WSJ By The Numbers - Top 10 for Oct.30
In the universe of global IPOs, the fraction of non-U.S. IPOs listed in the U.S. has fallen to under 10% so far in 2006 from 37% in 2000.
| As Home Owners Face Strains, Market Bets on Loan Defaults: Subprime lending has put as many as 2 million families into homes over the past decade, helping push the U.S. homeownership rate up to 69% from 65% -- a major shift toward an "ownership society". Since the beginning of 2002, banks and specialized lenders have made some $2.2 trillion in loans, more than five times the amount in the preceding five-year period, and includes a growing share of "affordability" products such as "piggyback," "interest-only" and "no-doc" loans. First American Real Estate Solutions estimates that about $640 billion in subprime loans made in 2004 and 2005 will reset to higher rates over the next five years. | $2.2
T Home Loans |
| Pain From U.S. Housing Slump Is Likely To Linger, but Some Say Worst May Be Past: Bank of America expects residential construction to decline at an annual rate of 13% in the current quarter, 5% in next year's first quarter and 2.2% in the second quarter before starting to grow again. Largely because residential investment dropped at an annual rate of 17%, the real GDP growth rate declined to 1.6% in the third quarter, according to an estimate released by the Commerce Department. Without that drop in residential building, the GDP growth rate would have been about 2.7%. | 13% Residential Decline |
| Wal-Mart Posts Softest Same-Store Sales Since '00: Wal-Mart Stores posted a 0.5% increase in sales at established U.S. stores in October, the smallest gain in nearly 6 years. Retail Metrics estimates that the 56 retailers it tracks will report an average gain of 3.3% for October on Thursday. Factoring out Wal-Mart, that estimated average rises to 4.8%. Thomson Financial forecasts a 3.9% gain, which jumps to 4.8% without Wal-Mart. In Wal-Mart's last fiscal year, its fourth quarter -- covering November, December and January -- accounted for 28.6% of its annual sales and 32% of its net income. | 0.5% Wal-Mart Growth |
| If You Want to Scream, Press...: "Most companies expect that chat and email will replace phones [in call centers], but that's not happening," says Esteban Kolsky, a research director at Gartner. Currently only 5% of customers seeking help from an outsourced call center use chat and 10% to 15% use email, he says. The number of home-based U.S. outsourced agents is expected to more than double to 300,000 by 2010 from nearly 140,000 today, according to IDC. | 300k Agents |
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Time Inc. Picks Its Web Winners -- And Its Flagship Isn't One: This year, Time Inc. expects Internet revenue to contribute about 15% of net income at Sports Illustrated, Time Inc.'s second-biggest title, and 25% at the business titles, which include Fortune, Money and Business 2.0. CNNMoney.com and SI.com, both receaive over 6 million unique users per month while Time.com and People.com receive around 4 million unique users, according to Neilson Net Ratings. |
25% Online Share |
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Baseball Shrugs Off Postseason, As Other Parts of Business Thrive: The just-completed World Series between the St. Louis Cardinals and Detroit Tigers set a low record -- Television viewership was the lowest ever, down about 8% from last season. The series hit a new low for the fourth time since 2000. MLB generated a record $5.2 billion in revenue this year on the strength of another high -- 76 million ticket-buying fans. Preliminary Nielsen Media research numbers show an average TV viewership of 15.8 million fans per game this year. |
$5.2B MLB |
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Stocks Get Lift From the Return Of U.S. Investors: TrimTabs, an independent research firm that tracks fund flows, estimates that U.S. stock mutual funds expanded a net $3.2 billion this month through Tuesday, exceeding September's $2.2 billion net inflow. And exchange-traded funds based on U.S. tocks attracted $6.4 billion so far this month. |
$6.4B ETF Inflows |
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October Saw Most Deals In More Than a Year: A total of 20 companies launched IPOs that raised $3.5 billion in October, compared with 12 companies raising $1.4 billion in October 2005, according to Dealogic's count. That is the busiest month for the U.S. IPO market since 30 stocks made their debut in August 2005. October also proved to be a much smoother pricing environment for IPOs as some 75% of the offerings were priced within or above their expected ranges, compared with 71% in September and 57% in August. |
$3.5B October IPOs |
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WSJ By The Numbers - Metrics 2.0 |
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