Airline Triple Threat; Oil’s $100 Floor; Wal-Mart’s Thrifty Shoppers; Six Flags on a Thrill Ride; Gannett Printing Pink Slips; GM’s Electric Car On the Way; Estee Lauder Looks Good; Netflix’s Mail Snafu

• British Airways PLC (OTC ADR: BAIRY), AMR Corp.’s (AMR) American Airlines Inc. and Iberia SA (PINK: IBRLF) announced yesterday (Thursday) that they were applying for European and U.S. antitrust immunity. If the three airlines receive the requested exemption, the three carriers will cooperatively set fares and share seats on transatlantic flights, BusinessWeek reported.

• Despite oil’s recent pullback, icon investor T. Boone Pickens feels crude will not drop below $100 due to the United States’ heavy dependence on foreign oil. “I don’t think it’ll drop below $100,” Pickens told Reuters yesterday (Thursday) in a telephone interview. “I would say $110 is where it might go, something like that.”

• Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (WMT) announced yesterday (Thursday) that net income increased 17% in its fiscal second quarter driven by bargain hungry shoppers hurting from high food and fuel prices. For the quarter ended July 31, Wal-Mart reported net income of $3.45 billion, or 87 cents per share, an increase from $2.95 billion, or 72 cents per share, for the same period in the prior year,
  The Wall Street Journal reported.

• Amusement park operator Six Flags Inc. (SIX) said yesterday (Thursday) that revenue in the third quarter through Aug. 12 was up 7.6%, or $23.5 million, from the same period last year, and included fewer operating days. Attendance grew 5.1%, or 407,000 people, to 8.4 million, the company said. Year-to-date, Six Flags said its revenue was up 6.1% from last year, representing an increase of $43.1 million.

• Gannett Co. Inc. (GCI) Inc will eliminate 1,000 positions from its local newspapers around the U.S. because of declining advertising and circulation revenue, Reuters reported. The company said the cuts equal about 3% of the positions in its Community Publishing unit.

• General Motors Corp. (GM) said yesterday (Thursday) that it would finalize the design of the all-electric Chevy Volt by mid-September and hopes to have 50 prototypes with production-ready parts by the end of 2008. GM plans to launch the car in 2010, Reuters reported.

• Estee Lauder Cos. Inc. (EL) said yesterday (Thursday) that net income hit $120.2 million, or 61 cents a share, in the quarter ended June 30, from $88.6 million, or 45 cents a share, a year earlier. Quarterly sales rose 14% to $2.01 billion. For fiscal 2009, the company said it expected earnings per share of $2.57 to $2.72 and net sales growth of 6% to 8%.

• Netflix Inc. (NFLX) has suffered a major disruption in its mail-service DVD rental business, The Wall Street Journal reported, that has prevented the majority of customers from receiving movies since Tuesday. Steve Swasey, a spokesman for California-based Netflix, described the cause of the disruption as a “pretty severe technical” problem with the company’s shipping system and could not speculate as to when the problem might be resolved.

Source: Global Investing Roundups Friday, August 15th, 2008