The chase by Marty Cej:
Research In Motion executives are beginning their annual general meeting with shareholders. BNN begins its special coverage of the event now. Kim Parlee and Andrew McCreath will report live from the company's hometown of Waterloo, ON throughout the trading day, including interviews with company executives and shareholders. They will also Tweet live from inside the AGM as RIM's leadership face tough questions from shareholders. The company, Canada's largest by market value just a few years ago, has plenty to answer for and shareholders will be less forbearing than in recent quarters after new CEO Thorstein Heins announced a few weeks ago a wider-than-expected loss, 5,000 job cuts and a delay in the release of the BB10 operating system and phones to 2013.
One of the biggest challenges RIM faces is convincing current BlackBerry users to consider buying the next iteration of the smartphone and winning over new smartphone users. Much of that challenge falls to Rick Costanzo, executive vice-president of global sales. Constanzo sits down with us this morning to discuss the opportunities in new markets and the challenges in mature ones.
In the meantime, European equity markets are rallying and Spanish bond yields are tumbling 22 basis points after European finance ministers agreed to accelerate the disbursement of 30 billion euros in aid to shore up Spanish banks by the end of this month and may move the costs of the bailouts off the Spanish government's balance sheet to better insulate the Spanish economy from the debt crisis. "There's no emergency here," Luxembourg Finance Minister Luc Frieden told Reuters. He did. He really said that. Anyhow, the finance ministers were stymied in their attempts to make any advances in the creation of a single European banking supervisor, something that would help make direct recapitalization of European banks easier, but the markets are applauding this short-term answer to the Spanish question.
There are plenty of important sectors and stocks to watch today. Keep an eye on the semiconductor chipmakers after Advanced Micro Devices last night warned of an unexpected decline in second-quarter sales. The world's second-biggest maker of PC processors said demand was being hamstrung by slower economic growth in China and failing economies in Europe. The rising popularity of tablets is also hurting AMD, which doesn't make chips for the devices. Intel, meanwhile, last night agreed to invest as much as $4.1 billion in Dutch chip-equipment maker ASML to help shave time off production schedules.
Watch the U.S. coal stocks today after Patriot Coal filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection after the close of trading yesterday. Some companies will have direct contractual exposure to Patriot, such as Peabody and Arch Coal, while others might simply be affected by a change in sentiment towards the whole sector, which continues to be assailed by falling demand as energy generators turn to cheap natural gas. Other stocks to watch include Alpha Natural Resources, Cloud Peak, Walter Energy and Consol Energy.
Let's not forget about Alcoa, which kicked off the second-quarter U.S. earnings season. Alcoa earned 6 cents a share, in line with expectations, but the company is still likely to see earnings-per-share downgrades from analysts as they factor in lower aluminum prices. UBS today cut its 2012 profit forecast for Alcoa to 38 cents a share from 58 cents, and lowered its 2013 forecast to $1.26 from $1.56. UBS is also cutting its EPS estimates for base metals miners by 38 percent for 2012 and 12 percent for 2013 to reflect lower demand and falling prices.