Company

Sym-bol

P/E*

Price

10.27.06

Earn

ings/

share

Sales/

Income

B=billion

M=million

52-wk high/

52-wk low

Market Cap/#

Shares

Cash On Hand

Debt/

Equity Ratio

Pension & OPEBs

Insider Trading

ExxonMobil

XOM

11.20

71.46

1.28

388.07 B

39.39 B

72.33

55.60

424.8 B

5.945 B

$14.6 B

.07

-$16.092 billion*

$49 M sold.

Altria

MO

15.20

81.85

5.40

100.50 B

11.35 B

85.00

68.36

171.3 B

2.093 B

$5.7 B

.48

-$7.113 billion*

$214 M sold. ($196 by Director Slim Helu)

Microsoft

MSFT

22.60

$28.34

1.25

45.35 B

12.94 B

28.79

21.45

278.6 B

9.83 B

$31.8 B

0

0

$446 milion sold by Bill Gates.

Apple

AAPL

36.20

$80.41

2.27

19.31 B

1.99 B

86.40

50.16

68.59 B

853 M

$10 B

0

0

$69 M sold.

$700,000 bought by new board director, Eric Schmidt.

eBay

EBAY

44.30

$32.07

.74

5.58 B

1.06 B

47.86

22.83

45.39 B

1.415 B

$3.8 billion

0

0

$32 M sold.

General Motors

GM

N/E

33.93

-17.18

206.64 B

-9.6 B

36.56

18.33

19.19 B

565.6 M

$14.1 B

3.85

-$50 billion

None filed.

Company

Description

News and Comments

Altria

Marlboro cigarettes (Phillip Morris) and Kraft foods.

GM, XOM, MO are dividend-paying stocks with heavy institutional ownership. Net revenues for the third quarter of 2006 increased 3.7% versus 2005 to $25.9 billion. Net earnings decreased 0.3% to $2.9 billion. During the third quarter of 2006, Altria Group, Inc. increased its regular quarterly dividend by 7.5% to $0.86 per common share, which represents an annualized rate of $3.44 per common share. PM USA's total retail share increased to 50.4% in the third quarter of 2006, driven by Marlboro. Kraft Foods Inc. (Kraft) reported 2006 third-quarter results on October 23, 2006. Kraft's net revenues were up 2.3% to $8.2 billion, driven by North American convenient meals, cheese, snacks, cereals and powdered beverages. The brand portfolio of Altria Group, Inc.'s consumer packaged goods companies includes such well-known names as Kraft, Jacobs, L&M, Marlboro, Maxwell House, Nabisco, Oreo, Oscar Mayer, Parliament, Philadelphia, Post and Virginia Slims.

Apple Computer

Macs, iBooks, iPods, iMusic. All things cool in computers and music. Strong relationship with Disney. Steve Jobs is the single largest Disney shareholder (with the acquisition of Pixar by Disney), and is a strong candidate for Chairman of the Board when George J. Mitchell

Chairman of the Board, The Walt Disney Company, retires.

Last earnings report was 2006-05-05. Missed the August 2005 report due to the SEC investigation into stock option grants. Reported preliminary 4Q on 10.18.06., which may be subject to "significant adjustment as a result of a likely restatement of historical results" revenue of $4.84 billion and net quarterly profit of $546 million, or $.62 per diluted share. These results compare to revenue of $3.68 billion and net profit of $430 million, or $.50 per diluted share, in the year-ago quarter. International sales accounted for 40 percent of the quarter's revenue.

Apple shipped 1,610,000 Macintosh(R) computers and 8,729,000 iPods during the quarter, representing 30 percent growth in Macs and 35 percent growth in iPods over the year-ago quarter.

eBay

Owns the largest online auction in the world, AND the largest online payment system – PayPal -- and the largest VOIP – Skype. Also owns Shopping.com.

Reported 3Q Earnings 10.18.06. The company repurchased approximately 24 million shares of its common stock at a total cost of $667 million during the quarter, completing one-third of its previously announced stock repurchase program.

"Q3 was a very good quarter for the company and a continuation of the strong earnings growth we delivered throughout the first half of the year," said Meg Whitman, President and CEO of eBay Inc. "As our results demonstrate, we are executing on our strategy to grow our Marketplaces, PayPal and Skype businesses individually and collectively to deliver greater value to our community of users and to our shareholders." Marketplaces net revenues totaled a record $1.049 billion in Q3-06, a growth rate of 22% over the $858 million reported in Q3-05. The eBay platform confirmed registered user base at the end of Q3-06 totaled 212 million, representing a 26% increase over the 168 million users reported at the end of Q3-05.

Skype net revenues totaled $50 million in Q3-06, representing a 13% increase from the $44 million reported in Q2-06. Skype had 136 million registered users at the end of Q3-06, representing a 20% increase from the 113 million users at the end of Q2-06. (note: the other IT growth juggernaut – MySpace – had only 124 million registered users as of 10.28.06. The United States has only 300 million people, so Skype users make up almost ½ of the U.S. inhabitants!

ExxonMobil

The biggest publicly traded company in the world.

3Q net income of $10,490 million ($1.77 per share), an increase of $570 million from the third quarter of 2005. According to the company press release, "The Corporation distributed a total of $8.9 billion to shareholders in the third quarter through dividends and share purchases to reduce shares outstanding, an increase of 30% or $2.1 billion versus 2005." Spending on capital and exploration projects was $5.1 billion, an increase of 15% versus 2005. Purchased 126 million shares of its common stock for the treasury at a gross cost of $8.4 billion. GM, XOM, MO are dividend-paying stocks, with heavy institutional ownership.

General Motors

World’s largest automaker.

GM reported a net loss of $115 million on 10.27.06, or $0.20 per share, for the third quarter of 2006, compared with a loss of $1.7 billion, or $2.94 per share, for the year-ago quarter. The net loss for this year's third quarter included $644 million, or $1.13 per share, in charges for special items, including goodwill impairment at GMAC and an increase to the charge associated with Delphi's reorganization. Delphi labor liabilities could cost between $6.0 and $7.5 billion. Working to sell 51% of GMAC by 4^th quarter. Details have not yet been released. Cash, marketable securities, and readily-available assets of the Voluntary Employees' Beneficiary Association (VEBA) trust totaled $20.4 billion at Sept. 30, 2006, down from $22.9 billion on June 30, 2006, but up from $19.2 billion on Sept. 30, 2005. GM withdrew $2 billion from the VEBA trust in the third quarter to fund health care. Press release included four paragraphs of risk factors that could ground the turnaround effort at General Motors, but did not include the White Elephant in the room – pension plans and OPEBs (though these were an expense line item in the liabilities section of the press release.) GM's global market share in the third quarter was 13.9 percent, up slightly from the second quarter market share of 13.7 percent, but down from 14.4 percent in the third quarter of 2005. GM, XOM, MO are dividend-paying stocks, with heavy institutional ownership. General Motors will hold a conference call to review and discuss its October U.S. sales results at approximately 2 p.m. ET on Wednesday, November 1.

Microsoft

World’s largest software company. Owns X-Box, Zune (new handheld music device and online music store), Windows, Explorer and more.

Zune, MSFT’s 30GB media player, becomes available Nov. 14, 2006. Should be wireless functionality + ability to download latest software to keep it up to date. Zune Music Stores ala iTunes, but will Zune be as cool as iPod? Reported 1st quarter revenue on 10.26.06 of $10.81 billion for the period ended September 30, 2006, an 11% increase over the same quarter of the prior year. Operating income for the quarter was $4.47 billion, an 11% increase compared with $4.05 billion in the prior year period. Net income and diluted earnings per share for the first quarter were $3.48 billion and $0.35 per share.