On Monday, Shares of Altria Group Inc (NYSE:MO), gained 0.03% to $60.49.
Altria Group, declared its 2015 third-quarter and nine-month business results and reaffirmed its guidance for 2015 full-year adjusted diluted EPS.
“Altria continued to deliver outstanding performance in the third quarter and for the first nine months. Once again, our businesses strengthened their market leadership, with strong income growth and solid retail share gains by the iconic Marlboro and Copenhagen brands,” said Marty Barrington, Altria’s Chairman, Chief Executive Officer and President. “We believe our year-to-date adjusted EPS growth of 11.5% positions us well to deliver on our full-year plans. In addition, we’re happy Anheuser-Busch InBev and SABMiller continue to work together to finalize terms in advance of their possible combination. We see this transaction, and our participation in it as SABMiller’s largest shareholder, as a compelling opportunity to strengthen for our shareholders our position in the global brewing business.”
Altria Group, Inc., through its auxiliaries, manufactures and sells cigarettes, smokeless products, and wine in the United States and internationally. It offers cigarettes primarily under the Marlboro brand; cigars principally under the Black & Mild brand; and moist smokeless tobacco products under the Copenhagen, Skoal, Red Seal, Husky, and Marlboro Snus brand names.
Shares of Viacom, Inc. (NASDAQ:VIAB), inclined 2.84% to $50.71, during its last trading session.
TiVo Research and Analytics, a partner of TiVo Inc. (NASDAQ: TIVO), and Viacom, declared a new planned alliance focused on advancing Viacom’s proprietary data and advertising solutions. Viacom’s innovative data and ad products have led the industry in recent years with predictive tools such as Vantage and Echo Social Graph that hyper-target consumers. The first such alliance for TiVo with a media company, TiVo Research’s one-of-a-kind suite of single-source measurement tools will integrate with Viacom Vantage’s advanced predictive engine to augment its precision and consumer targeting capabilities. The new partnership also provides Viacom Velocity and Velocity Products Group — the company’s creative content/integrated media group and the newly formed group that brings multi-platform social partnerships, products, and services to clients — with more data that can assist improvement the impact of custom campaigns and further expands the unique analytics delivered to ad partners.
Frank Foster, Senior Vice President and General Manager of TiVo Research, said, “This integration will make Viacom the first network to offer advertisers true single-source solutions for audience targeting and measurement. The combination of Viacom’s advanced predictive engine and TiVo’s anonymized, granular set-top box data, matched directly to purchase and consumer engagement data in a privacy protected manner, allows advertisers to see much more than if their campaign was viewed. This partnership will not only enable advertisers to see how effectively a campaign reached the target audience, but it will shed light on whether the campaign enticed consumers to take action such as going to a store or buying a product.”
Viacom Inc. operates as an entertainment content company in the United States and internationally. The company creates television programs, motion pictures, short-form video, applications, games, consumer products, social media, and other entertainment content.
Finally, Shares of Cenovus Energy Inc. (NYSE:CVE), ended its last trade with 4.96% gain, and closed at $15.65.
Cenovus Energy, continues to make noteworthy progress in reducing its costs while delivering strong operational performance and oil sands production growth. The company is benefiting from the decisive steps taken over the past year to improvement its financial resilience in the face of what is predictable to be a prolonged period of lower oil prices.
“We’re delivering on the commitments we made at the outset of 2015 to improve Cenovus’s position as a low-cost producer,” said Brian Ferguson, Cenovus President & Chief Executive Officer. “We’ve realized substantial, sustainable cost reductions, maintained capital discipline and strengthened our balance sheet. We will continue to look for additional opportunities to reduce costs, become more efficient and enhance shareholder value.”
Third quarter highlights
- Maintained financial strength with about $4.4 billion of cash and cash equivalents on the balance sheet and a net debt to capitalization ratio of 13%
- Achieved cost reductions that were better than forecast, bringing total anticipated savings for 2015 to about $400 million
- On track to achieve $100 million in forecast annual savings, starting in 2016, from workforce reductions
- Reduced oil sands per-unit operating costs by 23% from the third quarter of 2014 and total crude oil per-unit operating expenses by 22%
- Generated cash flow of $444 million, down 55% from the same period a year earlier
- Recognized for strong performance in corporate responsibility as the only North American oil and gas producer to be comprised in this year’s Dow Jones Sustainability (DJSI) World Index
Cenovus Energy Inc., an integrated oil company, develops, produces, and markets crude oil, natural gas liquids (NGLs), and natural gas in Canada with refining operations in the United States. The company’s Oil Sands segment engages in the development and production of bitumen assets at Foster Creek, Christina Lake, Narrows Lake, and the Athabasca natural gas assets, in addition to projects in the early stages of development, such as Grand Rapids and Telephone Lake.