Wednesday, August 8, 2012


News Corp., Monster Beverage fall after hours

Zynga COO resigns in the wake of reshuffle

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By Carla Mozee, MarketWatch
LOS ANGELES (MarketWatch)—Monster Beverage Corp. shares tumbled Wednesday evening after the drink maker’s quarterly profit came in short of Wall Street’s expectations, while shares of News Corp. fell as the media company’s revenue missed the consensus estimate.
Meanwhile, Zynga Inc. shares came under pressure as an executive resigned in the wake of a reshuffle at the social-games maker.
Monster Beverage MNST -1.58%  shares dropped as much as 20%, but recently pared the loss to 9.3% at $61.25. The company’s second-quarter profit rose 30% to $110 million, or 59 cents a share, but analysts polled by FactSet had expected earnings of 62 cents a share. Sales climbed 28% to $593 million, and Wall Street was looking for $595 million.Read more about Monster Beverage's quarterly report.
Ahead of the report, shares of Monster Beverage, whose brands include Monster Energy and Hansen’s Natural, had nearly doubled over the last 12 months.

Mossberg on coming laptops

George Stahl and Walt Mossberg discuss why it may be a good idea to wait to buy a laptop, and Katie Boehret reviews apps that make it easy to earn money on side jobs. Photo: Lenovo.
News Corp. NWSA -0.59%  shares fell 3% to $23. The company said fiscal fourth-quarter revenue was $8.4 billion, down from $9 billion a year ago, and analysts had pegged revenue at $8.76 billion for the most recent period. Earnings excluding the charges were 32 cents a share, matching expectations.
News Corp. swung to a net loss on $3 billion in pretax charges related to its plan to spin off its publishing businesses, with the loss coming in at $1.6 billion, or 64 cents a share. A year ago, it made $683 million, or 26 cents. News Corp. said in June that it planned to split its publishing operations from its media and entertainment businesses. Publishing operations include The Wall Street Journal and MarketWatch, publisher of this report. Read more about News Corp.'s results.
Zynga shares ZNGA -2.06%  gave up 2.7% to $2.87 as the company said in regulatory filing that Chief Operating Officer John Schappert has resigned, effective immediately. His executive position and post on Zynga’s board “was not tendered in connection with any disagreement with the company on any matter relating to the company’s operations, policies or practices.”
Schappert was sidelined in an executive re-shuffle announced last week that put two other executives in charge of game development. Zynga’s games including “CityVille” and “FarmVille” are featured on Facebook Inc.’s FB 0.00%  platform.
But advancing were shares of Allscripts Healthcare Solutions Inc. MDRX +3.90%  as the company raised its full-year earnings forecast on a reduction in shares outstanding and an increase in borrowings associated with stock buybacks. Shares gained 7.7% to $10.34. More on Allscripts's results, outlook.
In regular session trading, U.S. stocks closed mixed and struggled to solidly extend a winning streak into a fourth session. The Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA +0.05% ended 7 points higher at 13,175.64. The S&P 500 Index SPX +0.06%  edged up about 1 point at 1,402.22 while the Nasdaq Composite Index COMP -0.15%   shed 0.2% to 3,011.25.  Read about U.S. stocks in Market Snapshot.

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