Market Share

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.

Another venerable video store bit the dust in my neighborhood recently, announcing it would close by the end of this month. I'd call it "Chestnut Hill's beloved TLA Video," but apparently my neighbors and I didn't love it quite enough. Or maybe we just loved the price or convenience of mail-order DVDs, online streaming, and video on demand from Comcast or Verizon even more. It's more than a coincidence that TLA is closing at the same time that Comcast plans to close on its takeover of NBC Universal, the $30 billion deal that won approval last week after a painstaking, yearlong review by the Federal Communications Commission and the Justice Department.

HERSHEY, Pa. - The Hershey Co.'s third-quarter net income rose 9 percent, helped by strong sales of candy, mints and gum, and it raised its earnings outlook. The maker of Reese's peanut butter cups and Twizzlers said its net income for the three months ended Oct. 3 totaled $182.9 million, or 79 cents per share. That's up from $168.5 million, or 73 cents per share. Revenue rose 4 percent to $1.55 billion, from $1.48 billion last year. Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters predicted net income of 79 cents per share on revenue of $1.56 billion.

Cherry Hill-based Subaru of America Inc. today said its September sales of 21,432 vehicles represents a 47 percent increase over September 2009. The results reflect a near doubling of sales of the Subaru Outback sport utility wagon. Year-to-date sales of 193,614 units, compared to 158,421 units sold by this time in 2009, represents a 22-percent gain, the company said. Subaru has about 2 percent of the U.S. market share. Subaru of America is a wholly owned subsidiary of Fuji Heavy Industries Ltd. of Japan.