PepsiCo announced on Thursday that while third-quarter net profits fell by 37 percent due to taxes, earnings were up by a higher-than-expected 17 percent when one-time charges were excluded.

This led the beverages and snack foods company to raise its outlook on full-year earnings. The growth was driven by strong international sales and domestic demand that was increased by an exceptionally hot summer in the US. Growing especially were PepsiCo’s no carbonated brands, such as Aquafina bottled water and Gatorade sports drinks.

International sales were up 17 percent, with strongest growth in India, Turkey, Russia, China, Argentina, and the Middle East. The company’s biggest international markets, Mexico and the UK, were up from the previous quarter but sales there were still slow. Beverage volumes were up globally by 10 percent, while snack food volumes grew by 4.5 percent.

In North America, total beverage volume grew by 8 percent, a record, with slow carbonated drink sales compensated for by 24 percent growth in non-carbonated brands. Total revenues were up 13 percent to $8.18 billion, compared to $7.26 billion last year at the same time.

General Motors has announced that it will continue its development of hybrid vehicles even though at this point the company will lose money on the project. The company said that it will pursue hybrid technology in order to boost its credentials as an environmentally-conscious firm.

The chairman and chief executive of GM said that the hybrid technology is still in its early stages and sales volume is still low. He also said that he believes that it will be very difficult to persuade buyers to pay the extra money for a hybrid vehicle unless gasoline reaches a price of around $8 per gallon.

Analysts are concerned that if GM continues to pursue hybrid technology it will harm its sales of a new group of large Subs and pick-ups to be launched next year. Still, GM is planning on introducing hybrid versions of its GMC Yukon and Chevrolet Tahoe in late 2007, and to follow those by the launch of hybrid pick-ups.

They developed the hybrid technology they will use in conjunction with Daimler Chrysler and BMW. In addition to the implementation of hybrid technology, GM also plans on brushing up its environmental credentials by improving fuel efficiency by 10 percent on its non-hybrid vehicles.

US electronics and telecommunications company Motorola is said to be considering selling off its automotive products unit, a move some say could bring in over $1 billion.

The sale would fit into the plans of the company’s chief executive, who has been focusing more on the telecommunications side of its business. Selling the automotive products unit, which mainly makes products used in vehicle navigation and safety devices and sensors used in steering, braking and other systems, also makes sense in light of competition in the auto parts sector and the trend toward lower vehicle production and rising prices.

On the other hand, the company’s mobile phone handset business, which is gaining ground on sector leader Nokia by introducing products such as the super-thin RAZR mobile phone, brought in more than 50 percent of Motorola’s $31.1 billion in revenues last year. The automotive products unit employs around 5,000 people and had sales of around $1.7 billion last year.

Google has filed papers with the US Securities and Exchange Commission that say it will sell 14.16 million of its class A shares, but it was close-mouthed about what it would use the money realized from the sale for.

The filing included a warning that it might use the funds for purposes that “do not improve our operating results or increase the value of your investment.” The internet search company has traditionally been very reluctant to disclose its plans in advance, but it did say in its filing that it might use the money from the sale for the acquisition of technology, complementary businesses, or other assets, but that it did not have any agreements to do that at present and that it would put the money in easily liquidated investments until it had a use for it.

At Wednesday’s closing price of $285.10 per share, the sale of more than 14 million shares would bring in over $4 billion in cash for the company, which already had $3 billion cash at the end of June. The new offering will dilute the value of existing shares by about 5 percent, and some analysts theorized that the new stock offering is Google’s way of cashing in on its current high share price.

The US airline sector saw gains on Tuesday on the news that Delta Air Lines will sell one of it’s units and that the outlook for Northwest Airlines is good. In afternoon trading, the American Stock Exchange Airline Index was up 3.9 percent to 49.36 points despite further gains in the price of crude oil, which is damaging profits to the airlines.

Delta announced plans on Monday to sell Atlantic Southeast Airlines to SkyWest for $425 million. The sale comes at a time when Delta, which says it will use the money raised from the sale to pay off debts, is struggling to avoid bankruptcy. Even though Delta warned that the sale might not prevent a bankruptcy, its shares jumped by 11.5 percent on the New York Stock Exchange, to $1.55, on the announcement of the sale.

None of this has stopped ratings agencies from downgrading Delta’s rating. Fulcrum Global Partners put Delta’s rating at “sell”, down from “neutral” and cut it’s target price from $3 down to zero, citing the impending possibility of bankruptcy. At the same time, SkyWest’s rating from FGP was left at “buy”, with a target price of $27 per share.

Meanwhile, shares in Northwest Airlines gained 12.4 percent to $4.69 on the Nasdaq as Morgan Stanley raised that airline’s rating from “equal weight” to “overweight” and put its target price at $9 per share even though a mechanics strike is likely to strike Northwest on August 20.

Agilent Technologies, the world’s biggest testing equipment maker, has announced that it is instituting a restructuring that will see it shed its semiconductor unit, cut 1,300 jobs, and cut costs by $450 million.

Next year, the company also said, it will spin off its system-on-chip and memory test business. Agilent said that these moves would let it focus on its testing and measurement business. Two private equity firms, Kohlberg Kravis Roberts and Silver Lake Partners, will purchase the company’s chip business for around $2.66 billion, and Netherlands company Philips will pay around $945 million for Agilent’s 47 percent share of LED maker Lumileds Lighting.

Analysts say that Agilent’s business troubles since it was spun off from Hewlett Packard in 2000 has to do with the cyclical nature of its cash-intensive semiconductor business. Despite these troubles, however, Agilent posted third-quarter earnings that were better than analysts had expected due to cost-cutting measures that compensated for a 10 percent decline in sales.

The news of Agilent’s restructuring sent its shares up by around 12 percent by mid-day on Monday in New York, rising $3.15 to $29.56.

Maytag Corp. has declared a $21 per share takeover offer from Whirlpool to be a “superior proposal” and made the recommendation that shareholders vote to reject a rival bid by private-equity group Ripplewood Holdings and its acquisitions unit, Triton.

In a statement released on Friday afternoon, Maytag said that it would violate its fiduciary duty to its shareholders to reject the Whirlpool offer in favor of the smaller Triton bid, which it previously had endorsed.

However, due to Maytag’s rejection of the smaller offer, Triton will receive a $40 million break-up fee to be paid by Whirlpool. The total value of the Whirlpool bid is $2.7 billion. In addition, Whirlpool has offered to pay Maytag $120 million in the event that the deal does not pass regulatory muster, and will also pay up to $15 million to keep on Maytag employees.

The guarantee in the case that regulators do not approve the deal is particularly important, since the company that will be formed by the merger of Maytag and Whirlpool will have a large enough share of the washing machine and kitchen appliance market - 48 percent, compared to 26 percent for General Electric and 20 percent for Electrolux - to draw the attention of antitrust regulators.

Time Warner has settled a lawsuit filed by shareholders over the media giant’s merger with America Online in 2001. After the merger, which cost Time Warner $124 billion, stock values plummeted on stalled growth, prompting the litigation which claimed that AOL had inflated sales figures in order to close the deal.

The settlement will cost Time Warner $2.4 billion dollars, pushing the company to its first losing quarter in nearly three years. The company’s report shows that it lost $321 million in the second quarter as sales dropped 1.1 percent to $10.7 billion on lower film revenues and lost AOL customers.

AOL lost 917,000 customers in the US in the quarter, and film revenues could not match last year’s income from “Lord of the Rings” and “Harry Potter”.

In the same quarter last year, Time Warner’s profit was $777 million. Besides announcing the end of litigation, Time Warner also said on Wednesday that it will mount a $5 billion share buyback. The combined announcements saw share values drop 15 cents to $17.27.

Under pressure from stockholders to raise stock prices, Wendy’s International Inc. will offer up to 18 percent of it’s portion of the Tim Horton donut chain to the public and close as many as 450 of it’s Wendy’s fast food restaurants, it was announced on Friday.

The value of shares in Wendy’s have risen by 45 percent in the past two years in comparison with a 99 percent rise in the worth of shares in McDonald’s in the same period.

The plan calls the closure of as many as 60 of its company-owned stores and the sale of around 400 to franchisees.

It will also slow the opening of new stores to around 40 per year next year, down from an average of 71 new openings per year in the past four years.

Wendy’s will also sell the real estate at 217 franchise sites, buy back $1 billion in shares, and increase its dividend by 25 percent.

One analyst said that the announced moves will have no real impact on the company’s business dynamics, but will increase value to shareholders in the short run.

On the announcement of the new plan, shares in the Dublin, Ohio-based company gained $5.55 to $50.82 by mid-morning on the New York Stock Exchange.

The Wendy’s hamburger chain has 6,727 restaurants around the world, Tim Hortons has 2,491 stores in Canada and 264 in the United States. Additionally, the Baja Fresh chain has 303 restaurants in the US.

Officials of US aircraft manufacturer Boeing said on Tuesday that it believes it will win its World Trade Organization case charging the European Union of paying illegal subsidies to European aircraft maker Airbus, and that the WTO will make Airbus pay back the money that it has received from governments within the EU.

Boeing claims it was this government assistance which allowed Airbus to overtake Boeing as the world’s biggest manufacturer of aircraft.

Boeing is confident that Airbus will be required to repay the funds it received from the EU nations despite the fact that the WTO has only ruled once that an illegal subsidy be repaid, and that the order in that case was not complied with.

Boeing officials said that the current case is different, insisting that it is not a question of the WTO simply telling the governments that had given the aid to Airbus that the help was illegal and that they should not to do it any more, but more a question of how the subsidies will be withdrawn.

One possible way suggested by Boeing would be to convert the subsidies into normal market loans which Airbus would have to repay.

Exacerbating the case is the fact that Airbus has already said it might look for help from France, Germany, Britain, and Spain to help it with its Airbus A380 aircraft, money that it would likely receive before the WTO makes a ruling in the case which, including appeals, will probably not be resolved for at least two years.

Meanwhile, Airbus has countercharged Boeing with receiving government subsidies in the form of incentives from the state of Washington to keep their operations there as well as in the form of defense contracts from the US government.

Shares in Maytag gained over 9 percent to $16.91 in early-day trading in New York, while Whirlpool was up by over 5 percent on the announcement that Maytag will consider an unsolicited takeover bid from Whirlpool.

Whirlpool’s bid of $1.3 billion is higher than the $1.125 billion bid from a group headed by Ripplewood Holdings LLC, which the Maytag board still favors.

This makes the third group showing interest in Maytag, as Chinese appliance maker Haier Group has proposed but not made official a bid of $16 per share. Analysts’ opinions on the Whirlpool offer were mixed.

Some felt that the acquisition of Maytag would be advantageous to Whirlpool.

The fact that Whirlpool already has a relationship with the unions that work with Maytag gives Whirlpool an advantage over other bidders, according to some analysts.

However, other analysts felt that Whirlpool’s bid was mostly an effort to keep Haier, a stronger international rival, out of the bidding. Meanwhile, Maytag shareholders are slated to vote on the Ripplewood bid on August 19.

A decision handed down by the US 9th Circuit Court of Appeals late Thursday afternoon that immediately ended the ban on importation of Canadian cattle into to the US due to fears of mad cow disease sent shares of Tyson Foods Inc. soaring on Friday morning.

The stock gained 7.5 percent, or $1.39 to trade at $19.91 on the New York Stock Exchange early in the day. Under the decision, Canadian cattle might begin to enter the US as early as the end of the summer, according to analysts.

Tyson said on Friday that it is waiting for information from the US Department of Agriculture for details of how and when the border will be reopened to cattle.

The company plans to resume importation of cattle as soon as practically possible. The ban, according to one analyst, had severely cut Tyson’s capacity because there just were not enough cattle to process. Tyson, the worlds largest chicken producer, began processing beef in 2001 and beef is now the largest proportion of its business.

Before the ban, the US had imported about 2 million head of cattle per year from Canada, approximately 8 percent of the cattle slaughtered in the US annually. The ban on importation came in May 2003 after traces of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), or mad cow disease, were discovered in a cow born in Alberta.

Southwest Airlines had an increase of 41 percent in net profits despite the increase in oil prices, and it has set a target of an additional increase of 15 percent for next year’s earnings.

Net profits increased in the second quarter to $159 million, up from $113 million.

Southwest, the largest US air carrier when determined by market capitalization, has achieved this through an aggressive program to hedge fuel requirements that resulted in a savings of $196 million in fuel and oil costs in the second quarter.

It has hedged 85 percent of its fuel requirements for the second half of this year at $26 per barrel and over half of its fuel needs for 2006 at $32 per barrel.

It has also hedged various proportions of its fuel needs till 2009 for prices between $31 and $35 per barrel.

Another factor in Southwest’s excellent performance was the continuing recovery in the demand for air travel.

Unit costs fell by 3.5 per cent in the quarter despite a 25 percent increase in per gallon cost of jet fuel, according to Southwest’s chief executive.

He said that unit costs would remain about the same in the third quarter, but that fuel costs would be higher.

This was the 57th quarter in a row that Southwest has recorded a profit.

UK-based leisure group Rank, which owns the Hard Rock Café chain, announced that it will delist from Nasdaq and end its registration with the US Securities and Exchange Commission.

They will, however, continue to trade on the London Stock Exchange. In order to untangle itself from US exchanges, it will change its Articles of Association so that US investors will have to transfer their shares in its ordinary stock.

By taking these measures, Rank will no longer have to comply with either the Sarbanes-Oxley Act requirement to prove adequate supervision of accounting practices or with SEC reporting requirements.

The costs of complying with these requirements are the reason Rank gave for its decision to delist.

According to a study published in June by a law firm in Chicago showed that in the past year, the costs for a large company maintaining a public listing in the United States went up by 45 percent.

Most of that rise in cost, according to the study, comes from rising accounting fees. Audit fees increased by 55 percent for large companies in the past year, according to the study.

Small companies, defined as those companies with less than $1 billion in annual revenues, have seen their audit fees rise even more, up 96 percent in the past year.

It has been revealed that AMC Entertainment and Loews Cineplex Entertainment will merge into the second-largest chain of movie theaters in the United States.

Terms of the deal, which comes at a time when US movie attendance is at its lowest in nearly 10 years, were not made public, but when each company was purchased by separate groups of private equity firms in 2004, AMC cost JP Morgan Partners and Apollo Management $1.67 and Bain Capital, Carlyle, and Spectrum Equity Investors paid $1.46 billion for Loews.

AMC and Loews were already talking about a merger at the time they were purchased last year. The merger is expected to give the new company, which will be run by the current AMC chief executive, a better position in negotiating exhibitor’s rights with Hollywood studios.

It is also expected to bring cost cuts at a time when US movie ticket sales are down 11 percent from last year since the summer movie season began on May 6.

The group that owns AMC will control 60 percent of the new company, and the Loews group will control the remaining 40 percent, but once the deal is closed and regulators approve it, the company will likely be taken public next year.

Legislation has been introduced in the United States that would require aircraft capable of carrying over 800 passengers to have the technology to combat weapons such as Stinger missiles.

If passed by Congress and signed by President George W. Bush, it would mean that the A380, currently under development by European aircraft manufacturer Airbus, would have to have such technology installed or the planes could not fly in the US.

The bill does not specifically mention the A380, but that aircraft is the only one currently being developed that could carry that many people. Representative John Mica, the Republican chairman of the House aviation committee who introduced the bill, has denied that his legislation is aimed at Airbus.

The introduction of the bill, however, comes at a time when the US and the European Union have a dispute before the World Trade Organization that concerns government subsidies paid to Airbus and Boeing, its US rival. An Airbus official called the legislation “silly” and dismissed the legislation as an attempt to give Boeing an advantage in the marketplace.

In the US the bill is opposed by the Air Transport Association, which represents US airlines, as an attempt to mandate aircraft technology through legislation.

A US company with the same name as an Indian airline scheduled to begin flights to the US on June 23 has alleged that the Indian company is tied to al-Qaeda.

Jet Airways of India, based in Mumbai, currently has a 43 percent share of the domestic market in India and in it’s last phase of global expansion, has been accused of ties to al-Qaeda by Jet Airways of Maryland in the US in a complaint filed with the US department of transportation.

In its complaint, the US company alleges that the Indian company has ties to Dawood Ibrahim, an Indian gangster, and through him to al-Qaeda, and that allowing the Indian company to operate in the US would give al-Qaeda access to the US to carry out its terrorist activities.

Jet Airways of India says that the US company does no business but merely has rented a suite of offices, and that the real issue is over the similar trade-name of the two companies. The Indian company has filed a rebuttal to the charges with the department of transportation, and they say they hope to meet their launch date despite the claim from the US company.

The US Food and Drug Administration has confirmed that it investigating reports that up to 38 men who used the impotence drug Viagra have suffered vision loss.

Pfizer, the company that makes Viagra and the largest pharmaceuticals group in the world, defended its product, saying that there is no evidence that the type of vision loss reported in the Viagra users is more frequent in users of the drug than it is in men who do not use it.

The company also said that the type of vision loss being reported by users of the drug is common in men over 50 who have conditions like high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and diabetes, conditions that can also cause the impotence problems that Viagra treats.

This, Pfizer claims, makes it impossible to tell whether the drug itself had anything to do with the men’s loss of vision. Notwithstanding their defense of Viagra, Pfizer is in talks with the FDA over the possibility of revising safety warnings on the drug.

Shares of Pfizer lost nearly 2 percent of their value on the New York Stock Exchange Friday after reports of the vision problems were announced.

Hyundai has opened its first plant in the US, located in Montgomery, Alabama. It is a $1.1 billion facility that the company claims to be the most advanced in the world.

Hyundai joins Honda and Mercedes in Alabama, to become the third foreign automobile manufacturer located there.

Once the plant swings into full production, Alabama will have the capacity to make 800,000 cars per year, up from zero auto production just eight years ago.

The American South has become a rival to the traditional Michigan automakers and a favorite location for foreign manufacturers because the South is less unionized and wages are much lower there.

Hyundai sold 419,000 cars in the United States last year, amounting to 4.1 percent of the total market, and is also becoming more of a force in Europe, where it is currently building a $1 billion plant in Slovakia.

The company is already the number one seller of cars in China and India.

Warner Music Group stocks fell 7 percent Wednesday on the debut of its Initial Public Offering. This was seen as an expression of lack of faith in an unsettled music industry by investors.

Among the factors that investors might be thinking about are the constant technological changes affecting the industry, the fact that the music industry must adjust to new ways of distributing music, and the effect of digital piracy on the industry’s bottom line.

Warner’s raised $554.2 million, selling 32.6 million shares at a price of $17. It had hoped to raise over $750 million dollars on shares selling at between $22 and $24 per share.

Additionally, in early trading on Wednesday in New York, Warner’s shares had fallen $1.25 to $15.75.

Warner executives are putting the blame on the fall in share prices to a Tuesday sell-off of media shares brought on by DreamWorks’ negative first-quarter report and on recent weaknesses in the IPO market generally.

Some analysts, though, had said last week that Warner would likely have to drop the prices of its shares below the $20 mark per share.

General Electric will announce a plan on Monday that will see it investing in and developing new technologies meant to make industry’s activities less harmful to the environment.

GE’s new initiative is scheduled to be announced in a speech by the chairman and chief executive of the company in a speech in Washington, D.C., at George Washington University.

GE’s new initiative comes at a time when the Bush administration has started to encourage the development of environmentally friendly technologies.

Additionally, other industries have begun to recognize the business advantages of being seen as environmentally friendly.

These companies include several automobile manufacturers that have begun manufacturing gas-electric hybrid vehicles as well as UK energy company BP, which has recently expanded into solar power.

GE’s plan is for the company to invent “green” technologies. In order to accomplish this, GE will double its current investment in new product research.

GE will also make a commitment to reducing the production of greenhouse gasses as well as to making the environmental consequences of its operations known.

Despite the appearance of finality in the merger war between Qwest Communications and Verizon Communications when Qwest withdrew from the bidding a week ago, the battle might not yet be completely over.

After last Monday’s withdrawal, several MCI shareholders met with executives from Qwest to urge them to make another bid for MCI, the second-largest long-distance carrier in the U.S., telling the executives that they feel that a merger with Qwest has a better chance to produce growth than a merger between MCI and Verizon.

In response, Qwest on Monday said that it would not re-enter the bidding unless MCI shareholders vote down the pending Verizon when they meet in June or July to act on the proposed merger. This does not seem likely to happen, however, especially since Carlos Slim sold his 13 percent share in MCI, the largest single holding in the company, to Verizon recently.

In addition, MCI’s board has endorsed Verizon bids repeatedly, saying that Verizon is more stable financially than Qwest, a smaller company with considerable debt. MCI’s board has also said that a number of large business customers have threatened to leave MCI if it makes a deal with Qwest.

Boeing and Lockheed Martin will, if the government approves, merge their satellite launch operations.

This move comes after several years of civil litigation between the two companies and the suspension of Boeing’s U.S. Air Force contracts.

The proposed merger would save the government an estimated $100 million to $150 million per year and will effectively put an end to the U.S. government strategy that keeps two launch services available to the military.

The Air Force supports the planned merger. Even if the merger happens, each company’s rockets - Lockheed’s Atlas V series and Boeing’s Delta IV rockets - would be maintained, but two companies’ supportive infrastructure, including administration, launch, and manufacturing operations, would be merged into one entity.

One reason for this merger might well be the collapse in the market for commercial launches. In the 1990s, when the two-launch operations strategy was created, the commercial market was expected to provide enough contracts for two separate entities.

The litigation and ethics scandal that caused the suspension of $1 billion dollars worth of government contracts with Boeing were the result of accusations that Boeing acquired proprietary information belonging to Lockheed and used it to win a 1998 Air Force contract to Lockheed to win an Air Force contract in 1998.

After declaring a revised merger bid from Qwest Communications superior on April 21, MCI has now announced that it would be more likely to accept a revised offer from Verizon superior due to pressure exerted by its business customers.

In making Monday’s announcement, MCI said that some of its “most important business customers” have indicated a preference for Verizon over Qwest and that some had indicated they would seek to end their MCI contracts if the Qwest deal were accepted.

MCI also listed in its announcement a number of other factors it is taking into consideration in evaluating the two bids.

Meanwhile, Qwest claims that a survey it conducted shows that a majority of MCI shareholders prefer their bid over Verizon’s.

Verizon‘s new offer was for $26 per share, made up of $5.60 cash and either 0.5743 Verizon shares for each MCI share or $20.40 in value, whichever is greater.

This offer totals $8.45 billion in comparison to a $9.9 billion bid from Qwest, which amounts to $30 per share - $16 in case and 3.373 Qwest shares at a $14 fixed value.

Boeing has taken yet another step in it’s effort to once again become the leader in the commercial aerospace industry, a status that had been claimed in recent years by Airbus, Boeing’s European rival.

After an announcement of a new order worth $6 billion from Air Canada, Boeing announced Tuesday that Air India had ordered up to 50 aircraft from the Chicago-based company.

Boeing is also expected to announce an order of eighteen 787s from Northwest Airlines. Northwest was previously Airbus’ third-largest customer.

One factor in Boeing’s new ascendancy over Airbus is that Airbus has not settled on a configuration for its new Airbus A350, and has not received formal approval to build it even though it is already taking orders for the new plane.

The Air India order, which is said to be worth almost $7 billion, includes eight 777-200LRs, fifteen 777-300ERs, and twenty-seven 787s.

With 217 total orders and commitments for the 787, shares in U.S. aircraft manufacturer Boeing advanced by nearly 3 percent to $59.50 in early trading on Monday.

This number of orders included a newly announced deal for Air Canada to purchase 14 787s and 18 777s from the Chicago-based Boeing, for a total of around $6 billion. Besides these firm purchases, Air Canada also took options for 46 additional 787s and 18 777s.

Air Canada’s chief executive said Monday that the 787 would be the more economical aircraft, saving about 30 percent in fuel efficiency and costs for maintenance compared to planes currently in use.

The airline recently announced plans for daily non-stop flights to Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou.

Air Canada has seen rapid expansion of its Asian and Latin American routes recently, as many passengers from those areas prefer to fly into Toronto and Vancouver when traveling between Asia and the Latin American since U.S. visa and security restrictions have tightened.

Boeing will begin deliveries next year for the 777s and the 787s will be delivered beginning in 2010.

This is seen as a significant win for Boeing over it’s European rival Airbus. Air Canada had previously replaced all its Boeing aircraft with Airbus and Bombadier CRJ regional jets.

Eastman Kodak will likely lay off 15,000 employees and close approximately a third of its factories by 2006 as it shifts from traditional photography to digital photography.

Already feeling the repercussions of the shift, and the high cost of restructuring involved in the shift, Kodak reported a net first quarter loss of $142 million in 2005 as opposed to $21 million in earnings for the same period last year.

This news sent Kodak’s shares down 8 percent in early trading on Friday. Even ignoring $152 million in exceptional costs, Kodak only posted $9 million in earnings in the quarter, below expectations.

Traditional film sales dropped 17 percent in the United States and 29 percent worldwide in the quarter, although sales of digital products were up by 23 percent. Kodak is in the process of shifting over from traditional photography operations to digital products, health imaging, and high-volume printing.

The tactic of offering gasoline sales at warehouse club stores does not seem to be paying off in the current climate of rising gas prices, as two such companies saw the value of their shares drop in early trading on Friday illustrated.

Costco Wholesale Corp., the largest warehouse club operation in the United States, saw shares drop 9 percent on a report that weak profits from gasoline sales will probably send its earnings for the rest of the fiscal year below Wall Street expectations. Another wholesale club operation, BJ’s Wholesale Club, Inc., that offers gasoline sales at many of its stores, also lost ground, falling 6 percent early Friday.

Costco estimated that its current-quarter profits will be between 41 cents and 43 cents per share, below the Wall Street estimate of 46 cents per share. Costco’s estimate for next quarter’s earnings also will most likely fall below Wall Street’s estimate of 70 cents per share, at somewhere between 63 cents and 67 cents per share.

Viacom reported a 7 percent rise in its first-quarter operating profits in spite of poor performance by its radio and television divisions, as its cable networks showed strong growth.

This sent Viacom’s shares up 2.7 percent, or 94 cents, to $34.90 in mid-day trading in New York on Tuesday.

Viacom’s overall earnings in the first quarter of 2005 were $585 million, or 36 cents per share.

The operating income of its television division, which includes the broadcast networks CBS and UPN, dropped 8 percent to $304 million, and its radio division saw a 5 percent drop in its operating income, to $189 million.

However, Viacom’s cable group, which includes MTV and Nickelodeon, scored a 19 percent gain in revenues and a 20 percent rise in its operating income.

This report seems to justify Viacom’s previously announced intention to split into two separate groups, along cable/broadcast lines, a split that could happen as early as the first quarter of 2006.

Viacom’s first-quarter earnings for 2005 actually dropped 18 percent from the same period in 2004, but that quarter’s earnings were enhanced by a $111 million tax benefit.

Southwest Airlines, the Dallas-based U.S. budget air carrier and the only U.S. air carrier to show profits regularly since the World Trade Center attacks of 2001, reported Thursday that it had first-quarter net earnings of $76 million, up from $26 million in the same period last year.

It is the first company in the U.S. airline sector to report first-quarter earnings. Southwest is expected to be the only airline to report profits. The nine largest U.S. air carriers are expected to report losses totaling at least $2 billion.

The Thursday report indicated that Southwest’s profits were aided by the airline’s purchase of fuel at prefixed prices. This move saved the airline $155 million in the quarter.

The report warned, however, that second-quarter fuel prices are likely to be somewhat higher than in the first quarter and that second-quarter passenger numbers will probably be down from last year’s numbers because of an early Easter break this year. Southwest also said it had increased available seats by adding seven new airplanes to its fleet.