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Business Briefs

Reported by Star-Bulletin staff & wire

Thursday, March 1, 2001

Gateway stock falls on restated results

CORONADO, Calif. -- Shares of personal computer maker Gateway Inc. fell 8.4 percent today on news the company will restate its revenue and earnings for all of 2000 and sharply cut its earnings projections for the first half of this year. Gateway's stock dropped $1.45 to a 52-week low of $15.75.

To turn things around, Gateway president and CEO Ted Waitt announced plans to refocus the company on its core business of selling personal computers.

Waitt told financial analysts meeting here yesterday that the company, hurt by an industrywide slump, would break even before one-time charges in the first six months of 2001, far below analyst expectations of a profit of 17 cents a share.

Gateway also said it will abandon plans to open 90 Gateway Country retail stores by this year, leaving it with about 300.

Mortgage rates slip to 7.03 percent

WASHINGTON -- Mortgage rates around the country edged down this week as consumer confidence continued to decline. The average interest rate on 30-year fixed-rate mortgages fell to 7.03 percent, down from 7.12 percent last week, according to a nationwide survey released today by Freddie Mac, the mortgage company. Fifteen-year mortgages declined to 6.58 percent last week, down from 6.69 percent the previous week. One-year adjustable-rate mortgages averaged an initial rate of 6.39 percent, vs. 6.43 percent last week.

Feds: No collusion on gasoline prices

WASHINGTON -- Federal investigators found no evidence that oil companies conspired to gouge Midwestern motorists last summer, when pump prices in Chicago, Milwaukee and other cities rose above $2 per gallon. Investigators also concluded that the decline in gasoline prices after June was unrelated to the Federal Trade Commission's inquiry.

The FTC investigation "uncovered no evidence of tacit or explicit collusion among market participants," the agency's chairman, Robert Pitofsky, wrote Rep. Billy Tauzin, chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee.