W.W. Grainger Inc. (GWW) reported a 3% year-over-year drop in October sales. (October this year had one less selling day compared to October 2008.) The company benefited from a 2% positive contribution from the businesses in Japan and India, 1% from the acquisition of Imperial Supplies and 2% from favorable foreign currency translation. Excluding the impact of acquisitions and currency exchange, Grainger’s daily sales in October were down 8% from last year. The company witnessed a 7% decline in daily sales in the U.S., as demand remained weak across all end markets. These results include sales from Imperial Supplies, which the company acquired in mid-October. Excluding this acquisition, U.S. daily sales were down 8%. In the Canadian (Acklands-Grainger) division, daily sales were up 5% due to favorable foreign exchange. However, the division’s daily sales were down 7% in local currency due to continued weakness in ...

America Movil (AMX) reported results for third-quarter 2009 with earnings per ADS of 86 cents edging past the Zacks Consensus Estimates of 85 cents while increasing 22.6% from the year-ago earnings per ADS of 70 cents. Net profit surged 50.6% year over year to 18.7 billion pesos (US$1.4 billion) or 0.57 pesos per share. This healthy growth was fuelled by higher revenue and lower financing costs which fell 82.5% year over year due to gains stemming from favorable exchange rate swings.  Revenue & EBITDA Latin America’s largest wireless carrier continues to register a double-digit revenue growth as evident from the 16.9% year over year increase in consolidated revenue in the quarter to 99.8 billion pesos (US$7.5 billion), driven by 19.5% growth in service revenue. Revenue growth was supported by healthy business momentum across 3G wireless and broadband Internet businesses.  Consolidated EBITDA for the quarter was 40.4 ...

W.W. Grainger, Inc. (GWW) reported third-quarter EPS of $1.88 per share. This includes a one-time gain of 37 cents per share from the step-up of its investment in MonotaRO Co. Ltd. after Grainger became a majority owner in September. Excluding the one-time gain, Grainger’s third quarter EPS was $1.51, which was above the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $1.34, but 15% down from last year’s EPS of $1.77. The company has surpassed market expectations for the seventh consecutive quarter. The company posted revenue of $1.6 billion, down 13.6% from $1.8 billion in the third quarter of 2008. GWW is experiencing weak demand as the economic slowdown is driving Grainger’s customers to idle or close facilities and delay purchases. In the United States segment, Grainger witnessed a 14% drop in sales as demand remained weak in all its customer end-markets. After increasing marginally in the second quarter, ...

The Wyncrest Group Inc. is focused on designing insurance products customized to provide risk management solutions to carefully selected specialty markets where conventional lines don’t exist. These contracts are offered through the company’s separate subsidiaries or in some cases patented and licensed.

Wyncrest’s specialty construction liability solutions are typically structured as a captive insurance company hosted in tax friendly country like Panama so the insured can enjoy certain tax benefits. They offer a solution to difficult problems like asbestos liability coverage required by governments for drywall contractors while controlling claim risk.

The company’s warranty products are sold directly through its wholly owned domestic Southwest Financial Group subsidiary. Started 1992, the subsidiary today has over 22,000 clients and 285 reps accross the US. SFG has penetrated valuable market segments in certain ethnic communities and state teachers unions.

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W.W. Grainger Inc.’s (GWW) sales for the month of August were down 13% compared to last year. This was slightly narrower compared to the 14% decline in July. The company continues to witness weak demand in all its end-markets and geographies. The economic slowdown is driving Grainger’s customers to idle or close facilities and delay purchases, thereby affecting the company’s top-line growth.   Grainger witnessed a 14% decline in U.S. sales, same as in July. Sales were down in all the end-markets. After increasing marginally in the second quarter, sales to the government segment declined in single digits in the first two months of the third quarter, reflecting weakness among state agencies owing to budget cuts.   In the Canadian (Acklands-Grainger) division, sales were down 8%, an improvement compared to the 19% decline in the month of July. Sales were down 5% in local currency due to continued ...

Tesoro Corp. (TSO) shipped its first barrels of crude oil through a reversed Panama pipeline, which runs from the Atlantic to the Pacific Basin. Owned by Petroterminal de Panama (PTP), a cooperative venture between the Government of the Republic of Panama and private industry, the 81-mile pipeline formerly flowed from the Pacific to the Atlantic.   At the time of signing the agreement to use the PTP pipeline in December 2008, Tesoro said that it will ship 107,000 barrels per day (Bbl/d) of crude through the pipeline under a seven-year agreement.   Reversal of the pipeline establishes a new conduit for crude oil transportation and will help Tesoro to economically deliver a broader range of crude oils produced in Africa, the Atlantic region of South America and the North Sea, through Panama, to the company's five Pacific Rim refineries (two in California and one each in Washington, Hawaii ...

Yesterday, Boeing (BA) said it had completed its critical design review of Required Navigation Performance (RNP) procedures for Panama’s Tocumen International Airport and Howard Airport.

The critical design review, which took place at the Copa Airlines training center in Panama City, assessed the "fly-ability" of the procedures to ensure compatibility with airline crew procedures. RNP uses global-positioning satellites and onboard flight-management systems to guide airplanes accurately along precise flight paths.

More precise routing will help in saving flight time and fuel consumption significantly by providing the most direct arrival routes to the runways. It will also help in lowering greenhouse gas emissions.

In May, Boeing signed an agreement with Panama’s Civil Aviation Authority to provide RNP procedures as part of the country’s effort to set new standards for safe and efficient airline operations for its aviation sector.

The current economic crisis remains a real threat to global economic

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Today, medical device company INVO Bioscience, Inc. announced the signing of three distribution contracts in South and Latin America. The company, focused on treatment options for patients diagnosed with infertility, is looking to the Daxley Group to distribute INVO Bioscience in Columbia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Panama, Mexico, Brazil, Chili, Argentina and Uruguay. Daxley also distributes for Medicult, Conception Technologies, Biogenics and Rocket Medical, all who offer infertility treatment products in said countries. INVO Bioscience’s patented product, the INVOcell, allows for vaginal incubation of eggs, sperm and early embryo development during the infertility treatment process.

Dr. Claude Ranoux has been invited to attend a meeting of the Association of Columbian Fertility and Sterility on August 22nd. Dr. Ranoux will lecture and hold a training seminar on the INVO procedure for over 17 OB/GYN’s and embryologists from South America. This training will allow them the capability of performing the INVO procedure in their facilities.

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Water is essential for life. It’s quite literally an investment that you can’t live without. And while you might not be able to trade water futures on the Chicago Board of Trade, providing people with H2O is a $400 billion global industry, according to an article by Harvard’s Garry Emmons.

“In an age of global water scarcity, with governments scrambling to create new water systems or repair deteriorating ones, there is money in water,” he says. And Emmons isn’t the only expert who thinks water is soon to be a very valuable commodity. “Water is going to be more important than oil in the next 20 years,” predicted Dipak Jain, dean of the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, to Bloomberg.

That’s thanks in large part to your local water utility. While cities and municipalities run 85% of water utilities, there are scores of for-profit companies left over to turn water

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I don't typically like spending a lot of time on stories that have more coverage by blogs than actual news outlets, but this one is really too juicy to pass up and it also continues our ongoing conversation about the dollar's prominence as a global reserve currency. Two men were recently stopped by Italian authorities while trying to cross the border into Switzerland with a fake-bottomed suitcase containing $134.5 billion worth of US Treasury bonds. That's right - billion with a B. Let's take just a moment to review which of the United States' various creditors even hold that much US debt. According to the latest data from the US Treasury Department, this is what we have to work through April of this year:

China ~ $763.5 billion Japan ~ $685.9 billion Caribbean Banking Centers ~ $204.7 billion OPEC ~

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