Company News for August 18, 2010

• Privately-held Reynolds Group announced plans to acquire hefty-bag maker, Pactiv (NYSE:PTV), for $6 billion, or $33.25 per share

• Deere (NYSE:DE - Analyst Report) reported better-than-expected sales and earnings for fiscal third quarter. Earnings of $1.44 beat estimates of $1.24 on revenues of $6.84 billion, which beat estimates of $6.5 billion. The firm said it was experiencing slow sales in Europe

• Target (NYSE:TGT - Analyst Report) reported inline second quarter earnings of 92 cents a share, on revenues of $15.53 billion, slightly missing consensus estimates of $15.6 billion

• BJ Wholesale (NYSE:BJ) posted worse than anticipated second quarter earnings of 67 cents a share, off estimates of 73 cents, as revenues of $2.79 billion cam in line with expectations. Guidance for 2011 was lowered to $2.40-$2.50 from $2.58-$2.68

• Goldman Sachs (NYSE:GS - Analyst Report) downgraded Illinois Tool Works (NYSE:ITW - Analyst Report) to "neutral" from "buy," cutting the price target from $53 to $50

• Needham maintained a "buy" rating on Marvell (NASDAQ:MRVL - Snapshot Report), but lowered the price target from $25 to $23. Morgan Keegan downgraded Netflix (NASDAQ:NFLX - Analyst Report) to "underperform" from "outperform”

Read the full analyst report on PTV

Read the full analyst report on DE

Read the full analyst report on TGT

Read the full analyst report on BJ

Read the full analyst report on GS

Read the full analyst report on ITW

Read the full analyst report on MRVL

Read the full analyst report on NFLX