Houston REIT buys Seattle building

A Texas-based real-estate investment trust has bought another building in Seattle.

Hines REIT of Houston said it paid about $72 million for Fifth & Bell, a five-year-old, six-story office building on Fifth Avenue between Bell and Battery streets downtown. The seller was Touchstone Seattle Venture II.

Hines said the building is 83 percent leased, with such tenants as Philips Electronics, Edelman Worldwide and West Travel.

Last month, Hines bought the Seattle Design Center in the Georgetown neighborhood for $57 million.

787 rollout gives stock price a boost

Boeing shares climbed Monday after the aerospace giant gave the public a first look at its newly assembled Dreamliner and announced 35 new orders for the next-generation jet.

Shares in the company rose as much as 2.5 percent before finishing up $1.02, or 1 percent, at $99.90.

On Sunday, Boeing rolled out the 787 Dreamliner, an event that gave Wall Street its first chance to see an aircraft some had feared was running into delays.

"The aircraft looked great," Credit Suisse analyst Robert Spingarn said Monday, though he cautioned that Boeing still has to prove that the airplane can operate smoothly. Still, Spingarn said that "rising comfort with 787 progress" caused him to raise his price target on Boeing's shares, rated outperform, by $14 to $124, and to lift earnings estimates as well.

Boeing

Chinese order split between rivals

China Southern Airlines, the country's biggest carrier, plans to buy 45 narrow-body airliners from Boeing and Airbus valued at as much as $3.6 billion at list prices.

The two separate agreements call for the purchase of 25 737-800s from Boeing and 20 A320 aircraft from Airbus, the carrier, based in Guangzhou, southern China, said in a statement released Monday on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.

Delivery of the Boeing aircraft, valued at as much as $1.9 billion at list prices, would begin in 2011. Shipment of the Airbus planes, valued at as much as $1.7 billion, would begin in March 2009.

PayScale

Investors pump $8.8 million to site

PayScale, a Web site that tracks employee salaries, plans to announce today that it has raised $8.8 million in a third round of venture capital.

The Seattle company said it expects to raise an additional $1.5 million in the next two months, for a total of $10.3 million.

New investors in the round were Corporate Executive Board and Allen & Co. Also participating were PayScale's previous investors, including Trinity Ventures, Madrona Venture Group, Fluke Venture Partners, and Buerk Dale Victor. Previously, PayScale, which has about 55 employees, had raised $10.2 million.

Gates Foundation

Berkshire Hathaway shares go to charity

The five foundations that billionaire Warren Buffett has pledged most of his $49 billion fortune to received their second annual gifts of Class B shares of Berkshire Hathaway on Monday.

Buffett said in a news release that he had given 572,375 Berkshire shares to the foundations according to the terms he announced last June. Based on Friday's closing price of $3,704.90, this year's gift to charity was worth $2.12 billion.

Most of the shares — 475,000 — went to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation; the rest went to Buffett's own foundation and the foundations run by each of his three children.

Buffett has said he plans to give away 12,050,000 Class B shares of Berkshire Hathaway stock to the five foundations.

Yapta

$3 million raised in financing

Seattle-based Yapta, a Web site that tracks airline ticket pricing for customers, plans to announce today that it raised $2.3 million in an initial financing round.

Participating investors include First Round Capital, Voyager Capital, Swiftsure Capital and Bay Partners. In total, the company has raised $3 million.

Yapta said the money will be used to develop services, such as the ability to tag trips and get alerts. The money will also go toward marketing.

Schnitzer Steel

Earnings rise to company high

Schnitzer Steel Industries, which recycles scrap metal, said earnings rose 45 percent to a third-quarter record on rising foreign demand. The shares jumped as much as 19 percent as profit topped analysts' estimates.

Net income in the three months ending May 31 rose to $43.8 million, or $1.47 a share, from $30.2 million, or 98 cents, a year earlier, the Portland-based Schnitzer company said Monday. The company was expected to earn $1.07 a share, the average of three analysts surveyed by Bloomberg.

Shares of Schnitzer rose $9.04, or 17.3 percent, to $61.36 Monday. They are up 54.6 percent so far this year.

Amazon.com

No PC needed for video ordering

Users of TiVo's digital video recorders should be able to order movies from Amazon.com's Unbox download service directly from their televisions starting today.

The two companies partnered in March to deliver Seattle-based Amazon's movie downloads to TiVo machines, but the feature previously required customers to make their orders on a computer through Amazon's Web site.

Now, PC intervention won't be needed, the companies said. The new "Buy on TV" feature allows TiVo users to search Amazon's video catalog and rent or purchase an item from their televisions.

Apple

iPhone foreshadows new iPod features

Apple may introduce new models of its iPod media player by January that have the iPhone's touch-screen display, a Piper Jaffray analyst said.

"The iPhone reveals much of what the iPod will soon be," analyst Gene Munster said Monday in a report. The $299 device will have the features of the iPhone without the wireless connection or Web browser, he said.

JPMorgan Chase also issued an iPhone report, saying Apple plans to launch a cheaper version of the iPhone in the fourth quarter that could be based on the ultra-slim iPod Nano music player.

Kevin Chang, a JPMorgan analyst based in Taiwan, cited people in the supply channel he did not name and an application with the U.S. Patent and Trademark office for his report dated July 8.

Apple filed a patent application document dated July 5 that refers to a multifunctional handheld device with a circular touch pad control, similar to the Nano's scroll wheel.

Apple spokeswoman Natalie Kerris declined comment.

Alcoa

Net income falls with outage costs

Aluminum maker Alcoa on Monday said second-quarter profit slipped nearly 4 percent as outage costs at two smelters weighed down results.

Net income fell to $715 million, or 81 cents per share, from $744 million, or 85 cents per share, for the same period last year, while quarterly revenue rose to a record $8.1 billion, a 3.8 percent increase from the year-ago period.

The profit matched Wall Street expectations.

Alcoa shares rose 70 cents to $42.36, near the upper end of its 52-week range of $26.39 to $42.90.

Alcoa, the first of the Dow Jones industrials, also extended its offer Monday for the Montreal-based Alcan from today to Aug. 10, subject to further extension. Alcan's board earlier rejected the unsolicited bid as inadequate, hinting it would consider a sweetened bid.

FedEx

Officials refuse comment on rumor

FedEx officials refused to comment Monday on its mention as a potential buyout candidate or if such conjecture boosted the price of the shipping company's shares.

"We don't comment on speculation or rumor related to corporate development activity," company spokesman Jess Bunn said.

FedEx shares opened Monday at $113.37, up 2.3 percent from Friday's close, following a weekend column in Barron's speculating that the package delivery giant's market cap could make it attractive for a buyout attempt.

The shares climbed as high as $116.90 before closing up $5.33, or 4.8 percent, to $116.17.

FedEx, with a $34 billion market capitalization and $1 billion in debt, could be "in the zone of larger deals favored by cash-sodden LBO firms," the financial publication reported.

Barron's noted, however, that it had no evidence any buyout talks were in the works, and that FedEx has given no indication it would consider such a move.

Federal Reserve

Credit-card debt at 6-month high

Consumer borrowing posted a hefty increase in May, reflecting the biggest jump in credit-card debt in six months.

The Federal Reserve reported Monday that consumer credit rose at an annual rate of 6.4 percent in May, far above the small 1.1 percent gain of April. The advance was about double what analysts had been expecting.

The increase was propelled by a surge in the category that includes credit cards, which rose at a rate of 9.8 percent in May after having a tiny increase of 0.2 percent in April. The jump in credit-card debt was the largest since a 14.5 percent rate of increase in November.

The category of consumer credit that includes auto loans was also up in May, rising at a 4.4 percent rate after a 1.7 percent gain in April.

Compiled from The Associated Press, Seattle Times staff, MarketWatch and Bloomberg News.