Resources Empower Bay Street

Resources Empower Bay Street

Wednesday, February 2, 2005, 4:15 PM EST: (Thomson Financial Corporate Group): Toronto stocks continued to receive support from gold, material, energy and mining shares. Earnings from BCE and U.S.-based Google also garnered attention. Also in the States, the FOMC raised interest rates by 25 basis points to 2.5%, as expected.

* The S&P/Toronto Stock Exchange Composite Index jumped 33.81 points, or 0.36%.

* Telecom stocks rose on the session. BCE reported fourth-quarter net income of C$0.45 a share, up from C$0.41 a share a year earlier. The most recent result matched the mean analyst estimate, as provided by Thomson First Call. Revenue advanced to C$5 billion from C$4.8 billion. For the year, excluding restructuring items and net gains on investments, BCE earned C$2.02 a share, compared with C$1.89 a year prior.

* Meanwhile, oil prices declined and now stand below US$47 a barrel, as traders digested the latest U.S. weekly inventory reports. The Energy Department said that crude inventories declined by more than 300,000 barrels for the week ended January 28, but are still 12% higher than a year ago. Also, motor fuel inventories climbed 1.6 million barrels.

* Ivanhoe Energy advanced, after it reported a natural gas discovery at the Peach prospect in the North Antelope Hills area in Kern County, California. Meanwhile, EnCana Corp. is proceeding with its planned sale of conventional oil and gas assets in Western Canada, the Gulf of Mexico, Ecuador and some natural gas gathering and processing facilities in the U.S. Rocky Mountain states.

* Canadian Oil Sands Trust said that following the unsuccessful start-up of a hydrogen plant at the Syncrude oil sands facility, Hydrogen Plant 9-3 remains off-line for an undetermined amount of time. Petro-Canada and Imperial Oil are amongst a group of firms with interests in the project. Also, Haywood lifted its price target on Talisman Energy to C$48 from C$42.

* Within the steel industry, members of United Steelworkers at Stelco's AltaSteel subsidiary in Edmonton will vote tomorrow to renew a strike mandate. In similar news, sixty union workers at Dofasco subsidiary Powerlasers Ltd. voted to strike if they do not reach a first contract with the firm.

* Elsewhere, Lionore Mining International entered into a joint venture with African Rainbow Minerals at the Nkomati nickel mine in South Africa. The deal is valued at US$48.5 million. Also, First Calgary Petroleum moved higher on the session. The Wall Street Journal reported that Royal Dutch/Shell Group, Total SA, Statoil ASA and other firms are considering an investment in the firm, according to sources close to the situation. First Calgary put itself up for sale this past October.

* Gold shares posted strong gains ahead of Teck Cominco's quarterly release and despite a slightly lower close for the precious metal and strength in the greenback versus the euro. In corporate reports, Teck Cominco rallied ahead of its quarterly report, due out after the close. Merrill Lynch analyst Mike Jalonen noted that its fourth-quarter earnings per share forecast of C$0.77 may too be conservative.

* Within the technology group, Emergis said that its fourth-quarter loss from continuing operations narrowed to C$0.25 a share from C$0.45 a share last year. Quarterly revenues declined to C$45.6 million from C$68 million last year. Turning to research, Deutsche Bank started Research In Motion at "hold."

* South of the border, Google's fourth-quarter profit and revenues surged to levels above the mean Thomson First Call estimates. In other upbeat tech news, Adobe Systems and Nvidia upwardly revised their quarterly outlooks.

* In U.S. industrial reports, Boeing's fourth-quarter net profits dropped, while the firm posted better-than-expected revenues. In Canada, Bear Stearns downgraded Canadian National Railway to "peer perform" from "outperform."

-- Linda.Shea@thomson.com; Thomson Financial Corporate Group

This is Thomson Financial Corporate Group's Canadian Commentary,which is updated twice daily. The information herein is believed to be true and accurate, we take no responsibility for inaccurate information and reserve the right to update our reports. For more financial information at your fingertips, please visit www.irchannel.com. If you have any questions please e-mail James Sang at james.sang@tfn.com or call 646.822.6233 For more information about Thomson Financial visit us on-line at http://www.thomsonfinancial.com/.

PRNewswire -- Feb. 02


Source: Thomson Financial Corporate Group

Web site: http://www.thomsonfinancial.com/


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