Market Share

The cure was successful. The patient has recovered completely. Contac, the nonprescription cold remedy manufactued by SmithKline Beckman Corp., has regained all of the market share it lost in the United States in the wake of product-tampering incidents earlier this year. SmithKline's $40 million promotional blitz on behalf of its imperiled brand propelled Contac back into a leading postion among cold remedies, according to market-research data compiled by the A.C. Nielsen Co. SmithKline withdrew Contac from the market in March after capsules in Houston and Orlando, Fla., were found to have been contaminated with rat poison.

With its market for plastic food-and-beverage containers expected to expand by 11 percent a year through 2005, Constar International Inc. has no shortage of opportunities. Now that it has been spun off from the financially troubled Crown Cork & Seal Co. Inc., it should be easier for Constar to reap its share of that growth. "We need funding so we can grow with the marketplace," said Michael Hoffman, president and chief executive officer of Constar, which went public Nov. 15. The company's shares have not moved far from their $12 offering price, closing down 63 cents yesterday at $11.75 on Nasdaq.

The top dog among the region's supermarkets is growling again. Acme Markets, which had lost market share in recent years as it struggled to upgrade and expand its stores, was the clear winner in this year's survey of the supermarket business conducted by Food Trade News. While Acme boosted its market share, ShopRite and Genuardi's each suffered from a different problem and lost share. Their losses were both to Acme and a growing list of nontraditional rivals that make the Philadelphia area one of the more competitive grocery retailing markets in the country, the survey found.

General Motors Corp. will de-emphasize market share and adopt a "profit first" strategy, chairman Robert Stempel told stockholders yesterday. "Your corporation's North American focus has moved from 'market share with profitability' to 'profit first,' with less emphasis on market share," Stempel told about 1,650 shareholders at the company's annual meeting. In recent years, GM has tried vainly to hold onto its share of the U.S. market by offering rebates and discounts on its cars and trucks.

Acme Markets Inc. said yesterday that it would spend 17 percent more in 2002 than this year to remodel and expand its supermarkets in the Mid-Atlantic region. Over the last five years, the Malvern-based company has refurbished 40 percent its 185 markets as it tries to stem the number of customers leaving Acme for newer stores. Acme, whose area market share eroded from 28.4 percent in 1996 to 25.8 percent this year, operated 85 stores in the eight-county Philadelphia area as of June, according to Food Trade News.

Acme Markets Inc. may have stopped the decline in market share that has plagued the region's largest grocery-store chain for more than a decade, an executive at its parent company said yesterday. Peter Lynch, president and chief operating officer of Albertson's Inc., said that, as Acme stores have been renovated and expanded, the group's share of the supermarket pie in the Philadelphia area increased in its fiscal fourth quarter ended Jan. 31. Lynch ran the Acme division in the late 1990s, when it was owned by American Stores Inc. Albertson's bought American Stores in 1999.

Once an Acme customer, Jacki Menard now shops several times a week at the Genuardi's supermarket at the St. Davids Square Shopping Center. The Acme where she used to shop had "awful management" and "the stores were seedy and run-down," the Villanova resident said. Acme seems to know what she meant: Earlier this year, the company announced a 24-store improvement project. But for Menard, it was too late. She had converted to Genuardi's, citing better customer service, a cleaner store, and a better shopping environment.

The bloodbath in Detroit hasn't trickled over to Subaru of America Inc., with headquarters in Cherry Hill, which posted a slight increase in car sales for 2008 and gained its highest market share ever. Sales for 2009 are down only 2 percent, according to its latest year-to-date figures. Partly, that is a lucky function of being a small, niche automaker without a Big Three industrial base to sustain after car sales dropped off a cliff. Partly, it is a virtue of having seen the handwriting on the wall before the cliff dive.

Kerry T. Pacifico entered the Ford dealership business in 1954. Fourteen Ford dealers sold cars in Philadelphia then, and they were a happy lot. A Ford franchise was a ticket to family prosperity, jobs for relatives, and cash for country club fees. Today there are four Ford dealers in the city, among them Pacifico's on Essington Avenue near the airport. But even with reduced competition, sales are hurting. A plummeting new-vehicle market share at Ford Motor Co., maybe the sickest of Detroit's Big Three automakers, has led to anemic customer traffic.

Consider how the lilies of the field grow; they neither toil nor spin . . . Therefore, do not be anxious saying what shall we eat? or what are we to put on? But seek first the kingdom of God and his justice and all these things shall be given you besides. - Matthew 6:28-33 Coopers & Lybrand has helped us to see clearly the realities and challenges of operating our schools. - Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua The struggle between the priests and the money changers has changed little since Biblical times, except for a refinement in some Christian sects where - to save time, one supposes - the priest and the money man tend to be the same person.

Independence Blue Cross, the biggest health insurer in the Philadelphia region, added 45,020 members last year, the first growth since 2008 for the Center City nonprofit, which serves nearly 3.1 million people. IBC has yet to release comprehensive financial results for 2011, but president and chief executive Daniel J. Hilferty said the company continued its recovery from losses in 2008 and 2009 and expected to report an improvement over 2010, when it had a profit margin of 2.2 percent.

Talk about comebacks, remarkable recoveries, and rising from the ashes. Less than two years ago, Chrysler and General Motors were filing for bankruptcy, and heavily indebted Ford wasn't that much less moribund. Today, the near-death experiences, the layoffs, the plant closings, the diminishing market share, the pools of red ink the size of the Red Sea, are all fading memories. While it's premature to suggest that the Big Three will all live happily ever after, it sure looks that way at the moment.

ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. - As the mother of a famous college basketball player, Liza Cartmell traveled the country going to ever-bigger games as the NCAA championship drew near. In those towns, when a Sweet 16, an Elite 8 or a Final Four game was being played, "It felt like every night was New Year's Eve," said Cartmell, whose son, Brian Zoubek, was a member of Duke's 2010 championship team. "We need to create that atmosphere here," said Cartmell, who will try to do just that in her new role as Atlantic City's booster-in-chief.

CHARLESTON, S.C. - The College of Charleston's basketball court will be renamed TD Arena under a licensing agreement with TD Bank. The building had been Carolina First Arena. However, Carolina First was purchased by TD Bank last year. TD Bank will pay the school $600,000 for the naming rights through June 30, 2018. The College of Charleston had previously received $412,500 from Carolina First for naming rights. College president P. George Benson says the school is proud to have the sponsorship from the respected bank.

NEW YORK - Consumers might not be confident, but the stores that sell to them certainly seem to be. Wal-Mart and Home Depot, two of the nation's largest retailers and bellwethers of the U.S. economy, on Tuesday joined a string of other merchants that have raised their outlooks for the year despite a flow of bad economic news that suggests they have no reason to be optimistic. TJX Cos., which owns TJ Maxx and Marshall's; Macy's Inc.; Kohl's Corp.; and Nordstrom Inc. have all boosted their profit outlooks in the last week.

Since the real estate bubble burst more than five years ago, the FHA mortgage has become a major source of home-purchase financing. As I've reported here several times, the annual share of mortgages insured by the government under the Federal Housing Administration has increased from about 3 percent during the boom years of 2005 and 2006, to 20.76 percent in 2009, to about 30 percent today. With stricter underwriting requirements and higher loan premiums, FHA's market share showed some signs of declining earlier this year, but many experts believe that it will remain about 30 percent, if not a bit more.

NEW YORK - Wells Fargo & Co. on Tuesday said that its second-quarter profit rose 30 percent, as the number of uncollected loans and credit card bills dropped sharply, enabling the bank to release a big chunk of the money set aside to cover bad lending. Its shares rose more than 2 percent in premarket trading. The San Francisco bank said net income for the three months ended June 30 rose to $3.73 billion, or 70 cents per share, compared with $2.88 billion, or 55 cents per share, in the year-ago quarter.

As part of a push to hire 1,000 small-business bankers across the nation, Bank of America said today that it had hired 11 lenders in Southeastern Pennsylvania and six in South Jersey, based at branches in Camden, Burlington, Ocean, and Atlantic Counties. Last June, Bank of America had 102 branches with $7.7 billion in deposits, for a 6 percent market share, in the eight-county Philadelphia area.    -Harold Brubaker

In the 29 months since the financial meltdown of September 2008, the Federal Housing Administration has been insuring an ever-larger share of the nation's new mortgages. Recent figures place the number at one in three. The FHA's share of the mortgage market "waxed, waned, and waxed again" with the nation's economic health between 2000 and 2009, according to a recent study by the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia. In 2000, for example, the FHA's market share stood at 10.53 percent.

A first-quarter profit surprised luxury home builder Toll Bros., as well as the analysts predicting another loss, but the black ink is largely the result of a tax gain and not a buying frenzy. "The market is still tough; the home buyer is still wary," chief executive officer Douglas Yearley said Wednesday in a statement. "So far, the market is not generating the positive momentum that creates urgency among buyers. " Net income for the three months ended Jan. 31 was $3.4 million, or 2 cents a share, compared with a loss of $40.8 million, or 25 cents a share, a year earlier, Toll reported.