Boston Globe near sale of HQ to Concord co.

The Boston Globe is close to reaching an agreement to sell its Morrissey Boulevard headquarters to a Concord commercial real estate firm, the newspaper said.

CEO Mike Sheehan said the Globe is in the process of completing a purchase-and-sale agreement with Winstanley Enterprises, which has plans for mixed uses on the 16.5-acre site in Dorchester.

"We had a number of bids. We pared it down to three," Sheehan said. "We should have a (purchase and sale agreement) in a couple of weeks."

Winstanley currently owns and operates 43 buildings totaling about 5.5 million square feet throughout New England, according to its website.

The Globe had hired commercial real estate firm Colliers International to identify potential buyers. Sheehan declined to say how much the property will be sold for, but real estate experts have estimated it could be worth as much as 
$75 million.

Sheehan said the three offers were chosen as finalists in part because of price, but also because of what the bidders planned to do with the property.

"If I lived in this neighborhood, that's exactly what I'd want here," Sheehan said.

In a memo to employees, Sheehan said the Globe is likely to move out of its 815,000-square-foot headquarters at the end of 2016 or the beginning of 2017.

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CVS earnings soar on sales of specialty drugs

CVS Health Corp.'s third-quarter earnings exceeded Wall Street expectations, as growing sales of specialty drugs helped offset the loss of tobacco products, which the company stopped selling in September.

The nation's second-
largest drugstore chain's net income fell to $948 million, or 81 cents per share, from
$1.25 billion, or $1.02 per share a year earlier.

Adjusted to extinguish debt and for amortization costs, earnings were $1.15 per share, topping the $1.14 per share that was the average estimate of analysts surveyed by Zacks Investment Research. Revenue also surpassed expectations, rising to $35.02 billion, compared to the $34.65 billion analysts had forecast, according to Zacks.

Revenue from the Woonsocket, R.I.-based company's pharmacy benefits management, or PBM, side increased 16 percent, and operating profit from that segment grew 7.3 percent, helped by new business and the growth of expensive specialty drugs for complex chronic health conditions.

"PBM revenue growth and profitability were above our estimates, boosted by net new business and growth in specialty pharmacy, including ... contributions from Specialty Connect," a new program that allows CVS customers with these prescriptions to either pick them up or get them through the mail, according to Meredith Adler, a Barclays Capital analyst.

CVS said revenue from its retail pharmacy business increased 3 percent, but the loss of tobacco sales hurt earnings by 3 cents per share. The full-year impact of missing tobacco products will reduce earnings by 7 to 8 cents per share, the company said.

"As expected, the tobacco exit negatively impacted," Peter Costa, a Wells Fargo Securities analyst, said in a note. "We expect this impact may nearly double in Q4."

Herald wire services contributed to this report.

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US services firms grow more slowly, but hiring up

WASHINGTON — U.S. services firms expanded more slowly in October, but the pace of growth was still healthy. Hiring also rose to the fastest pace in more than nine years.

The Institute for Supply Management said Wednesday that its services index dropped to 57.1 in October, down from 58.6 in September. That was the second straight drop after the index had risen steadily since February to 59.6 in August, the highest in eight years. Any reading over 50 indicates expansion.

Steady hiring this year means more Americans are earning paychecks, which supports spending at retail stores, hotels and other service companies. Wednesday's data indicates that growth among service firms is cooling off a bit after rapid expansion earlier this year.

The ISM is a trade group of purchasing managers. Its survey of services firms covers businesses that employ 90 percent of the American workforce, including retail, construction, health care and financial services firms.

A gauge of hiring rose to 59.6, its highest level in nine years. That increase suggests that Friday's government report on jobs and unemployment could show another strong gain.

Still, there were plenty of signs that growth among service firms may have reached a plateau after accelerating for most of this year. A gauge of new orders fell nearly two points to 59.1, and a measure of order backlogs also fell.

"The majority of the respondents' comments reflect favorable business conditions," said Anthony Nieves, chair of the ISM's services index committee. "However, there is an indication that there continues to be a leveling off from the strong rate of growth of the preceding months."

New export orders fell sharply, to 53.5 from 57.5 in September, a sign that slowing growth overseas is beginning to impact U.S. firms. However, most of the firms responding to the survey are focused on the U.S. market and don't have any international business. Only about 35 percent said they had any overseas sales.

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Raytheon buys Blackbird Technologies for $420M

NEW YORK — Raytheon Co. said Wednesday that it bought privately held cybersecurity company Blackbird Technologies for about $420 million.

Raytheon, a defense contractor based in Waltham, Massachusetts, said the acquisition will help expand its surveillance and cybersecurity services to clients. Blackbird, headquartered in Herndon, Virginia, has customers in the defense, intelligence and law enforcement industries.

"Blackbird expands Raytheon's already-established footprint in the intelligence community market while helping to grow our cyber operations and special missions support to the Department of Defense," said Lynn Dugle, president of Raytheon's intelligence information and services unit, in a statement.

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Report: State foreclosures spike again

The number of foreclosure petitions in Massachusetts grew for the seventh straight month in September, but one expert says the numbers are not an accurate reflection of what is happening in the housing industry right now.

Foreclosure petitions rose 68 percent from September 2013, while foreclosure deeds — finalized foreclosures — rose 5 percent from a year before, according to a report from The Warren Group. Petitions rose to 734 across the state and deeds rose to 294.

The spike is not concerning, said Cassidy Murphy, editorial director of The Warren Group.

"Most of what is happening right now is people clearing out their backlogs of what they didn't do," Murphy said. "It's not much to write home about."

The increase is because of an artificially suppressed foreclosure market last year while lenders waited for new legislation to be passed.

"(Lenders) were waiting to hear what they needed to do," Murphy said. "We were not seeing them do (foreclosures) at a normal rate."

Murphy said even the inflated number of foreclosure deeds pales in comparison to the height of the housing crash.

"There were thousands of foreclosures a month, now we're down to a couple hundred," she said.

She said the backlog of foreclosures that has been building up while lenders wait for legislative guidance may not be cleared until late next year.

"Things will be bouncing around a little bit," she said.

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Boston.com blunders over contest victor

In politics, sometimes you can have it both ways. Boston.com proved that last night.

In the minutes before news outlets nationwide called the New Hampshire U.S. Senate race for U.S. Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, the website prematurely posted a pair of conflicting stories — one entitled "Scott Brown Wins U.S. Senate Seat for New Hampshire," the other under the headline "U.S. Senator Jeanne Shaheen Beats Scott Brown in New Hampshire."

The site responded to the error on their Twitter page soon after, saying "... The NH election stories were published prematurely. We're taking steps to fix the problem. Sorry for any confusion."

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HoJo seeks stars of ’60s ads

The Howard Johnson hotel chain is hunting for a former Quincy High School student, who came to the aid of a sailor on leave while training to be an apprentice cook in the former Dorchester HoJo's restaurant in the 1960s.

A nationwide search is underway for Ronald J. Brodeur, then a 17-year-old Quincy High junior, and 13 other former HoJo hotel and restaurant employees featured in the brand's "Spotlight on You" advertising campaign in the '60s.

As part of its 60th anniversary, HoJo's will reward the workers with five-night hotel stays and possibly invitations to appear in another ad campaign.

Founded in Quincy in 1925 as a drugstore with a soda fountain, HoJo's is now a chain of 432 hotels based in Parsippany, N.J., under Wyndham Hotel Group.

Brodeur assisted a sailor en route to visit his fiancee in Attleboro after returning from sea to Boston. The sailor had pulled up in front of the Dorchester HoJo's in a borrowed car, and Brodeur ended up helping him remount a wheel so he could make it to a garage. The good deed earned Brodeur a cash reward and a starring role in a HoJo ad.

"We chose to focus on the ads from the 'Spotlight on You' campaign because they speak not only to a very special time in the Howard Johnson brand's history — a time when the brand was growing and expanding by leaps and bounds across the interstates with hotels and restaurants, but also because they highlight an unwavering commitment to hospitality and great customer service," said Rui Barros, Wyndham Hotel Group's president and managing director of North American franchise operations.

The chain has launched its nationwide search through classified ads in newspapers, Facebook and other social media channels, and its own websites.

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New school music to charter’s ears

A music-oriented Boston charter school stands to be part of Roxbury's revival after signing a purchase-and-sale agreement for land to build a permanent facility about a quarter-mile from Dudley Square.

The 16-year-old Conservatory Lab Charter School plans to consolidate two temporary Brighton and Dorchester locations into a new school for about 450 pre-kindergarten through eighth-grade students. The land is part of the planned $140 million mixed-use Bartlett Place development.

"We're very excited to be where we are right now in terms of the process," Head of School Diana Lam said. "Most of our students come from Roxbury and the surrounding area, and we feel that also it is right at the center of the city."

The Conservatory Lab is "music-infused," with a focus on project-based learning and daily music instruction. All students play an instrument, and the school has 10 orchestras.

Plans call for a 70,000- to 72,000-square-foot school.

"We are engaged in trying to get the money together," Lam said. "The building may cost anywhere from $30 (million) to $35 million, but we don't need to raise all of that because we will have a stream of revenue."

The school receives tuition-reimbursement funds from the state to the tune of about 
$5.8 million this year.

The 1.6-acre building site is in the former 8.5-acre MBTA Bartlett bus yard bought in 2010 by Nuestra Comunidad Development Corp. and Dorchester's Windale Developers. Their Bartlett Place plans include 323 mixed-income apartments and owner-occupied homes, 55,000 square feet of retail and commercial space — including a 12,000-square-foot Harvest Co-op Market — in addition to the school.

"We have three buildings that could go into construction next year, which is exciting for Roxbury," said David Price, Nuestra Comunidad's executive director. The charter school could be the first, because it needs to open by mid-2016, he added.

The school would be open to the community at night and weekends for classes, workshops and music lessons.

"We're very excited to expand the services that we can provide to community members in Roxbury and to students that may not attend our school, but who live in Roxbury," Lam said.

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Survey: US businesses add 230,000 jobs in October

WASHINGTON — U.S. companies added 230,000 jobs in October, a private survey said, the most in four months and a sign that businesses are still willing to hire despite signs of slowing growth overseas.

Payroll processer ADP said Wednesday that the job gains were slightly ahead of the 225,000 added in September, which was revised up from an initial estimate of 213,000. Job gains above 200,000 are usually enough to lower the unemployment rate.

The data indicates that steady growth in the past six months has encouraged businesses to step up hiring. That could lead to a healthy job gain in Friday's government report on jobs and unemployment. The ADP numbers cover only private businesses and sometimes diverge from the government's more comprehensive report, which includes government agencies.

Economists forecast that the government's report will also show that employers added 230,000 jobs in October, according to a survey by FactSet.

Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Analytics, said that faltering economies in Europe, China and Japan haven't yet caused U.S. employers to pull back on adding workers.

"I don't think what's going on overseas is going to undermine the very strong numbers we're seeing right now," he said.

However, it's too early to say that other international trends, such as the strengthening dollar, will have no impact in the coming months, Zandi added. A stronger dollar makes U.S. exports more expensive overseas.

In fact, U.S. exports slowed in September, the government said earlier this week, a sign that weakness overseas may already be hitting some companies. Weaker overseas sales caused the trade deficit to jump 7.6 percent in September.

The job gains in the ADP report were broad-based: Construction firms added a solid 28,000 jobs, while manufacturing gained 15,000 positions. Professional and business services, which include mostly higher-paying positions such as accountants and engineers, gained 53,000.

Hiring has been strong this year, partly fueled by average growth of about 4 percent at an annual rate in the April-June and July-September quarters. Employers have added an average of 227,000 jobs a month in 2014, which puts this year on pace to be the strongest year for job creation since 1999.

Other recent reports suggest that Friday's government jobs report could be a healthy one. Manufacturers hired at a faster pace in October than in the previous month, according to a survey by the Institute for Supply Management, a trade group.

And applications for unemployment benefits have fallen to 14-year lows, evidence that employers are cutting very few jobs.

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Engine in failed rocket launch likely to be pulled

NEW YORK — Orbital Sciences says it will likely stop using the type of engines that were employed when its unmanned Antares commercial supply rocket bound for the International Space Station exploded moments after liftoff last week.

The company says its investigation of the crash is continuing, but preliminary results point to a failure in one of its two main engines involved in the first stage of launch. Orbital says it still plans to fulfill its contract with NASA to deliver all remaining cargo to the Space Station by the end of 2016.

The engines involved are liquid oxygen and kerosene-fueled AJ26 engines made by Aerojet Rocketdyne. The engines were originally designed and produced during the Soviet era in Russia, though modifications have been made.

On its website, Orbital said each AJ26 engine was sent from the Aerojet Rocketdyne facility in Sacramento, California, to the NASA/Stennis Space Center in Mississippi for hot fire acceptance testing, prior to heading to the Wallops Island, Virginia, launch site.

It will introduce an already-planned upgrade to the Antares propulsion system early in 2016.

Orbital Sciences Corp., based in Dulles, Virginia, says there will be no cost increase for NASA and it doesn't expect costs related to the accident to be material for Orbital in 2015.

Shares of Orbital Sciences rose $1.06, or 4.2 percent, to $26.18 in morning trading Wednesday.

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