Since I have 7 quarterly or annual reports to cover, I am not writing up macro news today. Over to the reporting companies, in alphabetical order from Britain, Canada, Israel, Japan, Norway, Singapore, and South Korea, and other news from Ireland:

*Canada's BCE profit beat forecasts and the stock rose 1.67% in US trading so far. Its net profit for its Q4 rose 25% to C$542 mn or 64 loonie cents/sh. Adjusted net excluding items came in at 72 loonie cents. Revenues rose 2.7% year/year to C$5.53 bn. Moreover, for the first time since 2010, it made money with landlines, maily because this service is now linked with accounts for broadband Internet and TV. It signed up 76,000 new accounts for its services overall.

BCE raised its dividend by 5% to 5.2%, and forecast a much better 2015 than earlier. It now expects a 1-3% rise in revenues and estimates it will earn C$3.28-3.38/sh. Its free cash flow figure is the most upbeat, now at a rise of 8-15% for the year, vs a level of only 6.7% up in 2014.

*Singapore's Global Logistic Properties (GBTZF) reported a lousy Q3 with profits off over 36% y/y to $112.4 mn despite revenues rising 0.7% to $179 mn despite a weaker yen. The revenue rise was because of a 1-month inflow from a Brazilian portfolio bought last summer and completion of some China projects. These added to expenses without helping earnings.

However, the big negatives were that GBTZF deferred revenues from its Airport City Development, and sold 11 of its Japanese properties to its J-REIT spinoff. The stock is down 1.63% in US trading. It reported after Singapore closed for the day. It was recommended by Harry Geisel.

​ We will probably sell.​

*Norwegian giant salmon farmer Marine Harvest Group reported in NOK that Q4 sales had increased marginally to 6,843 tn ($608.75 bn) and profits had been more or less flat in Q4 at 1.032 bn ($134 bn).

It had good news and bad. Feed self sufficiency at its farms is now 80% vs only 60% a year earlier. And it is merging its Chilean operations with Aquachile of which it will be owner of 42%. The bad news is related: it had lower profits in Chile which it brought back into play after a virus disaster. Apart from Chile, MHG also ran a loss in its Scottish operations. It plans further consolidation this year.

However, Norway was very profitable, thanks to the scale of its business there, not just farming, but smoking and preparing meals from the fish.

The stock is up 4.19% in trading despite the bleh results, mainly because it will pay NOK 1.2 in dividends Feb. 18, a yield of over 10%. This too is a Harry stock pick, doing much better.

*Korean Shinhan Financial Group (SHG) reports net income up 5% in Q4 to 2.081 trillion Won ($19.145 bn). The result was mainly attributable to yield income (up 9.6%) since non-yield income was off sharply. Factors hurting reuslts inlcuded a lot of new pensions because of a new early retirement program, which brought sales, general & administration costs up 6.2%. The main boost to earnings came from lower loan loss provisions, KW 950 bn in Q4 (or 0.43% of loans out) vs KW 1.184 trillion the prior year (or 0.59% of loans out.).

SHG is a full service banks offering credit cards, insurance, investment services, asset management, and an Internet bank called Jeju. It has a very stable and high tier 1 capital ratio, a mark of bank health, at 13.4%. It also has a balanced asset-liability system. Its liabilities are 57% in KW time savings accounts and 35% in low-cos deposits, so it doesn't depend on borrowing money on the markets. Its lending is 30% in mortgages and 19% in other retail assets and 51% in corporate.

The negative is that its credit card business while up in volume is down in profits, meaning Koreans are paying off their card bills too soon. The country is facing problems competing with neighbors like China and Japan which are cutting interest rates while Korea is not doing so. The stock is off 4.2% maybe because of all those trillions.

*Teva Pharmaceutical (TEVA) met, but did not beat, forecasts with its Q4 results as both revenues and earnings were in line with forecasts, yet the stock is up 1.8% regardless. Earnings were $687 mn or 80 cents/sh up 81%, but the removal of items (including forex) produced a better number, eps of $1.31/sh which barely beat (by a penny) and was up 115% from prior year Q4. Revenues fell 4.8% to $5.17 bn also matching analyst forecasts.

Copaxone, the Israeli firm's blockbuster, saw a 2% sales decline to $1.12 bn, but TEVA also gained from the US Supremes sending back to a lower court a ruling against its continue patent. Teva naturally has been pushing other patented and generics drugs to fill the gap.

Generics sales nonetheless fell 8% to $2.47 bn; excluing forex changed the fall was only 3%. The big change at Teva is the new patented drugs which grew sales marginally y/y to $2.24 bn. Offsetting the drop in Copaxone, against multiple sclerosis, were the following patentned drugs; Azilect/Agilect, whose sales were up 10.2% to $108 mn; Nuvigil up 38.2% to $105 mn; Treanda up 27.7% to $226 mn; and ProAir up 5.3% to $120 mn. Teva is becoming much less of a generic producer as rivals from India, Jordan, China, and other cheaper countries move in.

Teva was hit last year with higher Israeli taxes (which are still, however, in single-digit rates) and prepared for this by cutting costs. Its gross margin came to 55.9% from prior year's 53.3%. The problem is that it also cut R&D expenditure to $379 mn, a cut of 7.8%, which is something I do not like to see for a drug company. It may be just better siting of research but this was not stated in the release.

I did not have a chance to listen to the conference call myself, but the Fiercepharma.co​m​, reports that CEO Erez Vigodman said that after cost-cutting last year, this year he is “reorienting towards inorganic moves." This translates as looking for mergers and acquisitions especially in emerging markets, or for Perrigo (ex-Israeli, now Irish), Mylan (a very stale rumor), or Meda, a Swedish firm. I expect a takeover in generics myself.

Dr. Philip Frost, the controversial American who had chaired TEVA's board is resigning.

*Toray Industries reported in Yen today on its Q3 and 9 months under Japanese GAAP. The drug and chemicals group saw net profits rise 25% in the first 3 quarters of the FY to ¥62.53 bn or ¥39/sh vs 30.34 om the 9 mos of 2013. Its 9 mo revenues rose 10% y/y to ¥1.49 trillion and its 9 mo operating profits were up 8% to ¥86.48 bn. TRYIY also gave its outlook for its full fiscal year 2014-5 (to Mar. 31). It expects to book revenues of ¥2.05 trillion and net profit of ¥80 bn or ¥49.94/sh. Right now the yen is equal to 85 cents but I don't know what the figure was for last year or the earlier months of 2014.

*Vodafone (VOD) reported on its Q3 (its FY ends Mar. 31). the UK telco beat on revenues which rose 13.5% to £10.88 bn. It managed to keep its service revenues (sales) declined in a narrow range overall, down 0.4% worldwide, vs prior year Q3 decline of 4.8%. This is good news and boosted the share price in London by 2.4%.

The sales declines were variable in the extreme: off 2.7% in Europe, especially Germany and Italy; but up nicely in most emerging markets and Spain, but again very variable by country. India service revenues rose 15%; Turkish by 12%, both year/year. However, Vodacom (South Africa) sales fell 4%.

The big negative is capex in Europe and the UK which is costly, but needed for VOD to compete in 4G. This rose 39.4% y/y to £2.134 bn.

The best news is the guidance. VOD expects a profit of £11.6-11.9 bn in the full fiscal year 2014-5. The share is down 2.4% in Britain.

*Other news includes a confirmation of CRH's rating by Standard & Poor's which boosted the share price. It is long-term at BBB+ despite the hefty costs of buying the cement interests being divested by Holcim and Lafarge. Fitch also reiterated its rating but said it is on negative watch. CRH closed down 1.8% in London trading.

*Portugal Telecom (PT) is down despite the news I reported late yesterday that it should gain from the sale by the adminstrators (of the Luxembourg Tribunal) of bankrupt Rioforte of 6 Tivoli hotels. This should enable the Luxembourg outfit to repay part of its debt to PT.

I was asked to tell you all more about Steen Jakobsen. He is a Dane who operates various businesses in Carvoeiro, site of the spectacular Tivoli Almonsil hotel, which is built down the 3 sides of a cliff over the sea. Steen runs out local website, www.carvoeiro.com, the ice cream parlor, Dancône, a car-hire firm, and other businesses I may not know. I consider him a totally reliable source. Apart from the Carvoeiro hotel, we also have stayed in the one in Lisbon in the embassy area. There are also eight other hotels elsewhere in both Portugal and Brazil which were not bought byMinor International of Thailand, more business than tourism oriented.

Rioforte, the bankrupt owner, apparently has booked a gain from the sale already. The only sour note I can find is that a member of the discredited Espirito Santo family, acting on behalf of the liquidators, negotiated the deal with William Ellwood Heinecke, the Thai CEO of MINT. I expect he'll collect a fee.

Also I failed to note that the Luxembourg Tribunal has alread sold the travel agencies of the Espirito Santo Group, ES Viagens, to Switzerland's Springwater Capital. The price was not disclosed. A Mexican firm has bought the ES hospitals but not the clinics and offices, which are still on the block.

On the other hand, the sale to Mexican interests (Angeles) of insurance companyTranquilidade by the Grupo Espirito Santo, another bankrupt Luxembourg holding company, is being contested by other shareholders in Portugal. Apparently there is also a plan to sell the BES credit card business.

In addition to the money from MINT, the Hoteis Tivoli SA in Portugal have just declared a euros 60 mn dividend which created at euros 55 mn Special Revitalization Process (PER in Portuguese) at Rioforte, offsetting euros 81 mn which Rioforte owes to the Tivoli hotels. The only reason I could find this out is that another, solvent bank in Portugal posted the news.

None of this is crystal clear and none of it can be priced. But my hunch is that there will be more loot in PT than the market expects.

As you can guess, I took advantage of the price fall to buy more PT in her IRA at $0.815.

*The price of oil is back up which helped various of our shares: BP, SLB (Schlumberger), EC (Ecopetrol) and even CZZ (Cosan). I think I will stop watching the oil price. I am already not watching the negotiations with Greece either. Also helping BP was an upbeat article on Seeking Alpha by Bob Ciura who thinks it will get off with less of a Gulf of Mexico fine after all, of $13.7 bn vs earlier threats of $17.6 bn because the size of the spill has been reduced. Frankly, either is likely to pain us. And as noted the pay out by Rosneft seems to have been manipulated but this is probably a one-off.

*GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) raised £194 mn by selling Genmab shares it owned, signalled yesterday. 

*Canadian General Investments reported that it has lost 6% in price while gaining slightly in net asset value YTD. Our Canada play suffers from the failure of Canadians to buy closed-end funds. Its top 10 holdings as of close-Jan. Were:Dollarama Inc 6.2%; Enbridge 4.3%; Canadian Pacific RR 4%; West Fraser Timber 3.4%,Franco Nevada 3.2%; Open Text Corp, Bank of Montreal, and Air Canada 2.8%; andBrookfield Canada Office Properties and Yahoo 2.5%