World Markets Simplified

Tata Steel

Tata Steel Ltd. (TATA), India’s biggest producer, reported a worse-than-expected 90 percent drop in fourth-quarter profit as an escalating debt crisis in Europe lowered demand and prices in the steelmaker’s largest market.

Net income, including that of unit Tata Steel Europe Ltd., fell to 4.33 billion rupees ($79 million) in the three months ended March 31 from 41.8 billion rupees a year earlier, the Mumbai-based company said yesterday in a statement. The median profit estimate of 34 analysts in a Bloomberg survey was 8.81 billion rupees. Sales gained 1 percent to 338.6 billion rupees.

The gross domestic product in the 17-nation euro region stagnated in the last quarter, compared with the previous three months, the European Union’s statistics office in Luxembourg said on May 15. Steel demand in the European Union will drop about 2.7 percent this year, Eurofer, the European steel industry lobby group, said on May 7.

Total costs rose 5 percent to 319.1 billion rupees in the quarter, while raw material expenses fell 5 percent to 102.2 billion rupees, the company said. Earnings from sources other than the main business fell 39 percent to 2.22 billion rupees, the company said. Net debt increased to 476.97 billion rupees as on March 31, compared with 466.6 billion rupees a year ago.

Tata Steel shares fell 1.5 percent to 399.95 rupees in Mumbai yesterday. The benchmark Sensitive Index rose 0.5 percent. The earnings were announced after the market closed.
Debt Crisis

Steel deliveries for the quarter fell 6.5 percent to 6.22 million tons, underlining “operational difficulties” and lower demand in Europe because of the continuing debt crisis, Karl- Ulrich Kohler, chief executive officer at Tata Steel Europe, said in a statement.

The company expects production from its European mills to stabilize from January after a new blast furnace at Port Talbot starts production, Kohler said yesterday at a media conference in Mumbai. Lower raw material prices will improve margins for the European business and coal shipments from Mozambique’s Benga project should start this month, Managing Director H.M. Nerurkar said at the conference.

Tata Steel plans to increase output by 1 million tons this fiscal year from its Jamshedpur plant expansion, Nerurakar said. The company is arranging funds for a new plant in the eastern Indian state of Odisha, group Chief Financial Officer Koushik Chatterjee told reporters yesterday in Mumbai.

Tata Steel expects to start the first phase of the annual 3.5 million ton factory in Odisha as early as October 2013, Nerurkar said on April 20.
Fund Growth

The steelmaker has $2.4 billion of cash and cash equivalent and a capital structure that will support its ability to fund growth, Chatterjee said. The company expects to maintain its 1:1 net debt to equity position, he said.

The Indian operations may see a bigger impact of higher railway freight and increase in mineral royalties in this fiscal year, Nerurkar said yesterday.

Hot-rolled steel coil, a benchmark product used in automobiles and buildings, declined 11 percent to $703.50 a ton in the first quarter, compared with $793.70 a year earlier, according to Steel Business Briefing’s global price index. Iron ore, a steelmaking ingredient, averaged 20 percent lower than a year earlier, while coking coal fell 18 percent.

Steel demand in India may rise 8 percent this fiscal year after the nation’s central bank cut interest rates to boost growth, G.K. Basak, executive secretary at the steel ministry’s joint plant committee, said in an April 13 interview.

Global steel use will rise 3.6 percent this year, less than last year’s 5.6 percent increase, as European demand contracts and Chinese use slows, the World Steel Association said on April 27.

Just sent dirty pictures of yourself to someone who's not your wife? Need to get rid of them quickly? There's an app for that.

Snapchat lets you control how long your sexts last before disappearing.

Think of it as a new age, pervy version of the self-destructing tapes Jim Phelps played on "Mission Impossible" (kids, IMDB that, it was a great show).

"With Snapchat, users can share a photo and it will disappear from the gallery anywhere between one to ten seconds," writes Digital Trends. You can control how long the picture is up, and after it's deleted, it's gone forever.

An added plus, if the receiver attempts to capture the picture to keep it, you will be alerted. "After that, it’s out of Snapchat’s hands; you two are a phone call away from a screamfest to get that dirty picture off their phone,” writes DT’s Natt Garun. “Maybe you still shouldn’t have sent it ... in the first place."

Think how this app might have saved the careers of Rep. Anthony Weiner and Arkansas coach Bobby Petrino! Imagine, Snapchat would have allowed them to stay on the job, sexting away, keeping America great.

Well...

Be warned. Snapchat's privacy policy states that it's possible for deleted sexts to not really be deleted. "We cannot guarantee that the message data will be deleted in every case...Messages, therefore, are sent at the risk of the user."

Holland may have abandoned its famously lucrative (and destructive) colonial trade hundreds of years ago, but the country is still a major exporter of one thing: bike culture. The country even has its own Dutch Cycling Embassy, which helps cities all over the world plan safer bike infrastructure. Sales of their famously durable commuting bikes have skyrocketed, and even the their legal system is bike-oriented: Dutch laws on driver responsibility are being used as a model by policy-makers here in the US. Basically, for cyclists, Holland is the Marcia to every other country’s Jan.

Facebook Acquires Karma
Because simply having the largest IPO in U.S. history isn't enough for Facebook, the social network also went shopping. The social gifting mobile app called Karma is announcing that it has been acquired by Facebook. The company's cofounders, including Lee Linden, one of Fast Company's Most Creative People of 2012, says that the app will continue to operate as is. Facebook's interest in Karma is probably due to its expertise in mobile, an area that the social network knows it must master and figure out how to monetize.

• 400 New Hires as Allergan Inc. (AGN) Expands R&D More...

The long awaited multibillion dollar Social Network Facebook Inc offerings set to open in an hour under the ticker FB on Nasdaq. How will it trade on day first and will it cheer stock markets?

Catch the live action here

-Facebook opening bell delayed: Nasdaq

-Facebook shares opened just flat,6 % ( $40.5 ) higher to offering price of $38. Nothing like circuit breaker hit and no excitement. No panic buying seen as share started sleeping. Don't buy now as stock might slip in red soon. Check out our view Why Facebook is a sell? It has slipped from day high of $43.20. There is no more appetite for social media offering and might turn out to be a flop listing

-Facebook Share drift to $38 and might slip soon
-Facebook Share close to $38 at final minutes of trading left

Hewlett-Packard Co. (HPQ) is considering cutting as many as 25,000 jobs, or 8 percent of its workforce, to reduce costs and help the company contend with ebbing demand for computers and services, people briefed on the plans said.

The number to be cut includes 10,000 to 15,000 from Hewlett-Packard’s enterprise services group, which sells a range of information-technology services and has been beset by declining profitability, said these people, who asked not to be identified because the plans aren’t final and may change.

Topless dancers at the renowned Crazy Horse night club in Paris have gone on strike, saying they are not being paid enough to take the shirts off their backs.

The Crazy Horse, one of the most popular establishments of its kind in the world, said it was forced to cancel performances this week for the first time since the cabaret was created in 1951

The night club, which declined to give details on salary demands or current wages, said in a statement that it had always taken the wellbeing of its artists very seriously and that talks were continuing to resolve the dispute.

"It's an exceptional place which has the specialty of presenting a fully naked show," Suzanne, one of the dancers, told RTL radio.

"What's wrong is that we are asked to work 24 days per month for a pay that is worse than miserable," she said.

The cabaret's management said it was doing everything possible to reopen.

"Everything is done to give the Crazy Horse show back to its public," it said.

In the meantime, clients with tickets for a show this week will be offered a new date or a refund, a spokeswoman said.

The Crazy Horse, Lido and Moulin Rouge — where topless dancers perform in carefully orchestrated shows - have been top attractions for generations of tourists and locals.