Fears Fed could speed taper pushes weigh on stocks

PARIS — Fears that the U.S. Federal Reserve could rein in its stimulus more aggressively than previously weighed on stocks Wednesday.

Payroll processor ADP said Wednesday that companies added 238,000 jobs in the U.S. in December, up slightly from 229,000 in the previous month. November's figures were also revised higher.

While the numbers signal the growing strength of the world's largest economy, there are fears in the markets that they may prompt the Fed to speed up its plan to pare back its monthly financial asset purchases, which have kept a lid on borrowing rates over the past few years and shored up stocks. At its last policy meeting in December, the Fed took its first step to exit its current stimulus by deciding to trim its purchases by $10 billion to $75 billion this month.

"Fear of accelerated tapering has led to a slight sell-off," said Alex Conroy, a financial trader at Spreadex.

Investors were also likely viewing the ADP number skeptically, as historically they have not been the best guide to the official figures, which will be released on Friday.

The latest economic data from the eurozone wasn't able to buoy spirits, either. Eurostat, the EU's statistics office, said retail sales in the eurozone jumped 1.4 percent in November, far more than expected, while the unemployment rate held steady at 12.1 percent for the eighth month running.

Although the figures suggest the eurozone recovery might pick up, the bloc still faces big problems — the unemployment rate is at a record high and there are huge disparities across the region.

In afternoon trading, France's CAC-40 was down 0.2 percent 4,253, while the DAX in Germany dropped 0.1 percent 9,494. Britain's FTSE index fell 0.4 percent to 6,732.

The euro fell slightly to $1.3602, although that price is still relatively high.

On Wall Street, the Dow Jones industrial average was down 0.2 percent at 16,496 soon after the open while the broader S&P 500 index fell 0.1 percent to 1,835.

Earlier, Asian stocks mostly rose. Asian traders tend to be very sensitive to the U.S. economy, and they may have been anticipating the strong payrolls number. In addition, a decline in the U.S. trade deficit for November, which was partly due to increased domestic oil production, has raised expectations that fourth quarter economic growth will be higher than 3 percent.

Tokyo's Nikkei 225 gained 1.9 percent, closing at 16,121.45 and Hong Kong's Hang Seng added 1.3 percent to 22,996.59. Benchmarks in India, Southeast Asia and Taiwan also rose. China's Shanghai Composite lost early gains, closing 0.2 percent lower at 2,044.34.

In another sign there is hope the global economy is improving, energy prices rose Wednesday. Benchmark crude was up 14 cents to $93.81.

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Associated Press writer Teresa Cerojano in Manila, Philippines, contributed to this report.

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Monsanto 1Q profit climbs on biotech soybean sales

WASHINGTON — Monsanto reported better-than-expected first quarter earnings Wednesday on higher sales of the company's biotech soybean seeds and its signature herbicide Roundup.

Its earnings rose 8 percent, and its shares rose more than 2 percent in morning trading.

The St. Louis-based company said it earned $368 million, or 69 cents per share in the three months ended Nov. 30. That compares to earnings of $339 million, or 63 cents per share, in last year's quarter.

Revenue climbed 7 percent to $3.1 billion, driven by sales of its Intacta soybean seeds to farmers in Argentina and Brazil. The biotech engineered soybean, which is the company's first product designed for a non-U.S. market, repels caterpillars and withstands Monsanto's herbicide Roundup. Soybean sales grew 16 percent to $267 million for the quarter.

The company's performance beat the average estimate of analysts polled by FactSet. The consensus estimate was for earnings of 64 cents per share on sales of $3.069 billion in revenue for the quarter.

Its shares rose $2.93, or 2.5 percent, to $116.12 in morning trading.

Monsanto reiterated previous expectations of earnings between $5 and $5.20 per share for fiscal 2014. Analysts expected earnings of $5.25 for the year.

Monsanto, which has dominated the bioengineered-seed business for more than a decade, expects earnings growth in the "mid-to-high teens" for fiscal 2014, based largely on international seed sales in Latin America, Asia and other emerging markets.

The company's biotech seeds have genetically engineered traits that the company says benefit farmers enough that they come out ahead, despite the seeds' higher cost.

Total seed and seed license revenue declined to $1.68 billion from $1.76 billion, due to lower sales of the company's best-selling product, biotech corn seeds. Lower seed sales were offset by higher sales for the company's herbicide division, which increased $283 million to $1.47 billion.

While the vast majority of Monsanto's business comes from genetically enhanced seeds and herbicide, the company is making investments in computer-based farming tools.

On Wednesday the company announced a new agreement with U.S agricultural distributor WinField to explore collaborations on agriculture-based information technology. Monsanto recently acquired The Climate Corporation, a Silicon Valley startup that uses weather forecasting and data analysis to help farmers increase their yield each season. WinField markets its own so-called "precision farming" system that uses satellite imagery to help farmers plot out their planting strategy.

Monsanto executives have touted the Climate Corp. purchase as part of a broader strategy to combine Monsanto's seed biotechnology with the emerging field of computer-assisted farming.

Analysts say it could be years before Monsanto's investments in the space become profitable.

Monsanto reported an 18 percent increase in research and development spending in its first quarter to $409 million.

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Probe: $27B in wasteful health-care spending in Mass. in 2012

More than one-third of health care spending in Massachusetts is wasteful, squandered on unnecessary hospital readmissions and emergency room visits, according to detailed new report released today.

Wasteful spending in 2012 may have amounted to almost $27 billion, the report estimated.

The biggest waste of money — $700 million — was spent on readmissions of patients recently released from hospitals. Unnecessary ER visits tallied up $550 million in waste.

The study from the Health Policy Commission, a state watchdog group charged with monitoring health care costs in Massachusetts, also found that preventable infections acquired in health care settings cost $10 million to $18 million a year.

"Wasteful spending often results in poorer outcomes for patients," the report said.

It also slammed high-cost hospitals for not always providing high-level care: "Some hospitals deliver high-quality care with lower operating expenses, while many higher-expense hospitals achieve lower quality performance."

Massachusetts spends more per capita on health care than any other state, and health care costs here have grown faster than the national average.

The Health Policy Commission will discuss the findings of its report at a meeting today.

Developing...

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Stocks open lower on Wall Street ahead of Fed news

NEW YORK — Stocks are mostly lower in early trading as investors hold back ahead of the release of the latest news from the Federal Reserve.

The Dow Jones industrial average fell 88 points, or 0.6 percent, at 16,435 in early trading Wednesday.

The Standard & Poor's 500 index was down five points, or 0.3 percent, at 1,831. The Nasdaq composite fell eight points, 0.2 percent, to 4,154.

Telecommunications and energy stocks fell the most.

Ford rose 1 percent after CEO Alan Mulally said he would not leave to run Microsoft.

Later Wednesday, investors will get minutes from the Fed's December policy meeting, where officials voted to start pulling back on the bank's economic stimulus program.

Bond prices fell. The yield on the 10-year Treasury note rose to 2.98 percent.

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Germans defend exports as US Treasury's Lew visits

BERLIN — Germany's finance minister dismissed criticism of his country's export strength as his U.S. counterpart pressed for Europe's biggest economy to do more to fuel domestic demand.

Germany has long faced criticism from the U.S. and others for relying too heavily on its exports and, some contend, not importing enough to boost other economies in Europe.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew was visiting Berlin, part of a trip that also includes France and Portugal, as official data showed Germany's trade surplus widening further.

"We continue to believe that policies that would promote more domestic investment and demand would be good for the German economy and the global economy," Lew told a news conference after meeting German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble.

Chancellor Angela Merkel's weeks-old government, an alliance of right and left, is planning to introduce a national minimum wage and invest in infrastructure. But it is broadly keeping unchanged its approach to Europe's debt crisis, in which it has made cutting budget deficits a priority.

Lew stressed the importance of "getting the balance right" between promoting short-term growth and getting public finances in order, and said that policy decisions by Germany's new government "are consistent with that approach."

Germany's Federal Statistical Office reported a trade surplus for November of 17.8 billion euros ($24.2 billion), up from 16.7 billion the previous month. Exports rose 0.3 percent to 93.2 billion euros when adjusted for seasonal and calendar factors, while imports declined 1.1 percent to 75.4 billion euros.

German officials have little time for criticism of the country's export performance. Schaeuble noted that Germany's economic growth has been driven mainly by domestic demand recently.

"The eurozone as a whole has a very small surplus .... and without the German surplus toward third countries, the eurozone would have no surplus at all, but a deficit," Schaeuble said. "The American deficit won't be improved by a European one being added to it."

Alongside criticism from the U.S., the International Monetary Fund has said a smaller surplus is the only way to even out the imbalances that plague the eurozone.

Chris Williamson, chief economist at Markit, cautioned that any German move to emphasize exports less may not have the positive effect on the eurozone that some expect.

"Stronger German export gains, especially to non-euro countries, helps boost business activity at companies within the euro area that are suppliers to German firms," he said.

German and European economic growth are expected to pick up this year after the eurozone emerged from a lengthy recession. Separate data released Wednesday showed that German industrial orders were up 2.1 percent in November, following an equivalent decline the previous month.

Orders from inside Germany increased by 1.9 percent, while demand from other countries in the eurozone was flat and orders from countries outside the currency area climbed 3.5 percent.

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David Rising contributed to this report.

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Barnes & Noble promotes Nook head to CEO

NEW YORK — Book seller Barnes & Noble has promoted the head of its Nook business to chief executive of company.

The struggling retailer said Wednesday Michael Huseby, 59, will take the role immediately. The post has been vacant since July when CEO William Lynch left the company.

It comes after the busy holiday season that can account for up to 40 percent of a retailer's sales. Barnes & Noble will release holiday sales figures on Thursday.

Huseby will take the helm of the New York company as it struggles to turn around results in the face of tough competition and a book market that is shifting to digital books. The company is also dealing with an accounting probe by the Securities and Exchange Commission.

In its most recent fiscal second quarter ended Oct. 26, the company returned to a profit, helped by cost cuts, but revenue fell 8 percent declining across all segments.

The SEC told the bookseller Oct. 16 that it was investigating the company's restatement of earnings announced in July as well as an employee allegation that it improperly allocated some information-technology expenses between its Nook and retail segments. Barnes & Noble Inc. began reporting its Nook business sales separately from its retail business in late 2012 as it evaluated ways to become more profitable.

Huseby joined Barnes & Noble as CFO in 2012 and was promoted to president of the company and CEO of Nook Media in 2013. Before joining Barnes & Noble he was CFO of cable company Cablevision Systems Corp.

Barnes & Noble shares rose 6 cents to $14.81 in morning trading.

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Pa. pizza shop delivers medicines during cold snap

LIGONIER, Pa. — A western Pennsylvania pizza shop has been delivering prescription medicines and other supplies to ill and elderly residents so they don't have to go outside in the bitter cold.

Tom Wynkoop, owner of Fox's Pizza Den in Ligonier, tells WPXI-TV  that he tweeted his offer because his community about 45 miles east of Pittsburgh has a lot of elderly residents.

Wynkoop told those in need to call his cellphone to arrange deliveries of prescription medicines and other products — no strings attached. That's right: Folks don't have to order food from Wynkoop's shop to get help.

Wynkoop says his shop has made four deliveries. He says, "You have to be there for your residents."

The region was hit with record-low, subzero temperatures on Tuesday. Temperatures were subfreezing by Wednesday.

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Information from: WPXI-TV, http://www.wpxi.com

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Your next TV: Will it be Ultra HD?

LAS VEGAS — After attempts to hawk 3-D and OLED TVs fizzled in recent years, television manufacturers are taking small steps toward making a new technology, Ultra HD, more viable for mainstream consumers.

It's the first TV format to be driven by the Internet video-streaming phenomenon, and at the International CES gadget show this week, major streaming players Netflix and Amazon said they'll offer movies and TV shows in the format, and Sharp introduced a relatively inexpensive TV with near-Ultra HD quality.

The moves are meant to coax consumers to pedal faster on their TV upgrade cycles. At the moment, most Americans buy new TVs about once every seven years. TV manufacturers would love to create another wave of buying like the one that sent millions of people to stores a few years ago to upgrade from standard definition, tube TVs to flat-screen HD models.

Unlike the 3-D TV trend, which quickly eroded into a tech fad in recent years, analysts say Ultra HD may actually catch on. With screens that house four times more pixels than regular HD TVs, Ultra HD is a simple enough upgrade to gain widespread adoption in the next few years. Aside from being visually jarring, 3-D required sometimes pricey special glasses and gave some people headaches. Because Ultra HD content can be delivered over a standard high-speed Internet connection, it isn't likely to get bogged down in a format war that plagued the Blu-ray disc standard.

"You see it, you get it. It's a big, awesome picture," said Ben Arnold, a consumer electronics analyst at NPD Group. "Consumers will be interested in it as prices come down. Consumers are also moving toward bigger screens. All of this is good news for (Ultra HD)."

In side-by-side comparisons, Ultra HD is remarkably crisper than HD. It displays richer skin textures, finer details and less pixelation. The extra resolution becomes more important as consumers spend more money on bigger screens that amplify images.

But Ultra HD, or 4K, is in its very early stages. Although prototypes and demonstration models have been around for years, the first sets for consumer use didn't hit the market until 2012 with prices in the tens of thousands of dollars. Only about 60,000 Ultra HD sets were sold last year in the U.S., with 485,000 estimated this year, according to the Consumer Electronics Association.

Today, the lowest-priced Ultra HD TV being sold on Amazon.com is a 39-inch model from Seiki Digital for $500. The cheapest name-brand manufacturer's model, a 58-inch screen from Toshiba, sells for $2,750. And LG announced this week it would sell an Ultra HD set as small as 49 inches diagonally, which could bring entry level prices closer to $2,000 for top brands. Sharp's new Quattron+ brand, which brings near-4K resolution to sets by making better use of HD pixels, plans to price a 70-inch set around $3,200.

While those price tags are only likely to appeal to early-adopters, they're getting closer to prices people currently pay for big screens running only HD.

But that still isn't close enough, said James McQuivey, principal analyst with research firm Forrester. "These TVs won't actually sell well as long as they are priced high, something TV makers already know because in the last year they've dropped prices considerably," he said.

To entice consumers even further, a handful of content companies promised to make more movies and shows available for the super-sharp screens.

Netflix Inc. CEO Reed Hastings made the rounds at news conferences Monday to declare that the streaming video company is working on distributing 4K video over the Internet. Hastings said all Netflix original series are being shot in 4K and that the company is working with studios on formatting movies and TV shows in 4K, with one of the first series being Sony's "Breaking Bad."

Both Amazon.com Inc. and Hulu are shooting original series in 4K, and Amazon said it was working with major content producers Warner Bros., Lionsgate, 20th Century Fox and Discovery to make 4K content available.

The emergence of Ultra HD marks the first time a major TV standard is being pushed forward with the Internet. "It's a chance for the Internet to really shine," Hastings said.

Downloading huge Ultra HD files would take download speeds of only 15 megabits per second and could even work with a Wi-Fi connection, Hastings said. LG's chief technology officer, Skott Ahn, told The Associated Press that 4K content could be streamed with 8-15 Mbps Internet speeds using the latest HEVC video compression standard.

It's not clear how close the industry is on a Blu-ray disc standard for Ultra HD. No announcements about a format were made at the show, even as The Digital Entertainment Group, an industry consortium of studios and electronics makers, declared that strong consumer interest in 4K "bodes well for the home entertainment industry."

Enough people have to own Ultra HD sets for pay TV providers to start enabling service. If the CEA's forecast of 485,000 units sold in the U.S. comes true, that could provide enough of a base for cable, telecoms and satellite to begin to upgrade their systems, according to Pat Esser, president of cable TV provider Cox Communications, which serves about 10 percent of U.S. pay TV subscribers. If 50,000 Cox subscribers buy Ultra HD TVs, "then you've got my attention," Esser said in an interview.

Widespread adoption by live-TV producers still seems a ways off.

Sony Corp. promised an end-to-end production suite for professionals, and Sony Electronics President Mike Fasulo on Monday unveiled a Handicam that shoots in ultra HD for the home enthusiast, priced at $2,000 - "As I like to say, 4K for $2K."

He rattled off a list of upcoming movies, shows and live events that will be shot in 4K and offer something for ultra HD set buyers to watch, everything from Spike Lee's latest movie, "The Sweet Blood of Jesus," to the FIFA World Cup in June.

"We're not talking about this as a science project 10 years into the future," he said at Monday's news conference. "This is all happening now."

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Ga. banker accused of stealing millions seeks bond

STATESBORO, Ga. — A judge must decide whether a former Georgia banker accused of stealing millions from investors should be freed on bond after he spent the past 18 months eluding authorities.

Aubrey Lee Price is scheduled to appear Wednesday for a bond hearing before a federal magistrate judge in Statesboro. Authorities say the 47-year-old Price misspent, embezzled and lost $21 million before he vanished in June 2012, leaving letters that indicated he planned to commit suicide.

A Florida judge declared Price dead a year ago, but he was arrested last week during a traffic stop in south Georgia.

Price has been indicted in Georgia and New York on bank fraud charges. The bank where Price served as a director, the Montgomery Bank & Trust near Vidalia, closed after its assets were depleted.

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Stocks mixed as investors wait on the Fed

NEW YORK — Stocks were mixed in morning trading Wednesday as investors held back ahead of the latest news from the Federal Reserve. The Fed releases minutes later in the afternoon from its December policy meeting, where central bank officials voted to start reducing the Fed's extraordinary support for the U.S. economy.

KEEPING SCORE: The Dow Jones industrial average lost 62 points, or 0.4 percent, to 16,469 as of 10:55 a.m. Eastern. The Dow was dragged lower by Proctor & Gamble and McDonald's, both down more than 1 percent. The Standard & Poor's 500 index rose a point to 1,836 and the Nasdaq composite index rose 16 points, or 0.4 percent, to 4,169.

JOBS, JOBS, JOBS: The big theme of the week is job news. A private survey showed U.S. businesses added the most jobs in a year in December, powered by a big gain in construction work. Payroll processor ADP said Wednesday that companies added 238,000 jobs in December, better than the 200,000 economists had predicted. The ADP data sets the stage for Friday's government jobs report. Investors expect the U.S. economy created 190,000 jobs last month and the unemployment rate remained steady at 7 percent.

FED MINUTES: Later this afternoon, investors will get the minutes from the Federal Reserve's mid-December meeting. That's when Fed officials voted to start pulling back on the bank's huge bond-buying program, which came as a surprise to many investors. Wall Street will be looking for the reasons why the Fed believed it was time to start reducing stimulus.

EARNINGS SEASON ARRIVES: Big publicly traded companies will start reporting their quarterly financial results Thursday. Dow member Chevron reports after the closing bell Thursday as well as former Dow member Alcoa. Investors are going to be looking to see if the recent improvement in the U.S. economy has translated into higher earnings for corporate America.

FORD GAINS: Ford rose 22 cents, or 1.5 percent, to $15.60 after CEO Alan Mulally said he would not leave to run Microsoft. Mulally was considered a top candidate for the position, having led the turnaround for Ford turning the financial crisis.

BIG PHARMACEUTICAL DEAL: Forest Labs was up $8.86, or 15 percent, to $67.57 after the company said it would buy Aptalis, which specializes in treatments for gastrointestinal problems and cystic fibrosis, for $2.9 billion in cash.

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