>>> US Gapping down

Gapping down
In reaction to disappointing earnings/guidance: CSII -19.7%, DGII -9.1%, AXP -5.7%, ETFC -2.5%, SBUX -1.8%, GE-1%


Other news: ECR -3.8% (reports proved reserves declined 2% YoY; expects to see Q4 impairment due to), LGCY -21.1% (announced 2016 distribution suspension; capital budget of $37 mln), AGRX -14.7% (intends to offer and sell $30 million of shares of its common stock), REXX -13.3% (suspends payment of its quarterly dividend on shares of its 6.0% Series A convertible perpetual preferred stock), PSO -2.9% (modest pull back following yday's gains), ABX -2.5% (announced preliminary 2015 full-year production of 6.12 mln ounces of gold, in line with the co's updated guidance of 6.0-6.15 mln ounces), SBNY -1.5% (prices 2.2 mln shares of common stock at $136 per share)

Analyst comments: SKX -1% (downgraded to Neutral from Positive at Susquehanna)

NYPost : Cabela’s wants to sell credit card biz before it puts up entire company

Cabela’s wants to sell credit card biz before it puts up entire company

A funny thing has happened on the road to selling Cabela’s, the giant retailer of hunting, fishing and outdoor gear.

The company, instead of placing the entire 27-store chain on the block, has decided to first sell its highly profitable credit card operation, The Post has learned.

And since Cabela’s is seeking special conditions to the sale of its credit card operation — the Sidney, Neb., company wants to retain the profit stream from the business — some close to the process think an eventual sale of the brick-and-mortar chain may never occur, sources said.

Meanwhile, Bass Pro Shops, a rival that in the past has expressed interest in buying Cabela’s, is stuck on the sidelines as banks kick the tires of the credit card operation, sources said.

Together, sources said, the issues are slowing a sales process that started back in October when activist investor Elliott Management bought an 11 percent stake in Cabela’s and pressed for management to seek strategic alternatives — including a sale.

The decision to first sell the credit card operations — responsible for about 30 percent of the chain’s $3.6 billion in sales — was a surprise, sources said.

However, it could make the company easier to sell.

Plans are to sell ownership of the credit card operation — while retaining the profit stream. That would relieve Cabela’s of regulatory oversight and increase profits.

Whether or not Cabela’s is serious about selling its entire business will become clearer in about two months, a source predicted.

Elliott Management has said that, including options, it owns an 11 percent stake in Cabela’s, and the Paul Singer-controlled firm could launch a proxy fight.

All the Cabela’s directors are up for election.

Cabela’s has postponed the time it will accept board nominations from what would have been this month until it sets its annual meeting date.

Last year the annual meeting was in June.

Bass, meanwhile, sits on the sidelines.

The Springfield, Mo., company is controlled by founder John Morris, who is reportedly worth nearly $4 billion. Bass and Cabela’s generate about the same amount of revenue.

But Cabela’s is much less profitable because, sources said, it is still run like a family business with, for example, subpar inventory control systems.

Both rival Bass and private equity firms may see an opportunity to buy Cabela’s, modernize its operations and increase profits.
“Consolidation in outdoor retailing does make sense,” a source said, “as a lot of guys have grown too aggressively.”

Cabela’s shares were trading at $33.42 the day before Elliot announced its stake, and after rising to $46.90 in December closed Thursday down 2 percent to $39.79.

Over the last 12 months Cabela’s shares are down 29 percent. Cabela’s declined comment. Bass did not return calls.

FT : Vladimir Putin asked Bashar al-Assad to go

Vladimir Putin asked Bashar al-Assad to go

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Just weeks before his death on January 3, Colonel-General Igor Sergun, director of Russia’s GRU military intelligence agency, was sent to Damascus on a delicate mission.
The general, who is believed to have cut his teeth as a Soviet operative in Syria, bore a message from Vladimir Putin for President Bashar al-Assad: the Kremlin, the Syrian dictator’s most powerful international protector, believed it was time for him to step aside.

Mr Assad angrily refused.
Two senior western intelligence officials have given the FT details of Sergun’s mission. The Russian foreign ministry referred a request for comment to the defence ministry, which said it was unable to comment.
Russia’s failed gamble in Damascus left Mr Assad more entrenched than before, and hopes for a diplomatic solution to the vicious civil war appear again to be ebbing away.
UN officials have spent the past week lowering expectations that the talks between the warring factions planned for January 25 in Geneva will go ahead, let alone produce a diplomatic breakthrough.
It is a dramatic reversal of fortunes. News of the secret proposal delivered by Sergun — a choreographed transition of power that would maintain the Alawite regime but open the door to realistic negotiations with moderate rebels — added to a growing mood of optimism among western intelligence agencies in late 2015.
For the US-led coalition fighting Isis, it seemed that accommodating Moscow could break years of diplomatic deadlock over Mr Assad’s removal — a move Washington views as a precondition to cooling the sectarian tensions in Syria and Iraq that have fed the jihadi insurgency.
Moscow’s military intervention in the conflict in support of Damascus in late September, many in Europe and the US reasoned, had reached its limit. “Mr Putin had taken a look under the bonnet of the Syrian regime,” one senior European intelligence official told the FT “and found a lot more problems than he was bargaining for.”
However, Russia overplayed its hand, the official said, and Mr Assad made clear to Sergun that there could be no future for Russia in Syria unless he remained as president.

In his dealings with the Kremlin, Mr Assad has adopted a strategy of playing one foreign power off against another. His trump card on this occasion was Iran. Russia has been nervous of Tehran’s growing regional influence at the cost of its own leverage for months.
People close to the Syrian regime say suspicions about Russia’s intentions have been growing in Damascus for some time. “That mood of elation when Russia first got involved lasted for a while, but then people got more pessimistic,” said one Damascus businessman. “Assad’s people started to realise that having the big brother defending them meant he could also demand things of them too.”
Mr Assad has also been scrupulous in rooting out any powerful figures who might one day stand as an alternative to his leadership.
The disappearance of Abdelaziz al-Kheir, an Alawite dissident, was a striking example, said Joshua Landis, a Syria analyst from Oklahoma State University.
Mr Al-Kheir, a leading member of the National Co-ordinating Body, a political grouping dedicated to negotiating with Mr Assad to achieve democratic change, was from a prominent family in Mr Assad’s home town, said Mr Landis.
“He went to Moscow in 2012 and then he went to Beijing. It seemed clear to everyone they were checking him out as a potential Alawite replacement to the current regime that could assure the Alawite community,” Mr Landis said. On his return to Damascus he was taken from the airport by security agencies.

“That seemed to be a sign that Assad was not going to allow Russia to pick the next president,” Mr Landis added.
Moscow is frustrated. “It has become quite clear that part of an eventual political solution is that Assad has to step aside at some point, although we don’t think that it has been decided yet when that should be,” said a Russian authority on Syria who is involved in Moscow’s diplomacy. “Ever since President Assad was flown in to be received by our president last year, his attitude has been less that satisfactory, and this does interfere with our efforts towards a political solution.”
But the Kremlin is also pragmatic, note many foreign policy experts, and its intervention is as much about projecting itself on the international stage as it is about determining Syria’s leader.
Dmitri Trenin, head of the Carnegie Moscow Center, said: “For Putin, the intervention in Syria was never about keeping Assad in power, it is about getting the Americans to acknowledge Russia’s key role in settling this conflict, and that’s being achieved through the Vienna process.
“But it looks premature to engineer a coup in Syria — I don’t see how that would help the political process as there are not enough opposition people who can accept the regime if it gets just a different figurehead.”
Meanwhile, says one British diplomat, with no palatable strategy for withdrawal, Russia appears to be doubling down on its military intervention, leaving the prospect of a negotiated peace as far from reality as it has ever been.

>>> US Early premarket gappers

Early premarket gappers
C
Gapping up: GALE +18%, EGHT +9.2%, ZFGN +7%, JKS +6.8%, LVS +6.1%, HAL +5.8%, ERIC +5.7%, CHK +5.6%,RMD +5.6%, VSTM +5.5%, SUNE +5.5%, XNPT +5.4%, RDS.A +5%, BBL +4.9%, CSIQ +4.9%, STO +4.8%, SDRL+4.5%, FCX +4.4%, TOT +4.4%, YNDX +4.3%, KMI +4.3%, VLO +4.1%, ALV +4.1%, PBR +4%, AEG +3.8%, RIG+3.8%, VALE +3.6%, BP +3.5%, BHP +3.4%, ASML +3.4%, MITL +3.3%, SLB +3.2%, MRO +3.1%, BCS +3%, AA +3%,HSBC +3%, MXIM +3%, ABB +2.8%, RP +2.7%, CS +2.7%, FIT +2.5%, TEF +2.5%, XOM +2.5%, CEMP +1.6%, VASC+1.6%, SYF +0.9%, ISRG +0.4%

Gapping down: LGCY -29.6%, CSII -19.7%, AGRX -14.7%, REXX -13.3%, DGII -9.1%, AXP -4.2%, PSO -2.9%, SBUX-2.9%, ABX -2.6%, ABX -2.6%, ETFC -2.5%, GE -1%