CNBC Stock Blog

Euro zone stocks could plummet up to 50 percent if Greece makes a disorderly exit from the euro zone, a research note from Societe Generale said on Friday.

In the note, Claudia Panseri, head of equity strategy at Societe Generale, said the DJ Euro Stoxx 50

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[.STOXX50E  Loading...      ()   ], an index of leading euro zone shares, could halve if a disorderly Greek exit caused two years of declining profits in the euro zone, plus rising bond yields and equity risk premium.

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After two major balance sheet restructurings, Hudson City Bancorp still needs to change its business model, possibly restructure again and more than one analyst thinks the company should consider selling.

Sterne Agee analyst Matthew Kelley on Friday projected that in a takeout scenario, the troubled Hudson City Bancorp would have a “terminal value” of $8.25 a share, which would be a 31 percent premium over Thursday’s closing price of $6.27.

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CNBC.com

How’s this for an income investing mantra: The only thing better than a big dividend payout is a bigger one.

The thing is, that’s a harder goal to accomplish than it seems. Chasing yields, after all, will only get you so far; and all too often, big dividend payers have such big yields because investors are discounting the likelihood of a dividend rate cut.

But this week, we’re not waiting for high-yielding firms to announce dividend hikes. Instead, we’re focusing on the future, taking a look at five companies that are likely to boost their dividend payouts in the next quarter.

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Lilli Day | Photodisc | Getty Images

Idenix Pharmaceuticals didn’t perform after a bullish trade last month, but investors are trying again.

Traders bought the June 12.50 calls on April 30, and yesterday 11,000 July 12.50 calls were purchased in large blocks for $1.20, according to OptionMonster’s real-time tracking systems. They also sold the July 17.50 calls for $0.30 and the July 7.50 puts for $0.60 to help finance the trade.

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With investor caution at unprecedented highs and no end in sight to Europe’s debt crisis, one investment manager thinks he has the definitive list of stocks that will maximize returns despite market volatility.

Peter Garnry, equity strategist, Saxo Bank, said that, despite the gloomy macro-economic picture, equities still represent one of the best way for investors to make money as bond yields offer investors little or nothing as seen by Germany’s offering of zero percent interest on its two-year Schatz earlier this week.

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Photo: Max Morse | Wikipedia Meg Whitman

Hewlett-Packard shares surged about 11 percent following a better-than-expected quarterly earnings report and mass layoff announcement on Wednesday. By Thursday, the street is wondering how the company can keep it up with fewer resources.

The company

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[HPQ  Loading...      ()   ] will cut 27,000 jobs between now and the end of 2014.  » Read More

Source: Google

Turns out the recipe for cooking Google’s goose — or Amazon.com’s, eBay’s, Facebook’s or really any Web giant for that matter — is pretty darn simple.

“Make it like Google,” tech entrepreneur Gabriel Weinberg says, “only simpler.”

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Sebastien Bozon | AFP | Getty Images

General Electric’s $4.5 billion “special dividend” — to be paid from GE Capital to the parent company — will be used entirely for buybacks, GE Chairman and CEO Jeff Immelt told investors at an industry conference Wednesday.

The buybacks will add roughly three cents per share to GE’s 2013 earnings, according to a report from Citigroup published Thursday.

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Emmanuel Dunand | AFP | Getty Images

Investors looking to short Facebook stock are getting “in front of a freight train,” analyst Laura Martin of Needham & Co. told CNBC.

Martin initiated coverage of Facebook Wednesday with a “buy” rating and a $40 per share price target — that’s a 29 percent premium to Tuesday’s closing price. » Read More

On Tuesday, Sirius XM Radio CEO Mel Karmazin addressed investors at the company’s annual shareholders meeting.

As usual, Karmazin told us very little that we did not already know. The tighter his rhetorical hold gets on Sirius XM, the more I hope, for the sake of the company’s shareholders and survival, Mel gets pushed out before it’s too late.

It’s pretty easy to wrap your head around this analogy, particularly if you have followed terrestrial radio and Karmazin’s time in it. Mel runs Sirius XM like a cluster of New York radio stations. He made the move from broadcast radio to satellite and, for all intents and purposes, got right to programming Sirius XM’s channels like the standard Clear Channel

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[CCO  Loading...      ()   ] or CBS

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[CBS  Loading...      ()   ] offering.

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Photo by: Salim Virji

KBW analyst David Conrad on Tuesday said that JPMorgan Chase could be broken up if stock price multiples remain low over the long term.

Konrad said that his firm did not think that JPMorgan CEO James Dimon was “going anywhere soon,” in the wake of the company's $2 billion second-quarter hedge trading loss and its suspension of its share buyback program, but that “should the market continue to depress the multiples of universal banks regardless of underlying values, we believe the board may explore options to unlock value.”

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AP Hewlett Packard

Analysts expect Hewlett-Packard to announce a restructuring plan today that could mean layoffs for 25,000 to 35,000 employees, or 10 percent of the company’s workforce.

“It’s not a surprise at this stage of the game. It’s just the beginning,” said Mark Stahlman, director at TMT Strategies, in an interview on CNBC’s “Squawk Box.”

The restructuring announcement is expected to dovetail with the company’s second-quarter earnings report, expected after the closing bell.

Despite the layoffs, Stahlman sees a silver lining.

“HP has a fabulous opportunity here. They've got totally new management,” he said. “Maybe [CEO] Meg Whitman will actually try to run the company; in order to do that, she'll need a new digital economy strategy."  » Read More