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“Shares of Facebook (NASDAQ: FB [FREE Stock Trend Analysis]) surged to a session high Wednesday after a 13F filing revealed that Leon Cooperman’s Omega Advisors had purchased 3.16 million shares in the last quarter.

Although Cooperman could’ve exited his stake within the last few weeks, he was in Facebook as of December 31.

Facebook shares traded up nearly three percent after news of Cooperman’s filing broke, trading back above $28 per share.

(c) 2013 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved.

“Yahoo’s search deal with Microsoft is underperforming, CEO Marissa Mayer saidduring an appearance at the Goldman Sachs Technology and Internet Conference in San Francisco on Tuesday.

The deal has not delivered the market share gains or revenue boost that was expected, Mayer said. Yahoo and Microsoft inked the 10-year search partnership in 2010 as part of an effort to challenge Google. But Google retained a 66.7 percent share of the U.S. market as of December, almost the same as its 66.6 percent share two years ago, according to ComScore. Microsoft lagged behind with a 16.3 percent share and Yahoo had 12.2 percent.

“We need to see monetization working better because we know that it can and we’ve seen other competitors in the space illustrate how well it can work,” Mayer said of the partnership….”

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“Thanks to its complicated regulatory structure and the continuing popularity of web-enabled feature phones, Japan’s mobile market is difficult for foreign companies to penetrate. But Apple has finally managed to work its way to the top, according to a report by Counterpoint Research (h/t TNW).

Apple took a 16 percent market share in Q4 2012 and 15 percent for the full year of 2012, taking the top slot for the first time in annual terms and displacing Sharp’s six-year reign as champion. Sharp and Fujitsu each took 14 percent of the market in 2012. The research report notes that Apple had temporarily displaced Sharp in Q4 2011, but that the Japanese company climbed back to the top for the first half of 2012.

The Cupertino-based company has been in the No. 1 spot since November, says Counterpoint Research. Other foreign brands, including Samsung and LG, also increased their shares in Q4 2012, and their combined share of the market exceeded 50 percent for the first time in Japan’s history….”

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“Global mobile phone sales declined by 1.7% in 2012, hit by tough economic conditions, shifting consumer preferences and intense market competition, industry research firm Gartner said Wednesday.

World-wide sales to end users totaled 1.75 billion units in 2012, a 1.7% decline from 2011 sales, Gartner said, adding that fourth-quarter 2012 smartphone sales reached 207.7 million units, 38.3% higher than the same period last year.

Gartner expects sales of world-wide smartphone sales to end users to be close to 1 billion units in 2013, while it estimates overall mobile phone sales to end users to reach 1.9 billion units.

Apple Inc. AAPL -2.57% and South Korea’s Samsung Electronics Co.005930.SE +1.29% dominated the smartphone segment with a combined market share of 52% in the fourth quarter, up from 46.4% in the third quarter of 2012, Gartner said….”

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“WellPoint Inc. named Joseph R. Swedish as its new chief executive, unexpectedly turning to a hospital-industry veteran to lead the second-largest U.S. health insurer through the challenging implementation of the health-care overhaul.

Mr. Swedish, 61 years old, will take over as CEO on March 25, the company said. Since 2004, he has been chief executive and president of Trinity Health, a Catholic operator of 47 hospitals with revenue of around $9 billion last year.

The choice is likely to surprise investors, whose displeasure with previous WellPoint CEO Angela Braly helped lead to her resignation last August. Mr. Swedish’s career has been spent on the provider side of health care, and recently at nonprofit institutions, so he is not a familiar face for managed-care investors.

In an interview, Mr. Swedish signaled that he’s unlikely to radically change WellPoint’s current direction under interim CEO John Cannon. “I’m inheriting a springboard” that will propel the company forward, he said. “This organization has an expert leadership team.” Mr. Swedish also said his background will help him forge closer ties with health-care providers in efforts to share data and improve care and efficiency.

Under Ms. Braly, WellPoint suffered through a series of missteps, including earnings misses; a proposed premium increase in California that became a lightning rod in the health-overhaul debate and was later scaled back; and a public tiff with the Obama administration. Investor concerns crystallized after a disappointing second-quarter earnings report and guidance downgrade last July….”

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“Blackstone Group LP hired Anthony Maniscalco to help run a new business that will buy stakes in hedge-fund managers, said three people familiar with the plans, as the firm tackles an investing area where institutions such as Goldman Sachs Group Inc. have had mixed results.

Maniscalco, 42, previously head of alternative-asset management in the investment-banking group at Barclays Plc in New York, will be part of the team that evaluates and strikes deals with fund managers, said the people, asking not to be named because the information is private.Peter Rose, a spokesman for New York-based Blackstone, which has $46.1 billion in its hedge-fund group, declined to comment on the hires….”

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“Apple and Google are enemies and partners at the same time due to asymmetric competition. According to a report from Morgan Stanley, Google could pay more than $1 billion in 2014 to remain the default search engine on iOS. In 2009, Google paid only $82 million for the privilege. Analyst Scott Devitt believes that it is a per-device deal growing every year.

For every dollar of revenue Google makes on iOS thanks to advertising and data collection, Apple gets 75 cents from Google. The number is only going to increase in the coming years if iOS sales keep growing.

To put it into perspective, the Mozilla Foundation should get $400 million in 2014. Google remains the main contributor to the organization as one can read in Mozilla’s reports. Opera is another longstanding partner, but Morgan Stanley doesn’t give figures for this deal.

Over the years, Apple has gotten more revenue from Google as Microsoft has been pushing very hard and bidding to make Bing the default search engine. For example, Bing is now the default provider on Nokia and BlackBerry devices. Money is a major incentive for Apple. But selling aGoogle-free iPhone could dictate the company’s next move….”

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“Teva won a court case that will allow it to sell a generic version of Bristol’s Baraclude, for hepatitis B, which had $1.4 billion in global sales last year.

A Bristol spokeswoman writes:

The U.S. District Court of the District of Delaware issued an opinion that the composition of matter patent covering the entecavir molecule is invalid as obvious.

We are disappointed in the Court’s decision and believe it is incorrect. We are in the process of reviewing the Court’s decision for the purposes of our appeal and will be evaluating our legal options.

Entecavir is the active ingredient in Baraclude. Baraclude is an antiviral medicine developed as part of Bristol-Myers Squibb’s commitment to improving treatment outcomes for patients with viral hepatitis. Baraclude is approved in the United States to treat patients with chronic hepatitis B in adults who have active virus and liver damage.

How big a deal is this? Not huge, says ISI Group analyst Mark Schoenebaum, who had the first report I saw of the news….”

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“LONDON—An internationally agreed, comprehensive overhaul of rules is needed if governments are to be able to continue to tax companies without resorting to unilateral action that would damage investment and economic growth, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development said Tuesday.

As governments in many developed countries look to boost their revenues to cut high budget deficits and debt, the strategies that companies with operations in a number of different countries use to minimize their tax bill have come under heightened scrutiny.

Led by the U.K., Germany and France, governments have begun to discuss how to stop big multinational companies from using legal loopholes to shift their profits to low-tax countries.

In a report prepared for a meeting of finance ministers from the Group of 20 largest economies in Moscow next Friday and Saturday, the OECD said that while corporate tax revenues haven’t fallen in recent years, there is evidence that the practice of recording profits in low tax jurisdictions rather than where revenue is generated—a practice known as profit shifting—is increasing.

It warned that the practice poses a threat to the ability of governments to tax any company, since the perception that large multinationals can avoid paying their fair share will erode compliance more broadly.

“If other taxpayers [including ordinary individuals] think that multinational corporations can legally avoid paying income tax it will undermine voluntary compliance by all taxpayers—upon which modern tax administration depends,” the OECD said.

The OECD also said that it would be impossible, and potentially damaging, for individual governments to act alone to prevent profit sifting.

“Unilateral and uncoordinated actions by governments responding in isolation could result in the risk of double—and possibly multiple—taxation for business,” the OECD said. “This would have a negative impact on investment, and thus on growth and employment globally.”

The OECD said corporate tax regimes haven’t responded to changes in the way businesses operate, both because they are “grounded in an economic environment characterized by a lower degree of economic integration across borders” and because the nature of cross-border transactions has changed….”

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“DreamWorks Animation’s Summer 2013 Film Turbo Speeds onto the Streaming Service

LOS ANGELES , Feb. 12, 2013 /CNW/ – Netflix, Inc. (NFLX) and DreamWorks Animation SKG, Inc. (DWA) today announced they will create the first ever Netflix Original Series for kids. Based on the highly-anticipated DreamWorks Animation movie Turbo, premiering in theaters this summer, the Netflix series Turbo: F.A.S.T. (Fast Action Stunt Team) debuts exclusively this December in the United States and across the globe in the 40 countries where Netflix offers its service.

“Families love Netflix, so creating an original series for kids was a natural for us. And we’re doing it in a big way by adapting Turbo, this year’s DreamWorks Animation summer tentpole movie,” said Ted Sarandos, Chief Content Officer of Netflix. “DreamWorks Animation has a long track record of creating incredibly successful characters and stories that delight people of all ages. We’re thrilled to add Turbo the series as well as all new DreamWorks Animation films, starting with their 2013 slate, to Netflix.”

“Netflix boasts one of the largest and fastest-growing audiences in kids television. They pioneered a new model for TV dramas with House of Cards, and now together, we’re doing the same thing with kids’ programming,” said DreamWorks Animation’s Chief Executive Officer, Jeffrey Katzenberg . “DreamWorks is thrilled to be part of the television revolution.”

DreamWorks Animation’s Turbo is a high velocity 3D comedy about an ordinary snail who dares to dream big – and fast. After a freak accident miraculously gives him the power of super-speed, Turbo kicks his dreaming into overdrive and embarks on an extraordinary journey to achieve the seemingly impossible: competing in the Indianapolis 500. The film, which stars Ryan Reynolds , Paul Giamatti, Michael Pena , Luis Guzmán, Bill Hader , Richard Jenkins , Ken Jeong , Michelle Rodriguez , Maya Rudolph , Ben Schwartz , Kurtwood Smith, Snoop Lion and Samuel L. Jackson , comes to theaters on July 19, 2013 ….”

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“Twitter users will be able to pay for products with tweets by using a new American Express payment system integrated onto the microblogging site.

The “Amex Sync” integration allows users who sync their Amex cards with Twitter to buy selected items by including special hashtags.

American Express first launched its original Twitter Sync feature last year, which allowed customers to get discount deals by tweeting hashtags of special offers. Now it has extended the feature to allow payments.

This new arrangement aimed at providing a new source of financing for Twitter, which has so far been largely reliant on advertising revenue.

Understandably, neither Amex nor Twitter will discuss financial terms of their partnership, but Twitter doesn’t rule out taking a cut of future e-commerce sales.

“We’re convinced that commerce is going to be one of the areas (for which) advertisers are going to start using our platform,” Joel Lunenfeld, Twitter’s vice president of global brand strategy, told the Wall Street Journal.

E-commerce has been slow to take off on social networks, with retailers who have tried to use their presence on the sites to stimulate transactions reporting disappointing results….”

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“Novo Nordisk Chief Executive Lars Rebien Sorensen said the company was “surprised and disappointed” by a letter it received Friday from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration demanding additional cardiovascular data. The Danish company, which is the world’s largest maker of insulin, said it doesn’t expect to be able to provide the information during 2013.

Shares of Novo Nordisk fell sharply Monday following the disclosure. The Danish drug maker said the FDA’s letter “is not expected to significantly impact Novo Nordisk’s expectations for the company’s financial results for 2013.”

The news comes less than two weeks after the company said the launch of Tresiba and a related product, Ryzodeg, was reason to be optimistic heading into 2013. Demand for insulin has been growing worldwide and Novo Nordisk’s new product is expected to sell at a premium over competitors’ drugs.

Novo Nordisk announced in January that Tresiba had been approved in the European Union. Launch in the U.K. and Denmark is to take place during the first half year of 2013, with other EU countries to follow through the end of 2014….”

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“Apple Inc. is experimenting with designs for a watch-like device that would perform some functions of a smartphone, according to people briefed on the effort.

The company has discussed such a device with its major manufacturing partner Hon Hai Precision Industry Co., one of these people said, as part of explorations of potentially large product categories beyond the smartphone and tablet.

Apple’s efforts come as companies have introduced various kinds of wearable gadgets, mainly designed to measure physical activity. More sophisticated devices face big technical challenges, but also are attracting investments from large technology companies.

Foxconn, as Hon Hai is also known, has been working on a spate of technologies that could be used in wearable devices, one of these people said. In particular, the Taiwan-based company has been working to address the challenges of making displays more power-efficient and working with chip manufacturers to strip down their products. The technologies are aimed at multiple Foxconn customers, this person said.

Capabilities that Apple is exploring for wearable devices remain unclear. But analysts and investors who have been tracking the field predict the company would release a product with many different functions and that the device would work closely with the iPhone.

Apple has been exploring the area for some time, according to the people briefed on the effort, and has hired employees with backgrounds in sensors and related technologies in recent years.

An Apple spokeswoman declined to comment. A spokesman for Foxconn declined to comment. The New York Times earlier reported that Apple is experimenting with wristwatch-like devices….”

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“Apple Inc.’s profit margins are falling back to levels not seen since sales took off after the 2007 debut of the iPhone, as competition and lack of breakthrough products pressure the company to lower prices.

Concern over falling margins helped prompt a 33 percent decline in Apple shares from a record high of $705.07 on Sept. 21, making it the worst-performing stock in the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index in the same period. Last week, Apple said the board and management are discussing the return of more money to shareholders, after a proposal by Greenlight Capital Inc.’s David Einhorn to pay out more of its $137.1 billion in cash and securities, possibly with higher-yielding preferred stock.

The latest quarter’s drop in gross margin to 39 percent from 45 percent a year earlier was caused by the introduction of the iPad mini, other products with higher costs and price cuts for existing products, Apple said. Unless Chief Executive OfficerTim Cook unveils a revolutionary new gadget with premium pricing, Apple shares will remain under pressure.

“It will be almost impossible for Apple to maintain the margins it’s had in the last few years,” David Yoffie, a professor at Harvard Business School, said in an interview. “They’ve been able to charge pretty much whatever they wanted for their products, but competition is increasing.”

A central challenge is slowing sales of the iPhone, Apple’s best-selling and most-profitable product that accounts for 56 percent of revenue. Samsung Electronics Co., HTC Corp. and other rivals are introducing cheaper and feature-laden smartphones and tablets based on Google Inc.’s Android software.

Steve Dowling, a spokesman at Apple, declined to comment.

Margin Pressures…”

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“Post-IPO life hasn’t been kind to Facebook and other newly public social startups, whose plummeting shares have left investors downtrodden. But LinkedIn, the first of the big social network upstarts to go public, continues to prove it can be a money-making machine.

Wall Street analysts had high expectations for LinkedIn’s (LNKD) fourth quarter, and the company still beat on both counts. LInkedIn netted $40.2 million, or 35 cents per share — more than three times as much as the $13 million it made a year earlier…”

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“A Canaccord Genuity study found that Apple took 72% of all handset profits worldwide while Samsung took 29%. While that is obviously a bit disconcerting, the thinking is that these are rounded-up numbers. What’s more troubling, however, is the fact that most other manufacturers – Nokia, BlackBerry, and HTC – are either losing money or making no profit at all.

The report is detailed over at Fortune by Mssr. Elmer-Dewitt but it points to the fact that we are living in a world where Apple takes the lion’s share of profit on 21.7% of sales while Samsung smothers the rest with another 21%.

That’s why BlackBerry is doomed: at this point in the game, there’s no room for third place let alone a distant contender coming up behind. In this horse race, Apple and Samsung are way ahead and BlackBerry is still on the farm.”

“Apple’s next big growth market could be India – a country where it has failed to find significant purchase with consumers up until this point. The Economic Times (via @ScepticGeek) is reporting that sales of Apple devices, with iPhones leading the way, rose by between 300 and 400 percent in the past quarter. That growth, identified by research firm IDC, is likely being propelled by Apple’s distribution partnerships with Redington and Ingram Micro.

According to Convergence Catalyst founder Jayanth Kolla in conversation with the Economic Times, Apple’s strategy in India mirrors the route it took to success in China; the company spent time studying the market, learned what it needed to do to sell handsets in India and then got aggressive about executing its sales strategy. Apple’s India team grew by 500 percent in six months to help make that happen, going from 30 to 150 people, Kolla says.

Apple’s strategy in India hasn’t involved fielding a lower cost device, but it has included making its iPhone more attainable for cost-conscious buyers. That’s being done through installment-based payment schemes operated through its resale partners, including one with TheMobileStore, a national Indian retail chain, which that company’s CEO says has helped increase sales of Apple gadgets three-fold in the past year.

Three- or four-fold growth in a single quarter is definitely impressive, but Apple has to make up a considerable gulf in India…..”

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“LONDON—Boeing Co. BA -1.07% on Friday said it had warned customers that near-term deliveries of 787 Dreamliners are at risk of delays as the Chicago jet maker continued to work with regulators to identify the cause of battery problems that have grounded its fleet world-wide.

European carriers Thomson Airways, part of U.K. leisure group TUI TravelTT.LN +1.11% PLC, and Norwegian Air Shuttle NAS.OS -1.28% ASA both said they are working on contingency plans after Boeing told them that deliveries of the jetliner could be delayed.

Thomson, due to take delivery of its first Dreamliner at the end of February, said that the delivery had been postponed and no new date had yet been scheduled. Norwegian, which has ordered a total of eight 787s, and was expecting its first in April, said it hasn’t received a new delivery date from Boeing nor a written confirmation of a possible delay.

The delays in 787 deliveries come as U.S. investigators said Thursday that short-circuits inside a battery triggered a fire aboard a parked Boeing Co. 787 Dreamliner last month. The investigators also found the safety-approval process for the power devices was flawed and “must be reconsidered” before the jets return to passenger service.

The consequences of the battery problems are now spreading to those airlines yet to take delivery of the new Boeing plane.

“We have informed our customers expecting 787 deliveries in the near term that those aircraft either have been or are at risk of being delayed,” Boeing said.

“We are staying in close communication with our customers as we work towards an approved means of compliance with the FAA Airworthiness Directive and develop a plan for resumption of 787 deliveries,” the company said in a statement.

Boeing declined to give details of its delivery schedules….”

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