Business Channel 2006-10-17&19

There are plenty of skeptics though, if you think back to it, when Wall Street analysts 1 began talking about Google as a 400-dollar-a-share stock, do you remember that?

Yeah.

Well, on Thursday, it closed at 426 dollars, and after the close it posted a stellar quarterly earnings 2 report. Its profit nearly doubled from a year ago to 733 million dollars, just absolutely blowing past the Street's expectation, and the stock, Richard, is soaring again today.

All I gotta say is criminy. (hehehe) cri, I just, I mean, like, you are right, 400, I didn't expect it to hit that hard, er that high when they first had the, the IPO. I did not even believe the price they were asking. Er, you know, what these profit numbers are that you're just mentioning? Were they a surprise at all?

Oh, no, not really. I mean, you can never be 100% sure when it comes to corporate 3 earnings. But in its very short life as a public company, Google has just surpassed Wall Street's earning expectations in seven out of eight quarters, typically by a wide margin 4. And in a conference call late Thursday, Google CEO said, and I'm quoting here "business is very, very good here", end quote. Wall Street is certainly pleased with Google's results and one brokerage is even upping its price target on the stock too. Are you ready for this, Richard? 600 dollars.

Oh, man, (Yeah) I, I'm, eyes covered here. Er, I don't own any Google and I should have as ah, you can probably surmise 5. What does it mean for folks like myself who don't have any Google?

Ah, like us, 'cause I don't have Google either. (Ok, alright) Un, we're all having to dig a little deeper. I mean shoppers, for example, spent an average of 738 dollars last year during the holiday season. According to a new survey, spending is expected to increase this year to more than 790 dollars. The National Retail 6 Federation 7, which sponsored the survey, says 62% of shoppers plan to spend their money in department stores. That's up, er, from about 50% back in 2003 and a lot of that traffic will be coming from younger shoppers, a very highly desirable demographic. Nearly 80% of the 18 to 24-year-old age group plan to shop at department stores for holiday merchandise and that is up from 66% just two years ago. So the question people ask is what is fueling the upcoming buying spree? The answer: lower gas prices, at least that's part of the factors. Er, the NRF says that that's giving consumers the confidence to celebrate the holidays in style.

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1. stellar--adj. outstanding; Of or relating to a star performer.

2. criminy--Part of Speech: interjection

Definition: an exclamation 8 of surprise, a mild oath; also written crimine,
Etymology 9: Italian crimine 'crime'; euphemism 10 for 'Christ'

3. surmise--verb. to conjecture 11 or guess

4. demographic--noun. a single vital or social statistic 12 of a human population, as the number of births or deaths.