Financial thoughts

Crystal City

Zoltek Companies Inc. reported a $5.1 million loss in its second fiscal quarter, or 15 cents a share, compared to a $5 million loss a year ago, or 14 cents a share.

Bridgeton-based Zoltek manufactures high-performance carbon fibers that are used in wind turbines. The company said in a statement that it is maintaining excess capacity to capitalize on growth opportunities it has identified in large volume applications.

Zoltek’s net sales for the quarter ended March 31 rose 43 percent to $37 fast cash online.1 million.

A decline in sales to its largest wind turbine customer, Vestas, was offset by an increase of carbon fibers in Europe and Asia and for non-wind uses, the company said in a statement last week when it released its earnings. 

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Japan’s factory production and consumer spending both fell the most on record in March as the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disasters sent the country’s halting economic recovery into reverse.

The government said Thursday that industrial production plunged 15.3 percent from February after the March 11 earthquake and tsunami devastated Japan’s industrial northeast, crippled a nuclear power station that continues to leak radiation and caused widespread power shortages.

Factory production had been expected to fall sharply due to the disasters, but the drop was worse than the forecast of an 11.4 percent decline in a Kyodo News agency survey of analysts.

The disasters, which killed about 25,000 people, destroyed many factories, causing severe parts shortages particularly for Japan’s powerhouse automakers. Manufacturers including Toyota Motor Corp. and Sony Corp. were forced to suspend production due to the supply crunch and power outages.

The Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry said production would recover “gradually” from damage caused by the disasters, forecasting a 3.9 percent improvement in April and a 2.7 percent uptick in May.

But Martin Schulz, senior economist at Fujitsu Research Institute in Tokyo, said the government’s forecast was probably overly optimistic.

Even if it held true, it would be months before production reached its already depressed pre-disaster level, he said.

“This is a frustrating outlook,” he said.

Ministry officials said the March decline in the country’s index of output at factories and mines was the greatest since record keeping began in 1953. The previous largest decline was in February 2009, when the global financial crisis that began a few months earlier dragged production down 8.6 percent.

Prime Minister Naoto Kan has said he hopes disaster-recovery spending would help lift Japan out of its 20-year economic decline. China last year overtook Japan to become the world’s second-biggest economy.

The government proposed a special $50 billion (4 trillion yen) budget last week to help finance rebuilding efforts, which officials said would likely be only the first installment of reconstruction funding.

In a separate report, the government’s statistics bureau announced that consumer spending had also seen a record decline in March, falling 8 payday loans with no fax.5 percent from a year earlier.

The previous sharpest decline in the numbers that have been tracked since 1963 was a 7.2 percent dip in February 1974, soon after the 1970s oil shock helped trigger a worldwide stock market crash.

Goldman Sachs Global Economics analyst Norihiko Baba said in a report that a decline of 4 percent to 5 percent had been expected, since spending in March 2010 was especially robust due to tax breaks and discounts available at the time on energy-saving cars and appliances.

The much larger drop implied that the disasters were having a “strong impact” on spending, Baba said.

Kan has urged Japanese consumers to open their wallets as a way to help spur the economy, stressing that the upcoming Golden Week holidays will be a particularly good opportunity to spend.

But Schulz said consumers are unlikely to be in a spending mood amid the out-of-service elevators, dimmed lights and other power-saving reminders of the nuclear energy crisis set off by the disasters.

“Households in Japan after this shock and seeing that the crisis is ongoing will simply not go out and buy a new car or anything this year,” he said.

Separately, the government said the nation’s unemployment rate was unchanged in March from February at 4.6 percent, but the survey excluded the three prefectures hardest hit by the disasters.

The seasonally adjusted figure was better than Kyodo News agency’s average market forecast of 4.8 percent. It was the ninth consecutive month of steady improvements in the nation’s employment picture.

Schulz said the surprisingly upbeat jobs numbers were probably linked to employers’ need to keep workers on their payrolls to help restore damaged supply lines.

But he predicted a sharp downturn in those figures, as the drop-off in consumer spending translates into fewer jobs at hotels, restaurants and shops in Japan’s massive service sector.

The government also reported that consumer prices declined for the 25th straight month. The key consumer price index fell 0.1 percent as deflation continued to weigh on the economy.

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The Irish economic crisis has not been without its moments of humour.

By way of explaining the plight of Ireland’s crippled banks, which have rendered his nation insolvent, then-prime minister Bernie Ahern tried to divert blame from his government’s lax financial regulation to the global banking panic of 2008. That meltdown was triggered by the collapse of New York investment bank Lehman Brothers Holding Inc.

Pulaski Financial Corp.’s profit for the second quarter, $1.1 million, or 5 cents per share, improved from a loss of $4.3 million, or 47 cents a share a year ago, due to lower credit costs and higher net income. Pulaski Financial, the Creve Coeur-based holding company for Pulaski Bank, cited lower credit costs for the improvement in the second quarter that ended March 31, as delinquencies on commercial and residential loans in its portfolio declined.

Net interest income rose 4 percent for the second quarter, to $11.5 million, compared with a year ago.

The bank also reported a slowdown in its mortgage banking operations as the increase in market interest rates during the quarter dampened loan demand.

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I watched Hockey Night in Canada the other night in stunning high definition (HD) and I don

OTTAWA

WASHINGTON

Memorial Hospital in Belleville plans to build a $118 million new hospital in Shiloh, hospital officials announced Friday.

Plans for Memorial Hospital - East include 94 beds, private patient rooms, surgical suites, cardiac catheterization lab, an intensive care unit and an obstetrics unit. The hospital is expected to open in 2016 on a 94-acre site at Frank Scott Parkway East and Cross Street.

The hospital’s owner, Memorial Group, filed its intentions to build the new hospital with the Illinois Health Facilities and Services Review Board no fax cash advance. The board is expected to hear the proposal at its meeting in June.

When the new hospital opens, hospital officials expect the main campus in Belleville to reduce its capacity and convert all patient rooms to single occupancy.

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South Korea’s industrial production grew at the fastest pace in five months as overseas demand for the country’s cars and electronics drives growth in Asia’s fourth-largest economy.

Output increased 13.7 percent in January from a year earlier, Statistics Korea said in Gwacheon today, from a revised 10.6 percent in December. The median estimate of 12 economists surveyed by Bloomberg News was for a 12.4 percent gain. Production gained 4.6 percent from December.

Stocks and the won rose after the report, which bolstered economists’ expectations that Bank of Korea Governor Kim Choong Soo will raise the key interest rate next week from 2.75 percent. At the same time, central bank officials will need to consider whether surging oil prices may threaten growth by undermining the global economy and demand for exports.

“Strong output data suggests the economy is sustaining stable growth,” said June Park, an economist at Woori Investment & Securities Co. in Seoul. “Inflation pressures are mounting such that the central bank should raise interest rates soon.”

The won rose 0.4 percent to 1,123.75 per dollar as of 10:15 a.m. in Seoul, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. It touched 1,122.68, the strongest level since Feb. 23. The Kospi index (KOSPI) climbed 1.4 percent to 1,954.21.

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