Monday Business Roundup

Coors Up, Frontier, Newmont Down

By Richard Martin, 8-06-07

Three of Northern Colorado’s biggest companies made news in the last few days – and only one had a welcome story to tell.

Molson Coors, the third-largest U.S. brewer, announced a two-for-one stock split that will give each shareholder two shares for each one they own on Sept. 19. Headquartered in Montreal and in Denver, Molson Coors has seen its share price increase by 17 percent this year – defying some predictions that Americans were losing some of their taste for refreshing malt beverages. The beermaker also found a convenient close to a three-month strike at its plant in Edmonton: it shut the plant down. Two years ago in Slate, business writer Daniel Gross wrote that “powerful demographic and cultural trends … may flatten [beer] sales for years to come.” MC stock has risen 49 percent since that article appeared.

Despite a relatively new fleet of jets, a reputation for good service and reliability, and a hip marketing plan, Frontier Airlines has seen its stock nosedive by 43 percent in the last year. Last week the company’s chief executive Jeff Potter said he will resign to “take a position outside the airline industry” (translation: he’s parachuting out of the struggling business). Under pressure from cut-rate rival Southwest, which moved into the Denver market last year, and competition from DIA giant United, “Frontier has increasingly been viewed as a takeover target,” the Post reports.

Not ripe for takeover is Denver-based mining giant Newmont Mining Corp., which reported that it lost $2 billion in its most recent quarter. Newmont also said it remains committed to expanding its operations in Indonesia, from which many multinationals fled in the decade since the Asian financial crisis rocked confidence in the so-called “Baby Tiger” economies. In April a Newmont executive was cleared of all charges in a criminal trial for polluting a bay by dumping dangerous levels of toxic mine tailings into the waters off the island of Sulawesi, where Newmont had a large gold mine. Newmont’s stock has plummeted 32 percent since the pollution case began receiving worldwide notice in early 2006.

In other business news:

-- As mosquito season reaches its peak, a few businesses like Colorado Mosquito Control of Larimer County are making healthy profits from concern over West Nile virus. “This summer,” reports the Rocky Mountain Chronicle, “Colorado is facing a mosquito stampede on the scale of 2003, when West Nile first showed up in the state and killed 63 people statewide, including nine deaths in Larimer County.”

-- You might think there are more important things to work for in life than stamping out “ladies’ nights” at your local bar, but then you would lack the moral vision of Steve Horner of Denver. Denver County Judge Brian Campbell last week tossed out the suit brought by Horner claiming that newspaper ads for the female drink-discounts violate state civil rights laws. Seeking financial damages, Horner had previously been turned down by the state Civil Rights Commission.

-- As his attorneys fight to keep him from going to jail on his insider-trading conviction, former Qwest CEO Joe Nacchio continues to avoid acknowledging any wrongdoing. Now the former telecom exec has embraced the “ignorant and incompetent” excuse, claiming in a filing last week that he was unaware that the likelihood that Qwest would miss its financial targets was “material information” relating to Nacchio’s stock trades, and that former general counsel Drake Tempest should have informed him. This is a reversal from Nacchio’s defense at trial, when he claimed he believed that Qwest finances were just fine.

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