Sales Rose

SAN JOSE, Calif. - Worldwide sales of semiconductors rose 1.8 percent in October from the previous month, indicating that demand is recovering, an industry group said yesterday. Sales rose to $12.5 billion in October from $12.3 billion a month earlier, boosted by demand for chips used in mobile phones, the Semiconductor Industry Association said in a report. Chip sales posted their steepest decline last year, and the trade group lowered its 2002 sales forecast earlier this month. Sales rose 20 percent in October from a year earlier, and the association predicted a "normal" pattern for year-end orders.

Home sales ratcheted up in May even as buying choices continued to shrink in the Baltimore area, leaving sellers with more leverage than they've had in five years — at least for now. The number of homes changing hands in the metro area rose 13 percent compared with a year earlier, according to numbers released Monday by Rockville-based RealEstate Business Intelligence. The increase was driven by transactions with a regular seller, not a bank, thanks to a steep and likely temporary decline in foreclosures for sale.

JP Foodservice Inc.'s net income jumped 44 percent in its fiscal fourth quarter, and sales rose 15 percent for a 12th consecutive quarterly record, the company said.The Columbia-based food distributor reported net income of $10.4 million, or 47 cents a share, in the fourth quarter ended June 28, compared with $7.2 million, or 38 cents, a year earlier.Sales in the fourth quarter were $447.3 million, compared with $389.7 million for the same time a year earlier.JP Foodservice's stock closed off 50 cents at $31.50 yesterday.

As if foreclosures, high unemployment and tight credit weren't enough, would-be homebuyers in the Baltimore region got more fodder for wariness Wednesday as the Dow Jones industrial average plunged more than 500 points and a new local report showed housing prices continued to fall last month. The stock market gyrations — stoked by global economic concerns — also come on the heels of the Standard & Poor's credit-rating downgrade of mortgage financiers Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and the U.S. government, a move that helped push already low mortgage rates lower but also added to uncertainty about housing.

Jos. A. Bank Clothiers Inc., a Hampstead-based men's apparel retailer, defied an overall gloomy August for retailers to post a 14.6 percent sales increase in stores open at least a year. Bank, which has 147 stores in 29 states, said sales rose in every major category, particularly in suits, shirts and sportswear. Total sales jumped 20.3 percent last month to $14.3 million compared with $11.9 million in r the corresponding period a year earlier, Bank said. Combined catalog and Internet sales climbed 11.3 percent.

Maryland consumers ignored the stock market jitters and the Asian economic crisis last month to go on a mini new-car buying spree that boosted sales 5 percent, according to figures released yesterday by the state Motor Vehicle Administration.The gain here was slightly less than the 6 percent jump in sales nationwide as the auto industry closed its books on the 1998 model year.Vincent Trasatti Sr., president of East-West Lincoln and Mercury in Landover and secretary treasurer of the Maryland New Car and Truck Dealers Association, said big factory incentives were enough to make many consumers forget about declining stock prices.

DEARBORN, Mich. -- Ford Motor Co. said yesterday that its U.S. domestic car and truck sales rose 4.7 percent in June, providing one of the few bright spots in the U.S. auto industry's worst month since April 1995.Ford's results, which included a 4.0 percent gain in car sales, its first increase since December, follow declines reported earlier in the week by General Motors Corp., Chrysler Corp. and Toyota Motor Corp.Industrywide, sales fell 3.4 percent to 1.37 million in June and are down 1.4 percent for the first six months of the year, despite bigger incentives that automakers hoped would boost demand.

Digene Corp. reported yesterday that it trimmed its third-quarter net loss by 50 percent while sales rose by the same amount.For the quarter that ended March 31, the Beltsville maker of DNA-based medical tests said its net loss fell to $1.7 million, or 12 cents per share, compared with a loss of $3.4 million, or 25 cents per share, in the corresponding three months last year. Revenue rose to $4.6 million in the quarter from $3.2 million in the corresponding period last year.Product sales, rather than revenue from research contracts, made up most of the company's earnings.

ARMONK, N.Y. - International Business Machines Corp., the world's largest seller of computers and related services, said its fourth-quarter sales rose 7 percent, but its profit dropped because of acquisition costs. Profit from continuing operations declined 26 percent to $1.91 billion, or $1.11 a share, from $2.57 billion, or $1.46, in the fourth quarter of 2001, IBM said. Sales increased to $23.7 billion from $22.1 billion, helped by the October purchase of PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP's business consulting unit.

Bethlehem Steel Corp.'s loss narrowed in the second quarter as sales rose, and the company, currently in bankruptcy, said the outlook for the steel market is strong. The steelmaker, with 3,400 employees locally, lost $119 million, or 98 cents a share, in the three months that ended June 30, compared with a loss of $1.1 billion, or $8.80 a share, in the second quarter last year, which included one-time charges of a little more than $1 billion. Excluding unusual items, including furnace outages, the company's net loss was $82 million, vs. $119.

Back-to-back snowstorms shut down the region for days last month, but people still managed to buy and sell more homes. The number of homes changing hands in the Baltimore metro area increased almost 10 percent from a year earlier, on par with the previous two months, Metropolitan Regional Information Systems said Wednesday. Pending deals appeared to be more affected: The 7 percent uptick in contracts signed in February was the smallest year-over-year increase in months. And values continued to drop.

Sourcefire Inc., a Columbia cybersecurity company best known for its Snort intrusion-prevention technology, said Thursday that its net income nearly tripled in the fourth quarter of last year to $6.7 million, compared with a year earlier. Revenue was $35.3 million, up 37 percent from a year earlier. The company earned $8.9 million in profits in all of 2009, the first year since it went public in March 2007 that it wasn't in the red. One driver was a nearly twofold increase in sales to the federal government.

WASHINGTON - Retail sales rose more than expected in October due largely to a big rebound in auto sales. Last month's jump in sales also followed a dismal September retail performance that was revised even lower by the government. The Commerce Department said Monday that retail sales rose 1.4 percent last month. Economists had expected a gain of 1 percent. - Associated Press

Despite falling consumer confidence and gas prices that teetered around $4 a gallon, retailers surprised analysts by reporting yesterday better-than-expected same-store sales for May. Discount retailers like Wal-Mart Stores Inc., Costco Wholesale Corp. and TJX Cos. Inc. fared particularly well as price-conscious customers spent federal income-tax rebate checks on groceries, gasoline and off-price clothing. "The rebate checks were going to be a wild card this month, but it certainly looks like they kicked in," said Ken Perkins, president of the research firm Retail Metrics.

American consumers, uneasy about the economy and unimpressed by the merchandise in stores, delivered the bleak holiday shopping season retailers had expected, if not feared, according to one early but influential projection. Spending from Thanksgiving to Christmas rose just 3.6 percent over last year, the weakest performance in at least four years, according to MasterCard Advisors, a division of the credit card company. "There was not a recipe for a pickup in sales growth," said Michael McNamara, vice president for research and analysis at MasterCard Advisors, citing higher gas prices, a slowing housing market and a tight credit market.

Retailers are in for a tough fall, and consumers are in for deep discounts. Big chains reported a bleak September yesterday, with sales at stores open at least a year rising 1.7 percent, the weakest performance in five years, according to the International Council of Shopping Centers, a trade group. As a result, more than a dozen retailers, including the luxury chain Nordstrom Inc. and the discounter Target Corp., cut their earnings forecast for the final three months of the year. Those troubles will be a boon to shoppers.

Thirty-year mortgage rates have slipped below 6 percent nationally - a drop that promises to keep fueling the red-hot housing market as it remains a key fixture in propping up the economy. The benchmark 30-year rate dipped to 5.98 percent this week, Freddie Mac reported, the lowest level in eight weeks. The drop came as two reports released yesterday showed that August sales for new and existing homes continued on pace to post a third consecutive record year. The National Association of Realtors said sales of existing homes rose 5.5 percent to a seasonally adjusted rate of 6.47 million homes this year.

ATLANTA -- Coca-Cola Co.'s first-quarter earnings rose 11 percent as sales of Sprite gave Coke its fastest rate of growth in North America in at least five years, the company reported yesterday.The soft-drink maker's profit from operations rose to $789 million, or 32 cents a share, from $713 million, or 28 cents, in the year-earlier period.Coke spent heavily on advertising and introduced several products around the world, winning sales at the expense of rival PepsiCo Inc. In the United States, Coke's sales are rising two to three times the industry's average.