On Thursday Canadian Tire Corp. (TSX : CTC.A) announced that strong growth in their retail and financial divisions attributed to a increase of 13% (95.4 million) in third-quarter profits.  The retail sales rose 9% to $2.43 billion versus last year’s $2.23 billion.  These earnings will equate to $1.16 per share which is over some analysts estimates of $1.10 per share.  I am expecting that they will have a really strong fourth quarter with increased spending at their 34 new locations across Canada.  As well, Canadian Tire really does a lot of marketing during the Christmas season so sales should pick up substantially. Shares of Canadian Tire fell on the markets on Friday to 73.45 or by 0.31%.

Drug supplier Perrigo Company (NASDAQ : PRGO) announced today that they are recalling 11 million bottle of the over the counter drug acetaminophen. They have discovered that some of the pills were contaminated and contained metal fragments. So far, no injuries or illness has been reported. The recall will only be affecting the bottles containing 500mg tablets. With this news, Perrigo stocks are moving down, so far down 3.78% to 17.33 in Thursday morning trading. The recall is likely to cost $2.9 million and will affect the companies 2007 earnings.  Perrigo supplys over the counter medications to such retailers as Wal-Mart Store Inc, CVS Corp, Walgreens Co, and Costco Wholesale Corp.

Baidu.com Inc. (NASDAQ : BIDU) and Ebay Inc. (NASDAQ : EBAY) announced today that they are forming a partnership.  The details are still coming in but the main details are that Baidu will promote Ebay’s Chinese version of Paypal, Beibao, and that Baidu will be the exclusive text-based search advertising provider on the Eachnet auction site.  This partnership is beneficial to both parties as it attempts to take on the Chinese market leader for auction sites, Alibaba.com which is partially owned by Yahoo Inc and Tencent Holdings Ltd.

The online advertising on the Eachnet site will begin trials in the first-quarter 2007.  eBay and Baidu have said they don’t expect this deal to have a material impact on their financial results.  I have to beg to differ though since partnerships like this will always affect the finances of the companies involved.  The markets seemed to take note of the deal as Baidu, for the second day in a row, was on the rise, up around 3.75% to 97.40/share, while eBay Inc was up 0.83% to 32.83/share.

SIRIUS Satellite Radio (NASDAQ : SIRI) announced their 3rd quarter earnings report on Wednesday. In the report it showed that their net loss had decreased and their revenue more than doubled. Revenue doubled on strong subscriber growth during the quarter. During the 3rd quarter their net increase in subscribers was 441,000 to bring their total to 5.1 million. They maintained that their yearend forecast is 6.3 million subscribers. This is an excellent growth rate but the losses continued due to spending on new technology, and entertainment. Deals with Howard Stern, and the NFL are likely to bring in a lot of subscribers but they are also costly. During the morning trading the stock was up 2.44% to 4.19 and seemed to be rising.

Airbus SAS parent EADS NV (EPA : EAD) regretted to announce on Tuesday that Fedex (NYSE: FDX) had cancelled its 10-plane Airbus A380 order.  This news hit the stock hard after Tuesday’s close but the stock seemed to rebound back to its weekly average by Wednesday morning over in Europe.  It looked particularily bad at one point when the stock was down to 20.42 per share.  As of now, the stock is trading around 21.24 and up on the day.  After the cancellation, Airbus still has orders for 15 more cargo versions of the A380.   With this delay there has been some concern that more cancellations will follow.
The cancellation was brought on by “significant” delays, being blamed on persistent manufacuring problems.  In order to fulfill their aircraft demands, Fedex has decided to go with Airbus rival manufacuter’s Boeing (NYSE : BA) 777 Freighter plane.  They put in an order for 15 planes with an option for another 15.  This is big news for Boeing who seems to continue to gain orders as people leave Airbus’s Superjumbo behind.

Baidu.com (NASDAQ: BIDU) stock has been rising quite a bit today. So far this morning, the stock has risen up to 93.24 or 5.18%. Baidu.com is the number one search engine in China. There has been some speculation recently that either Google or Yahoo is interested in purchasing the company to gain a stonger foothold in the Chinese market. I am wondering whether this speculation is what is fuelling the stock increase. It seems kind of a delayed reaction if the reason for the increase is the third quarter earnings report where they increased profit ten fold. Their third quarter earnings was announced October 31. This is one company that people should watch for in the future as a possible acquistion target to gain market share in China.

While I was in China, I saw first hand that the search market was practically split between people searching with Google and others searching with Baidu. Another thing I noticed was people seemed to use Baidu to search for MP3s. When people were asked why they searched with one or the other they didn’t have a solid answer other than it was the one they always used. Then when asked if they would ever switch to another search engine most seemed alright with the idea as long as the searches brought them useful results.  Overall though, there remained some patriotism about using a Chinese search engine.