Turkey fans are 'Turketarian' in Butterball's ads

NEW YORK — Are you a "Turketarian"?

Trying to get the word out that Butterball makes more than just the big bird on Thanksgiving Day, Butterball is launching two TV ads that showcase its range of products from turkey sausage to turkey burgers and focus on people who love the lean protein.

Butterball, based in Garner, North Carolina, combined with Carolina Turkeys in 2006. The privately held company estimates that it makes one out of every five turkeys eaten on Thanksgiving. But Butterball also wants to be known for its other products such as smoked sausage and turkey burgers.

Butterball does not disclose sales figures. But rising demand for chicken and turkey — which both are less expensive than beef or pork — has led to strong demand for poultry producers like Butterball.

For its first TV effort in six years, Bill Klump, senior vice president for corporate marketing at Butterball, said the company interviewed 1,000 consumers about how they feel about turkey. Turkey lovers fell into two camps: those that prefer turkey as their main protein of choice and those who are more driven by health benefits.

The TV ads show people happily eating turkey products.

"If you can't imagine quitting turkey cold turkey. If 'protein shake' means dancing around with a turkey burger. If you think it's time we consider a new national bird.

Then you are what butterball calls a 'Turketarian," a voiceover states.

Butterball's ad agency, Y&R, considered other words, like "ambassador." But that seemed too formal, so they went with "Turketarian."

"It's one of those words that if you step back and think about it for a second the connotation very obvious," Klump said.

The campaign began last year with print and radio ads and social media. Now, Butterball is adding the TV spots, along with the other components. The ads run May 12 and run through July 4, as well as November, on network and cable stations.

The company did not disclose spending on the effort.

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Yellen foresees continued low borrowing rates

WASHINGTON — Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen said Wednesday that the U.S. economy is improving but noted that the job market remains "far from satisfactory" and inflation is still below the Fed's target rate.

Speaking to Congress' Joint Economic Committee, Yellen said that as a result, she expects low borrowing rates will continue to be needed for a "considerable time."

Yellen's comments echo her earlier signals that the Fed has no intention of acting soon to raise its key target for short-term interest rates even though the job market has strengthened and economic growth is poised to rebound this year. The Fed has kept short-term rates at a record low near zero since December 2008.

At the same time, Yellen cautioned that geopolitical tensions, a renewal of financial stress in emerging markets and a faltering housing recovery pose potential threats.

"While conditions in the labor market have improved appreciably, they are still far from satisfactory," Yellen said. "Even with recent declines in the unemployment rate, it continues to be elevated."

Rep. Kevin Brady, R-Texas, the committee chairman, pressed Yellen to specify when the Fed might start raising short-term rates and how it will act to pare its record holdings of Treasury and mortgage bonds.

Yellen said she couldn't give a date. But she said the Fed expects to begin raising rates when it sees enough progress in restoring full employment and when inflation has returned to its target of 2 percent.

She pointed to the Fed's latest quarterly economic forecasts, which showed that most members expect the Fed to begin raising short-term rates in 2015 or 2016.

Yellen noted that even when the Fed's bond purchases end, it intends to maintain its high level of holdings and will begin to reduce them only when the economy can withstand the pullback. The Fed's record investment portfolio exceeds $4 trillion.

But Yellen also stressed that the Fed wants to avoid past mistakes of keeping its policies loose for too long and thereby fueling inflation. She noted the prolonged bout of high inflation of the 1970s.

"The lessons of that period are very real to all of us, and none of us want to make that mistake again," Yellen said, referring to her Fed colleagues.

Yellen's testimony marked her first chance to discuss the economy since the Fed met last week and the government said Friday that the economy added 288,000 jobs in April, the biggest hiring surge in two years. The unemployment rate dropped to 6.3 percent, its lowest point since 2008, from 6.7 percent in March.

But the unemployment rate fell that far because many fewer people began looking for work in April, thereby reducing the number of unemployed. The proportion of Americans who either have a job or are looking for one has reached a three-decade low.

Still, at last week's Fed meeting, the central bank indicated that it saw signs of a strengthening economy. It approved a fourth $10 billion reduction in its monthly bond purchases to $45 billion, down from an original $85 billion. The Fed has been buying bonds to try to keep long-term rates low.

The Fed is expected to end its bond purchases by year's end. But even when it does, the Fed will maintain its holdings at a record level above $4 trillion, thereby providing continued downward pressure on long-term rates.

In its statement last week, the Fed reiterated its expectation that short-term rates would remain near zero for a "considerable time" after the bond buying program ends. Yellen repeated that language Wednesday.

"Many Americans who want a job are still unemployed, inflation continues to run below (the central bank's) longer-run objectives and work remains to further strengthen our financial system," she said.

In a speech last month in New York, Yellen had stressed the need for the Fed to remain flexible in deciding how to manage interest rates. She said that it was important to be able to respond to "significant unexpected twists and turns the economy may make."

Many Republicans have expressed concerns that the Fed's low-rate programs are raising the risks of financial market instability and high inflation in the future.

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Tech jitters continue to weigh on world stocks

LONDON — Jitters over the valuations of technology companies weighed on markets on Wednesday until fairly dovish remarks from Federal Reserve chair Janet Yellen helped shore up the mood.

Investors in Internet company shares remained cautious after sharp drops the day before. Twitter's share price fell another 3.8 percent after an 18 percent plunge the day before.

European and U.S. markets were somewhat more stable amid hopes that Russia was softening its stance over Ukraine, which has become increasingly unstable as pro-Russian militants clash with military forces.

The improving market backdrop was reinforced when Yellen told Congress' Joint Economic Committee that she expects low borrowing rates to remain a "considerable time."

Britain's FTSE 100 closed flat at 6,796.44 while Germany's DAX was up 0.7 percent at 9,534.06. The CAC-40 in France rose 0.4 percent to 4,446.44.

In the U.S., the Dow was 0.6 percent higher at 16,499 while the S&P 500 rose 0.4 percent to 1,875. The tech-heavy Nasdaq was 0.6 percent lower at 4,056.

In Asia, the Nikkei 225 stock index sank 2.9 percent to 14,033.45 as the U.S. dollar's relative weakness against the Japanese yen hit exporter shares. It was the first day of trading in Japan after a long weekend.

Elsewhere in Asia, South Korea's Kospi lost 1 percent and Hong Kong's Hang Seng shed 1.1 percent. Shares in Australia, Singapore, China, India and Taiwan fell while Indonesian and New Zealand shares edged higher.

In other markets, benchmark U.S. crude for June delivery was up $1.19 to $100.69 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

In currency trading, the euro slipped 0.1 percent to $1.3915 while the dollar was steady against the Japanese yen, at 101.71 yen.

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Behind Alibaba IPO is unlikely China success story

HONG KONG — The mammoth IPO planned by e-commerce giant Alibaba Group highlights founder Jack Ma's improbable rise to China's entrepreneur-in-chief.

Ma, a former English teacher who flunked his college entrance exam twice, founded Alibaba in his apartment in 1999 with 17 friends and $60,000 they had raised. Charismatic by the gray standards of Chinese CEOs, the impish Ma has cult status in China, where he's seen as the equivalent of Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos or Bill Gates.

In a country where state-owned enterprises dominate business and many owe their wealth to Communist Party ties, Ma stands out for his huge self-made success. Alibaba, which started as a site to link Chinese manufacturers with buyers overseas, became under Ma an e-commerce behemoth that is now expanding into banking, digital maps and online video.

The paperwork for Alibaba's initial public offering says it will raise at least $1 billion from the U.S. listing, but finance professionals believe that is a conservative notional figure to get the IPO process rolling. Estimates for the amount that could be raised have ranged from $10 billion to $20 billion. The price at which shares are sold might give Alibaba a market valuation of $200 billion, which is greater than Facebook.

Ma, who owns 8.9 percent of the company, is likely to become even wealthier following the IPO. He's already worth $8.4 billion, making him China's fifth-richest person, according to Forbes.

Ma, 49, stepped down as CEO last year, saying in a letter to employees that he's "no longer young for the Internet business." He remains chairman and an important figurehead for the company's 22,000 employees, though he's now focusing on philanthropy and recently established a charitable trust potentially worth billions.

"It would be hard to find a private citizen in China who's had such a big impact on the economy," said Porter Erisman, maker of a documentary about Alibaba and the company's former vice president of marketing. "I look at him as the pied piper of entrepreneurs in China. He created this platform, he pushed China online."

Ma is known as an enthralling speaker with a penchant for puns and slogans who enjoys performing at annual company meetings called Alifests. To mark the company's 10th anniversary in 2009, some 16,000 staff gathered in a stadium at Alibaba's Hangzhou home base were treated to a performance by Ma dressed as a punk rocker.

The entrepreneur may have inherited his knack for showmanship from his parents, who were performers of pingtan, a traditional form of storytelling and balladry that was banned during the violent upheaval of the Cultural Revolution.

As a boy, he was terrible at math but better at English and improved it by volunteering as tour guide in Hangzhou, a picturesque city near Shanghai. He earned an English degree from Hangzhou Teachers' Institute after passing the college exam on the third try. He taught at a local college, then set up his own translation company but moonlighted as a street peddler, hawking flowers, books, flashlights and clothes, to balance the books.

Ma first encountered the Internet in 1995. After word got around about his English proficiency, he was asked to help sort out a road construction project that was going sour over unpaid debts by meeting the American joint venture partner in California. Ma soon realized he had no intention of paying up. To stop Ma from leaving, the American locked him in his Malibu mansion for several days and, by some accounts, flashed a gun.

"It was really like a classic American-style Hollywood film. I was taken hostage by a kind of Mafia, so that I just left my suitcase behind," Ma said, recounting his escape to Liu Shiying and Martha Avery, authors of the 2009 book "Alibaba."

Ma persuaded the American to let him go by telling him they could work together on a project involving the Internet, which he had heard about vaguely. Instead of heading home, he flew to Seattle, where he met some contacts who showed him the World Wide Web. A search for beer turned up results on American, German and Japanese varieties but no Chinese beer. Ma was intrigued and the potential for an Internet company devoted to things Chinese dawned on him.

The seeds for Alibaba were planted with China Pages, which Ma founded in 1995 with $2,400 scraped together from relatives. It created websites for local businesses, starting with his translation firm. He partnered with a state-owned enterprise but the venture stumbled after a falling out.

He worked briefly at an e-commerce venture in Beijing backed by the Ministry of Foreign Trade and Economic Cooperation but left because of the lack of dynamism. He went back to Hangzhou to set up Alibaba, a business-to-business website that linked China's countless exporters with buyers around the world. He picked the company's name because of the universal appeal of the Arabian Nights story and associated catchphrase "Open Sesame."

The company launched retail website Taobao in 2003 to compete with eBay in China. Ma was unfazed about going up against the U.S. giant, famously saying, "Ebay is a shark in the ocean. We are a crocodile in the Yangtze River. If we fight in the ocean, we will lose. But if we fight in the river, we will win." Ebay shuttered its China site in 2006, a major victory for Ma.

Taobao's first items for sale came from Ma and the company's seven original employees, who each tried to find four things to sell.

"For the first 3 days, nobody came to buy so we had to buy it ourselves," Ma told a Hong Kong investment conference last year. "A week later somebody came to sell. Everything they sold, we bought it. We had a whole room of garbage."

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Follow Kelvin Chan at twitter.com/chanman

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Siemens CEO shakes up company to raise profits

FRANKFURT, Germany — German industrial equipment maker Siemens AG has launched a sweeping restructuring to raise disappointing profits and better compete with peers such as General Electric.

The company said Wednesday it is knocking out a layer of upper management, buying a key business to strengthen the crucial power generation division and shedding its line of hearing aids.

Siemens is a huge company with 359,000 employees worldwide that makes everything from gas- and wind-powered turbines to trains, medical imaging devices, factory machines and security equipment. But it has struggled to cut costs and raise profit margins.

Its new CEO, Joe Kaeser, hopes to make it nimbler by eliminating the four broad sectors overseeing its many businesses, and trimming the number of those business divisions from 16 to nine. Each division will get a profit margin target as Siemens aims to focus on fields where it can grow and earn the most.

Cutting out an entire level of management will reduce bureaucracy, speed up decisions, and save 1 billion euros a year, the company says.

Kaeser, who laid out the changes at a news conference in Berlin on Wednesday, took over last year after the previous CEO, Peter Loescher, missed several profit targets.

The revamp comes as Siemens is considering making an offer for the power generating business of France's Alstom, which has already received an offer from General Electric. Kaeser dismissed speculation that Siemen wasn't really serious about Alstom and mainly hoped to raise the price that GE would pay. "If I was not serious I would not waste my time or the time of my team," Kaeser said.

The company meanwhile said it had agreed to buy the gas turbine and compressor business from Britain's Rolls-Royce PLC for 950 million euros ($1.32 billion). The business makes small, highly efficient turbines the oil and gas industry can use to supply power, in particular on offshore platforms where space is limited.

Siemens will also spin off its hearing-aid business through a stock-market offering, and manage its medical business as a separate entity within Siemens.

The company meanwhile announced what it called a "mixed" earnings performance in the first three months of the year, the company's fiscal second quarter. Net profit rose 12 percent to 1.15 billion euros ($1.61 billion). But revenues fell 2 percent to 17.78 billion euros, and new orders slipped 13 percent to 18.43 billion euros. New orders are key to future profits as it delivers large projects with long lead times.

The results "showed that we still have a lot to do to improve our operating performance," Kaeser said. He reaffirmed the company's earnings projections.

The company named American oil executive Lisa Davis, until now with Royal Dutch Shell, to the top management board overseeing the company's businesses in gas and steam turbines and wind power, as well as its North and South America regions. She replaces Michael Suess, who resigned.

Shares in Siemens, which is based in Munich, rose 1.6 percent to 95.28 euros in early afternoon trading in Europe.

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US productivity fell at 1.7 percent rate in 1Q

WASHINGTON — U.S. productivity fell in the first quarter while labor costs rose, reflecting the economic slowdown caused at the start of the year by harsh winter weather.

The Labor Department said Wednesday that productivity declined at an annual rate of 1.7 percent in the January-March period, after growing at a 2.3 percent rate in last year's fourth quarter.

"Special factors, namely the weather, are to blame," said Jennifer Lee, a senior economist at BMO Capital Markets.

The falling productivity coupled with a slight increase in hourly compensation led to labor costs rising 4.2 percent in the first quarter. Labor costs had fallen in the previous two quarters.

Economic growth stalled in the first three months of this year, increasing just 0.1 percent, according to initial estimates by the Commerce Department. Freezing temperatures and snow storms disrupted growth. Retail sales and factory output plunged in January, only to recover as the weather warmed.

The economy might even have shrunk 0.6 percent during the first quarter, the research firm Marcoeconomic Advisers said Tuesday after the release of March trade data.

Productivity measures output per hour of work. Greater productivity should raise living standards because it enables companies to pay their workers more without having to increase prices, which could boost inflation.

Despite the increase in labor costs last quarter, overall inflation remains mild.

The Federal Reserve tracks productivity and labor costs when setting interest rate policies. Fed officials have attempted to spur growth by keeping short-term interest rates at record lows, while at the same time, purchasing bonds to try to keep long-term rates down as well.

Since December, however, the Fed has reduced its monthly bond-buying to $45 billion from $85 billion.

But the Fed is committed to holding down short-term rates for an extended period, saying that it expects to maintain those rates "well past" the time that unemployment dipped below its previous threshold of 6.5 percent.

The unemployment rate fell in April to 6.3 percent from 6.7 percent, a sign that economic growth should rebound in the second quarter.

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LevelUp moves to new office, adding employees and partners

Update: A previous version of this story incorrectly stated LevelUp had 200,000 monthly active users in 2012. That number referred to the total number of users who had used the service by August 2012, who at the time were described as active users.

Mobile payments company LevelUp has increased its user base and headcount quickly in the past four months and has moved to a new office in Downtown Crossing.

"Since January, we've grown about 15 percent and in the process moved to new offices in Downtown Crossing," said Matt Kiernan, marketing director for LevelUp.

The company said it has 1.5 million users, and active users - users with five or more purchases in a month - have increased 35 percent since January, from 80,000 to 110,000.

"We're seeing an increase in launches in white label apps where we've been seeing a lot of user growth," Kiernan said. "We are growing in terms of partnerships, revenue in terms of campaign sales."

Orders per months and spend volume are up 50 percent since January as well.

LevelUp attributes the growth to new enterprise partners, particularly partners outside of Boston including Dunn Bros Coffee, which has 65 locations in Minneapolis. The coffee company's app uses LevelUp.

"We have a couple thousand people in Minneapolis and the surrounding area paying with the LevelUp app," he said. "We are seeing growth in the middle of the country."

LevelUp has also been hiring quickly, adding 11 positions since January, a 15 percent increase. The new office, Kiernan said, is slightly bigger, has a better layout and feel, and features murals from local artists.

"It's just a better environment for getting work done," he said. "It allows us to hire more people."

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US stocks turn lower, erasing an early gain

NEW YORK — The stock market is turning lower in morning trading, erasing an early gain. Whole Foods plunged after cutting its profit forecast.

KEEPING SCORE: The Standard & Poor's 500 index fell four points, or 0.2 percent, to 1,864 an hour after the opening bell. The Dow Jones industrial average fell three points to 16,397 and while the Nasdaq composite index fell 46 points, or 1.1 percent, to 4,035.

FRESH SQUEEZE: Whole Foods plunged $9.62, or 20 percent, to $38.32 after the company cut its profit outlook late Tuesday. The company said its facing increased competition as supermarkets, big-box stores and even online retailers step up their offerings of organic foods. It's the third time the grocery chain has trimmed its profit forecast in the last six months.

PERCOLATING BUSINESS: Mondelez surged following news that it will combine its coffee business with D.E. Master Blenders to form a new company, Jacobs Douwe Egberts. The new company will sell Gevalia, Tassimo and Jacobs, among other coffee brands. Mondelez rose $2.78, or 8 percent, to $37.95.

IT'S ELECTRIC: Electronic Arts jumped $4.71, or 17 percent, to $32.73 after the video-game maker turned in stronger results late Tuesday. The maker of "The Sims" and "Madden NFL" reported higher profits and revenue than Wall Street expected and forecast stronger earnings over the next year. Electronic Arts has soared 43 percent so far this year.

YELLEN: Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen told Congress' Joint Economic Committee that she expects low borrowing rates will continue to be needed for a "considerable time." She also said stress in emerging markets and a faltering housing recovery are potential threats.

OTHER MARKETS: The yield on the 10-year Treasury note edged up to 2.61 percent from 2.59 percent late Tuesday. Crude oil rose 83 cents to $100.35 a barrel.

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Raids target synthetic drugs, sellers across US

WASHINGTON — The Drug Enforcement Administration on Wednesday broadened its national crackdown on synthetic drug manufacturers, wholesalers and retailers as federal agents served hundreds of search and arrest warrants in at least 25 states.

Agents served warrants at homes, warehouses and smoke shops beginning early morning, DEA spokesman Rusty Payne said. The largest single operation was a statewide effort in Alabama. Agents also were active in Florida and New Mexico, among other states.

The DEA has been cracking down on synthetic drugs, including so-called bath salts, spice and Molly, since the drugs first gained widespread popularity years ago.

In late 2010, the agency responsible for enforcing federal drug laws moved to ban five chemicals used to make synthetic marijuana blends, including K2, Spice and Blaze. Since then, drug manufacturers have continued to modify their formulas and develop new chemical mixtures.

Ferdinand Large, staff coordinator for DEA's Special Operations Division, said the agency is now broadly focused on Chinese chemical manufacturers and the distributors, wholesalers and retailers in the United States. There is also growing concern about where the money is going.

Investigators have tracked hundreds of millions of dollars in drug proceeds being sent to Yemen, Syria, Lebanon and Jordan, Large said.

"The money is going there, where it stops we don't know," Large said. Large said it's also unclear which criminal organizations may be profiting from the drug proceeds.

U.S. authorities long have worried about criminal and terrorist groups in the Middle East using drug trafficking to fund illicit activities.

In a November 2013 report on transnational organized crime, DEA Administrator Michele Leonhart said "drug trafficking organizations and terror networks are joined at the hip in many parts of the world.

"DEA must relentlessly purse these dangerous individuals and criminal groups that attempt to use drug trafficking profits to fuel and fund terror networks, such as Hezbollah," Leonhart said.

Payne said Wednesday's crackdown was focused strictly on U.S. targets and involved 66 DEA cases, seven investigations led by Immigration and Customs Enforcement special agents and several others led by Customs and Border Protection that focused on express consignment shipments.

Last year, the DEA and Customs and Border Protection wrapped up a 7-month investigation that ended in 150 arrests and the seizure of about a ton of drugs.

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Follow Alicia A. Caldwell on Twitter at www.twitter.com/acaldwellap

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US stocks are mostly higher in early trading

NEW YORK — Stocks are mostly higher in early trading as more U.S. companies report positive earnings surprises.

The Standard & Poor's 500 index rose four points, or 0.2 percent, to 1,872 in the first few minutes of trading Wednesday.

The Dow Jones industrial average rose 48 points, or 0.3 percent, to 16,445. The Nasdaq composite slipped five points, or 0.1 percent, to 4,075.

Mondelez International, which makes Triscuits and Oreos, soared 9 percent after saying it would combine its coffee business with D.E. Master Blenders.

Activision Blizzard and Molson Coors rose after their earnings beat analysts' estimates.

Whole Foods plunged 20 percent after cutting its profit outlook.

Bond prices were little changed. The yield on the 10-year Treasury note edged up to 2.60 percent.

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