News Summary for July 25, 2011

This is your Benzinga news summary and traders' outlook for Monday, July 25, 2011, covering headlines from overnight and Monday's pre-market session. Today in domestic pre-market trading, U.S. equity futures are trading lower after Congress failed to work out a deal to raise the debt ceiling over the weekend. The U.S. dollar and the Euro are both flat this morning. Earlier this morning, Credit Suisse upgraded Mindray Medical (NYSE:
MR
) to Outperform and JP Morgan upgraded Starwood Hotels (NYSE:
HOT
) to Outperform. View all of
today's upgrades here
. Goldman Sachs downgraded Kroger (NYSE:
KR
) to Sell and downgraded Safeway (NYSE:
SWY
) to Sell as well. View all of
today's downgrades here
. Citigroup initiates Pandora Media (NYSE:
P
) at Speculative Buy, BMC raised Xerox's (NYSE:
WHR
) price target to $14 from $13, and Goldman Sachs lowered PepsiCo's (NYSE:
PEP
) price target to $74 from $83. View all other
analyst ratings here
gold
and
silver
futures are positive in pre-market trading, with gold over the $1615 per ounce level, hitting new all-time highs earlier this morning. Energy futures are lower with
crude oil
dropping over $1 dollar per barrel, currently near the $98.90 level, and
gasoline
futures are trading near the 3.062 level; however,
natural gas
futures are up over 0.5%. Finally,
copper
futures are lower by about 0.5%. On the earnings front, Kimberly-Clark (NYSE:
KMB
) reported Q2 EPS of $1.18 on revenues of $5.26 billion; The Street was looking for $1.15 per share on revenues of $5.13 billion. Bank of Hawaii (NYSE:
BOH
) reported Q2 EPS of $0.74; The Street was looking for $0.78 per share. The company also authorized an increase in its buyback program by $120 million. Lorillard (NYSE:
LO
) reported Q2 EPS of $2.05 on revenues of $1.69 billion; The Street was looking for $2.02 per share on revenues of $1.15 billion. In corporate news, Research in Motion (NASDAQ:
RIMM
) announced the retirement of COO Don Morrison. The company also
announced it will cut about 2,000 jobs
. Also, United Natural Foods (Nasdaq:
UNFI
) today
announced that it has signed a three-year distribution agreement
with Safeway (NYSE:
SWY
). This concludes your news summary for July 25, 2011.
Market News and Data brought to you by Benzinga APIs

To add Benzinga News as your preferred source on Google, click here.