Modelo (GMODELOC.MX) earned 1.364 billion pesos ($104million) in the April-to-June period, down from 2.575 billionpesos in the same quarter of 2008. The drop in profit resulted from the cancellation ofpeso/dollar derivatives, which cost the company 2.038 billionpesos, or around $154 million, when announced in June. The company was, however, able to increase quarterly salesdomestic volume by 3.2 percent, helped by a shift in the Easterweek and marketing strategies that offset the impact of a fluoutbreak that shut down parts of the economy for several daysin May. Export volume fell 4.6 percent in the quarter from a yearago although it showed an improvement from the January-Marchperiod, the company said Net sales rose 9.8 percent to 22.409 billion pesos. Earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation andamortization (EBITDA) increased 11.6 percent to 7.296 billionpesos in the second quarter.
Regarding Modelo’s nine-month-old spat with partnerAnheuser-Busch, which owns half of the Mexican brewer, ChiefExecutive Carlos Fernandez declined to say during a conferencecall with analysts when the fight could be settled. “Basically I will skip the issue of the arbitration which Ihave been commenting on several occasions. That processcontinues and it all depends on the arbitrators,” he said. The Mexican brewer, maker of the popular Corona beer,initiated in October an arbitration against its U.S. partner,claiming it did not consult Modelo about the takeover byBelgium’s InBev of Anheuser-Busch last year. The transaction created AB InBev (ABI.BR), the world’slargest brewer. Modelo shares rose 0.76 percent to 46.45 pesos Wednesdaynoon.
($1 = 13.17 pesos as of end June) (Reporting by Cyntia Barrera Diaz; Editing by Steve Orlofsky) Stocks Mexico. HAMBURG, GERMANY, Jul 22 (MARKET WIRE) — A total of 16 applications from XING and 13 new partners from sevencountries will be launched step by step on the XING platform from todayonwards. Utilizing the new application platform of the XING PartnerEcosystem, Europe’s leading business network will provide its memberswith a wealth of business-related apps developed by partner companies. Inthe coming days, new tools by Huddle , Doodle, Dopplr, Deutsche Welle,MindMeister, SlideShare, spreed, travelload, Tungle, sueddeutsche.de,Wallstreet:Online, WELT ONLINE and ZCOPE will be introduced to theplatform via the new OpenSocial interface. From news and projectmanagement through to travel planning and data sharing — the new appscan be installed free-of-charge at https:// andwill be available to all XING members, in addition to the existingfeatures on the XING platform.Stefan Gross-Selbeck, CEO of XING AG, said: “Working together with ourpartners, our overriding aim is to make XING even more valuable for ourbusiness community.