Life Insurance

Wells Fargo & Co.'s third-quarter profit rose 13 percent as the bank continued to feed consumers' appetites for home mortgages and a variety of other loans - a recipe that has generated double-digit earnings growth through most of the past four years.

The San Francisco-based company said Tuesday that its net income totaled $1.98 billion, or $1.16 per share, for the three months ended in September. That compared with a profit of $1.75 billion, or $1.02 per share, a year earlier.

Revenue for the period totaled $8.5 billion, a 16 percent increase from a year earlier. The earnings were a penny above the consensus estimate of analysts polled by Thomson Financial.

The bank - the nation's largest headquartered west of the Mississippi - has accomplished the feat largely by catering to strong demand for home mortgages while also serving up a menu of other financial staples, including credit cards, car loans, insurance and checking accounts.

Motorola Inc., the world's No. 2 maker of mobile phones, said Tuesday its third-quarter earnings more than tripled on record sales as it continued to pick up market share in the global cell-phone market.

All four of its business units showed profitable growth during the quarter, not counting reorganization costs, and the cell-phone division turned in a whopping 41 percent increase in sales behind the Razr and other phones.

Motorola said net earnings for the July-through-September period were $1.75 billion, or 69 cents per share, compared with $479 million, or 18 cents per share, a year earlier, not counting the semiconductor unit, which it has since spun off.

Results included gains of 32 cents per share from Motorola's Nextel stock and related hedge adjustments and 13 cents from tax benefits, along with charges totaling 6 cents per share for debt retirement costs and a reorganization of its business units.

Excluding those items, Illinois-based company had operating earnings of 30 cents per share - 2 cents better than the consensus estimate of analysts surveyed by Thomson Financial.

Wall Street brokerage Merrill Lynch & Co. reported a 49 percent jump in its third-quarter earnings Tuesday, citing strong returns on its investments in both stocks and bonds. Its shares rose in early trading.

For the quarter ended Sept. 30, Merrill Lynch earned a record $1.38 billion, or $1.40 per share, compared with $922 million, or 93 cents per share, in the third quarter of 2004. Revenue climbed 38 percent to $6.69 billion from $4.83 billion last year.

Analysts had expected earnings of $1.18 per share on revenues of $6.17 billion. Merrill shares rose 12 cents to close at $61.21 Tuesday on the New York Stock Exchange.

Strong demand for notebook computers powered by Intel Corp. chips helped boost third quarter profits by 5 percent, but the technology bellwether missed analyst expectations by a penny.

In the three months ended Oct. 1, the world's largest maker of PC microprocessors earned $2 billion, or 32 cents per share, compared with $1.91 billion, or 30 cents a share, in the same period a year ago.

Intel said the latest results included an increase in taxes of about $250 million and the payment of $140 million to MicroUnity Inc. as part of a $300 million settlement in a patent infringement case.

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