Profit

Chris Paine is a filmmaker whose documentaries include "Who Killed the Electric Car?" ,"Charge" and "Revenge of the Electric Car. " The troubles of electric-car-maker Fisker Automotive have fueled another round of debate about whether plug-ins can live up to their promises. The California start-up, which had already halted production and laid off most of its employees, missed a federal loan payment Monday and told a congressional hearing on Wednesday that bankruptcy may be unavoidable . This is likely the end of the road...

PROFIT DROPS: Pork producer Smithfield Foods Inc.'s fourth quarter profit sank nearly 63 percent to $29.7 million as feed costs rose even as consumers resist price hikes, and hog prices and exports fell. MIXED SALES: Revenue rose more 3 percent to $3.32 billion. Sales of packaged meats rose 6 percent, while sales of fresh pork fell 3 percent as it saw a decline in exports to China, Russia and Japan. Its cost of sales rose 6 percent. BUYOUT PENDING: Smithfield agreed last month...

By now, you know everything. You have watched every episode of the first three seasons of "Arrested Development. " You have swallowed Netflix's bonus fourth season without chewing. You have tried to wash it down with honey from the hive mind. You have begun to gag. The new season started streaming early Sunday morning. The professional recappers picked it apart almost instantly, littering the Internet with twitticisms. Superfans got exactly what we wanted but still felt bereft...

MADRID — Spanish clothes retailer Inditex, which owns the Zara store chain, is blaming currency fluctuations for its lowest first-quarter growth in four years. Inditex said Wednesday that profit for February through April grew by 1.4 percent to 438 million euros ($583 million) compared with the same period last year. Sales were up a healthier 5.2 percent to 3.6 billion euros. Inditex said it had 6,058 stores as of April, up 49 during the quarter, with Russia, Japan and China accounting...

Eleven years ago, one of Washington's most tradition-bound companies placed a bet that would transform its fortunes. The wager, by The Washington Post Co. and its Kaplan division, took the form of a $165 million purchase of an Atlanta-based chain of for-profit vocational schools that catered to low-income students. The bet was big — the price equal to the profits earned that year by The Post Co.'s print-media pillars: this newspaper and Newsweek magazine. So was the payoff.

Christopher Shea has written for the Atlantic, the Wall Street Journal, and the Chronicle of Higher Education, where he is a contributing writer. The last batch of this year's college acceptance letters is in the mail, and scary news stories about how much an education will cost are in the air. We've heard tales of liberal arts majors with six-figure debts and entire families condemned to loan payments for decades to come. One Web designer in his early 40s told Consumer Reports last...

Thanks to the government's rescue of the financial system, many banks and hedge funds are making money again, but this turnaround has caused a backlash among recession-weary Americans. How should these business leaders respond? Former congressman Mickey Edwards is vice president of the Aspen Institute, where he directs the institute's Rodel Fellowships in Public Leadership. For those who see themselves as having a higher calling, with concern about the country and not merely the corporation, here's one three-part...

As they encounter uncertainty about future Pentagon spending, some of the largest local defense contractors are already seeing sales and profits flatten. Lockheed Martin, the world's biggest defense contractor, last week reported that profit declined 11 percent in the three-month period ended June 26, compared to the same period a year ago. Still, quarterly revenue increased slightly, to $11.55 billion, and company officials attributed the earnings drop to the divestment of Pacific Architects and Engineers, which Lockheed sold in April.

A Senate committee that successfully pressed for tighter regulation of the for-profit higher- education sector published a report Sunday that said the business had put shareholders before students. As of 2009, the report said, three-quarters of students in for-profit colleges attended institutions owned either by publicly traded companies or private equity firms. It said the schools excelled at recruiting students, but not necessarily at retaining them: More than half of students at...

The Washington Post Co. 's 2007 profit fell 11 percent from 2006, as the continued revenue slide at the company's flagship newspaper offset its highflying education division, Kaplan, the company reported yesterday. The Post Co. earned $289 million ($30.19 per share) on $4.2 billion in revenue in 2007, compared with a $325 million profit ($33.68) on $3.9 billion in revenue in 2006, the company said. In the fourth quarter, profit was $83 million ($8.71) on $1.1 billion in revenue, down 13 percent from a profit of...

DETROIT — Cost-cutting efforts and fresh new vehicles should help General Motors Co. boost its North American pretax profit margin to 10 percent by the middle of this decade, company officials said Wednesday. The North American profit margin — the amount of each dollar in revenue GM actually keeps — was 6.2 percent in the first quarter. Crosstown rival Ford Motor Co.'s margin was 11 percent for the same period. CEO Dan Akerson told a group of analysts that efforts to cut...

MILAN — The Prada fashion house says it will concentrate on expanding its presence in international markets and cutting costs this year after reporting first-quarter earnings rose 13.5 percent, mostly thanks to higher sales in Asia. The group, which comprises the Prada, Miu Miu, Church's and Car Shoe brands, reported Tuesday net income of 138 million euros ($183 million) compared with 122 million euros a year earlier. Sales in Asia, which account for 40 percent...

SAN FRANCISCO — With every phone call they make and every Web excursion they take, people are leaving a digital trail of revealing data that can be tracked by profit-seeking companies and terrorist-hunting government officials. The revelations that the National Security Agency is perusing millions of U.S. customer phone records at Verizon Communications and snooping on the digital communications stored by nine major Internet services illustrate how aggressively...

BANGKOK — The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission says a Thai plastics company employee made profits of $3.2 million by trading on inside knowledge that a takeover offer for Smithfield Foods was imminent. A U.S. court has frozen the American brokerage account of 30-year-old Badin Rungruangnavarat so the trading profits can't be transferred overseas. U.S. pork producer Smithfield announced a $4.7 billion takeover by Chinese meat company Shuanghui in late May. ...

RICHMOND, Va. — Used car dealership chain CarMax says its foundation is partnering with a national non-profit group to build 30 playgrounds across the country. The company is launching the $4.1 million partnership with KaBOOM! on Friday with the building of playgrounds in Richmond and Los Angeles Richmond-based CarMax says volunteers will build the playgrounds that will benefit 100,000 children by the end of 2015. In the next year, playgrounds also are planned...

WASHINGTON — A U.S. court has frozen the assets of Thailand trader accused of profiting from advance knowledge of a Chinese company's plan to acquire Smithfield Foods. The Securities and Exchange Commission has accused Badin Rungruangnavarat of insider trading, saying he made more than $3 million ahead of the $4.7 billion planned acquisition announced May 29. He bought thousands of options on Smithfield stock and futures contracts in the prior week that would turn...

NEWARK, N.J. -- Public Service Enterprise Group Inc. , which generates, transmits and distributes electric energy, said Wednesday its third-quarter profit fell 26 percent, which compared unfavorably with the same quarter last year. The weak economy and cool weather cut into demand and pricing, the company said. Net income of $488 million, or 96 cents per share, compared with $656 million, or $1.29 per share, for the same quarter in 2008. Last year's third quarter included a profit on the sale of discontinued operations of $180...

Recent earnings reports show that many government contractors have been able to maintain their profits through cost-cutting despite declining or flattening sales, but analysts are questioning how long companies can keep that up. Take Falls Church-based Northrop Grumman , which said profits grew at the end of 2011. The company's sales fell nearly 6 percent, to $6.51 billion, in the fourth quarter compared with a year earlier. But Northrop still posted profit of $548 million ($2.09 a share)