keeping a promise they had made to their son before his death last month at the Colorado high school.

Host Marriott Corp., fueled by a stock buyback and decreases in interest expenses, reported yesterday that its third-quarter earnings jumped 25 percent from the third quarter last year.The Bethesda-based hotel owner also attributed its funds from operations of 35 cents per share in the quarter that ended Sept. 10 over pro forma earnings in the comparable three-month period last year to increases in revenue per available room (REVPAR) and incremental earnings from hotel acquisitions."Our focus during the quarter was on carefully using our capital to improve returns to our shareholders," said Terence C. Golden, Host Marriott's president and chief executive officer.

WASHINGTON -- Claude Davis held the rifle like a venomous snake, carrying it gingerly toward a police officer as though it might snap up and bite him. The gun had been in his basement closet for 30 years -- and finally he was taking it out of his house and off his mind."

Westminster, a quaint county seat that has had just one shooting this year, is planning a small-town version of a big-city gun buyback.The offer: Beanie Babies.Such events are usually held in cities like Baltimore, which has 1,200 to 1,400 shootings annually, but police believe it will work in Carroll County."We've had several calls from people looking to turn in weapons," said Cpl. Michael Bible of the Westminster Police Department. "Our hope is that we can get guns off the streets, and keep them out of the reach of children."

Comsat Corp., a Bethesda-based provider of satellite services, said yesterday that it is considering its first stock buyback program as it reported second-quarter earnings of $4.1 million.For the comparable quarter in 1997, Comsat reported a net loss of $10.3 million, which included results from discontinued entertainment and manufacturing operations.The earnings -- 8 cents per diluted share vs. a loss of 21 cents in the year-earlier quarter -- were below analysts' estimates."A stock repurchase program is on the company's list for capital-allocation options; it's at the top of the list," Betty C. Alewine, Comsat's president and chief executive, said yesterday.

CHICAGO -- Quaker Oats Co. fired three top executives yesterday, including the head of its profitable Gatorade division, as part of a reorganization by new Chairman Robert Morrison to scale back the size of the company.The food and beverage company also said it will buy back as much as $1 billion in stock, about 17.6 million shares at Wednesday's closing price of $56.8125. That amounts to about 13 percent of the company's 138.1 million shares outstanding.Morrison, who joined Quaker in October, said he wants to make Quaker more profitable by paring back, especially in international markets.

DETROIT -- General Motors Corp. said yesterday that it will buy back an additional $4 billion of its stock, or 10 percent of the total outstanding, again using cash to try to buoy shares that have failed to keep up with the market or those of rival Ford Motor Co.The new buyback will begin in mid-March. When GM completes it a year later, the world's largest automaker will have bought $9 billion worth of its stock, or 20 percent of the total, since January 1997.Investors had shrugged at GM's two $2.5 billion buybacks last year, but they sent the shares $2.38 higher to $62.94 yesterday in trading of 3.11 million shares, more than the recent average of 2.33 million.

McCormick & Co. Inc. yesterday approved a 6 percent increase in its quarterly cash dividend, from 16 cents to 17 cents per share.This is at least the seventh consecutive December that McCormick has approved a penny boost in its dividend, the company said. The dividend is payable Jan. 22 to shareholders of record Dec. 31. McCormick has paid an annual dividend since 1925 -- including throughout the Great Depression."They have been very attentive to increasing shareholder benefits by increasing the dividend on an annual basis," said Judith M. DeHoff, an analyst who follows the Sparks-based spice and seasonings company for Legg Mason Wood Walker Inc. "They are very much shareholder-oriented -- this is just another example."

NEW YORK -- U.S. stocks were mixed yesterday on concern that share prices already reflect the benefits of the Federal Reserve interest-rate cut that is expected today.The Dow Jones industrial average rose 80.07, to 8,108.84. The Standard & Poor's 500 index gained 3.94, to 1,048.69. The Nasdaq composite index dropped 4.37, to 1,739.22, retreating from a 25.98-point advance.Among other broad indexes, the Russell 2,000 index of small-capitalization stocks lost 1.01, to 368.01; the Wilshire 5,000 index gained 27.96, to 9,603.

Reaction to Schmoke gun buyback programI just finished reading the article about the 1,053 weapons sold to the city under Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke's gun buyback program (Feb. 2, "Gun buyback exceeds goal in first day").I doubt if even one of those weapons was turned in by a ''bad guy,'' and I certainly don't feel any safer today than I did yesterday.Once again, our mayor gives evidence that he doesn't have a clue as to what goes on at street level and what the people of Baltimore both want and need.

Man is fatally shot in Northwest Baltimore Police were seeking the driver of a gray Jeep in the fatal shooting Sunday afternoon of a man on a street in the Towanda-Grantley neighborhood in Northwest Baltimore. Agent Donny Moses said the victim was standing near West Cold Spring Lane and Reisterstown Road about noon when a gunman exited the wanted vehicle, walked up to the victim and shot him at least once in the head before returning to the Jeep and driving off. The victim died a short time later at an area hospital.

Maryland's pioneering effort to conserve Chesapeake Bay blue crabs by buying back commercial crabbing licenses has come up short, state officials say. Too few crabbers were willing to sell, they say, and too many of those who were asked for too much - up to $425 million in one case. "We didn't get the participation we wanted, so we're well short of the goal we wanted to achieve," said Lynn Fegley, assistant fisheries director at the Department of Natural Resources. So state officials have decided to reject all 494 bids they received in the state's first-ever Priceline-style "reverse auction."

Close to 500 commercial crabbers bit on the state's offer to pay them to surrender their right to catch crabs for sale, according to Lynn Fegley, assistant fisheries director of the Maryland Department of Natural Resources. DNR had mailed buyback offers last month to 3,676 Marylanders holding "limited crab catcher" licenses, and they had until July 31 to respond. The licenses allow holders to deploy up to 50 wire-mesh "pots" or an unlimited amount of baited line to catch crabs for sale.

Help someone you care about take his or her music on the go this holiday. Good-sounding, cushy Coosh earphones ($20-$25; coosh.com) slip around the ear and into the ear to stay in place. They're not the best at reproducing bass, so lovers of boomy hip-hop won't be thrilled with them, but rock fans will rejoice. A Retrak charger ($25) plugs into a car's cigarette lighter jack to power just about any small portable device, including MP3 players and even a few power-hungry smart phones. Now a Bluetooth-capable phone can recharge even while being used with a hands-free headset.

Target Corp. Shares declined 53 cents to close at $50.56. The Minneapolis-based retailer is in talks to sell part of its credit card receivables business for about $4 billion and plans to use some of the proceeds for a stock buyback.

Texas Instruments Shares added 85 cents to $36.62 after the world's biggest maker of chips for mobile phones increased its share buyback plan by $5 billion and boosted its dividend for the second time this year.

Tribune Co. is sticking with its $2 billion stock repurchase and will complete it next week, despite opposition from one of its largest shareholders, Tribune's top executive said yesterday. Speaking at an industry conference in New York yesterday, Chief Executive Officer Dennis FitzSimons said the buyback announced May 30 is "on track." Tribune, which owns The Morning Call, the Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times and The Sun among its newspapers, is repurchasing up to 75 million shares of its stock in a bid to boost its sagging stock price.

NEW YORK -- Tribune Co., the owner of 26 television stations, has agreed to sell WCWN-TV in Albany, N.Y., to closely held Freedom Communications Inc. for $17 million. The transaction is part of Tribune's May 30 plan to sell at least $500 million in assets over the next two years, the company said yesterday. The station is affiliated with the CW network, which will begin airing in September after Time Warner Inc.'s WB and CBS Corp.'s UPN merge, said Tribune, which also owns the Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, The Sun and other newspapers.

CHICAGO -- When Dennis FitzSimons, chairman and chief executive of Tribune Co., announced a $2 billion stock buyback May 30, he was confident that the stock's value would rise. He just wasn't counting on it moving this quickly. Tribune shares surged 4.2 percent yesterday as investors bet that an increasingly public dispute between the company and the Chandler family, its second-largest shareholder, would lead to a restructuring that dwarfs the buyback. Several large Tribune investors and other market observers said the volatility in the stock threatened to disrupt the buyback plan and put the company in play.

A boardroom split over Tribune Co.'s stock buyback plan had investors wondering yesterday whether the disagreement was the first move toward putting the media giant into play or simply a negotiation between the company's most powerful players. Tribune shares rose 31 cents to $30.31 -- its highest in more than two months -- a day after the company disclosed that three of its directors had opposed the refinancing plan unveiled May 30. The three directors represent the interests of the Chandler Trusts of Los Angeles, which have a 12 percent stake in Tribune.