Apr 15, 2005 (JAGfn.com via COMTEX) --

IBM: Reit Neutral - IBM preannounced first quarter revenue of $22.9 billion versus our estimate of $23.4 billion. EPS of $0.85 was inline with our recently revised estimate related to equity compensation expense, and below our previous estimate of $1.00. It should be noted that equity compensation expense only accounted for a $0.10 impact to the quarter.

LLY: Reit Outperform - Judge Young ruled that Lilly's '382 patent for Zyprexa is valid and enforceable. The decision's language was very clearly in favor of Lilly that Zyprexa was NOT anticipated, NOT obvious over prior art, and NOT barred by public use.

FITB: Reit Outperform - Management indicated that the low end of its previous guidance of $3.20-$3.30 is achievable, but is dependent on maintaining good deposit growth. We are reducing our EPS estimates to $3.10 and $3.45 from $3.15 and $3.50 for 2005 and 2006, respectively, to account for the slightly lower net interest margin than we expected and the possibility that deposit growth will moderate from recent levels.

ETN: Reit Outperform - Eaton's first quarter results were in line-but the "innards" were not, and the market reacted. The automotive and truck segments were really impressive, which shows what price can do, but the electrical products and fluid power businesses lagged. In both cases, the underlying businesses were good-but European segments were quite disappointing.

ETN: Reit Outperform - AVY pre-announced a significant 1Q05 earnings miss, calling for EPS of roughly $0.61, which was well below the $0.74 consensus and the $0.71-0.78 range management had reaffirmed on March 14th. While the shortfall was a bit surprising, it was even more so given that raw materials were not the culprit.

AVY: Reit Outperform - AVY pre-announced a significant 1Q05 earnings miss, calling for EPS of roughly $0.61, which was well below the $0.74 consensus and the $0.71-0.78 range management had reaffirmed on March 14th. While the shortfall was a bit surprising, it was even more so given that raw materials were not the culprit.

TSN: Reit Neutral - National Beef Packing, the fourth largest beef packer with 11% market share, reported a loss of $13 MM compared to a profit of $1.8 MM a year ago (when profits were heavily negatively impacted by mad cow disease which virtually eliminated exports). Swift, the third largest meat packer (with 15% share) reported a loss of $39.6 MM from its beef operations compared to a loss of $70.4 in the prior year, of which $43 MM in losses were attributed to mad cow.

NTY: Reit Neutral - NYT is down 14.1% year to date, underperforming the S&P 500 by 10.0%. The stock continues to struggle on a relative basis as a result of challenges on the advertising growth. April appears to be shaping up similar to January/February, which saw advertising growth in the 2-3% range. Again, the recovery is category and market specific and NYT's large market, national skew is not working in its favor. We are optimistic that H2 will accelerate, but we'd like to see a few months of solid data before getting more constructive on the stock.

DJ: Reit Outperform - Dow Jones' stock sold off over 4.6% post the company's Q1 results. We believe the market over-reacted to management's conservative (in our opinion) Q2 guidance. In fact, we are moderately encouraged by the recent advertising trends at the WSJ.

MNI: Reit Outperform - McClatchy remains our favorite mid-cap newspaper stock due to its top of class management team, attractive asset base, and significant large-market exposure (Minneapolis, Raleigh, and Sacramento) relative to its size. In addition, McClatchy has been at the forefront of the newspaper industry in terms of monetizing its Internet properties.

NBIX: Reit Outperform - On Wednesday, April 14, before the market open, NBIX announced that it has filed an NDA for Indiplon capsules (formerly referred to as "immediate-release" Indiplon) with the US FDA. The filing, originally submitted in late 2004, was resubmitted due to technical difficulties.