Word: profitability
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...high-yield or "junk" bonds. I have avoided junk for years because too many weak companies were able to borrow at rates only slightly higher than those paid by the strongest debtors. Confidence in the economy ran so high that even companies with no hope of making a profit this decade could tap the markets cheaply. Junk-bond investors weren't getting paid enough for their risks...
...undergraduate education at Harvard could be better than it is. The difference in this case is that there is no good reason why it isn't. The availability of excellence at Harvard College is not compensation enough for those students here who have been unable to find it and profit from...
...more wrong with Japan's economy than its banks: Toshiba and Hitachi, two of the electronic giants that drove the country's postwar industrial boom, on Monday posted massive losses. Toshiba's $53.6 million pretax loss in the first half of fiscal '98 compared with a $212 million profit for the same period last year; Hitachi lost $1.04 billion compared with a $204 million profit in the equivalent period last year. "These companies will bleed as long as demand at home and in Asia remains weak," says TIME senior business reporter Bernard Baumohl. And therein lies Japan's vicious cycle...
...that Torvalds has made a penny of profit from his creation. For him it's been strictly a labor of love--although even love can grow cold after a while. "There are days when I get into technical arguments with people and I say, 'Screw you! I am taking a vacation for a week; I don't need this,'" he says. "But after a few days I always come back, because it's the most fun thing...
Such bullishness would mean a lot more if it persisted, say, until early next year. But there's a good chance it won't last that long. Profit margins are getting squeezed, and companies are running out of cash; some may not even be able to make good on the buybacks they've promised. Charles Clough, chief investment strategist at Merrill Lynch, notes that the amount of cash that companies have left after investing in plant and equipment--which is the cash that funds most buybacks--has been dwindling for two years. By next year the till may be empty...