Business Briefs for April 29

Vision offers airfare deal to Panhandle

Vision Airlines is offering $39 one-way airfares between St. Petersburg-Clearwater International Airport and the Florida Panhandle for travel through June 30. Fees and taxes are not included.

The sale began Thursday and ends June 20.

Vision flies into the Northwest Florida Regional Airport terminal at Eglin Air Force Base to serve the Destin and Fort Walton Beach areas.

Exxon profits soar 69% while pump prices rise

Exxon earned nearly $11 billion in the first quarter, a performance likely to land it in the center of the national debate over high gasoline prices.

The world's largest publicly traded company said Thursday that higher oil prices boosted profits 69 percent from a year ago. The result was Exxon's best since earning a record $14.83 billion in 2008's third quarter.

Wall Street had been expecting sharply higher earnings for oil companies. Oil prices rose 17 percent in the quarter. But huge oil profits will aggravate drivers with gasoline prices averaging $3.89 a gallon nationally.

Sprint adds 1.1 million subscribers

Sprint Nextel Corp. on Thursday said that it added more wireless subscribers in the first quarter than it has in five years, mainly on cheap service plans, as its turnaround continued despite the new threat of Verizon's iPhone.

Sprint added a net 1.1 million subscribers in the January to March period as its contract-free Virgin Mobile and Boost brands raked in a record number of new subscribers.

Verizon's launch of the iPhone on Feb. 10 and AT&T Inc.'s price cut on an older iPhone model didn't leave Sprint completely unscathed. Sprint posted a net loss of 114,000 subscribers on contract-based plans, which are the most lucrative.

Sony: Hacked data were encrypted

Sony is telling PlayStation users that it had encrypted the credit card data that hackers may have stolen, reducing but not eliminating the chances that thieves could have used the information.

Sony Corp. said Wednesday that while it had no direct evidence the data were even taken, it cannot rule out the possibility. It did not say how strong the encryption was, and it is possible for hackers to decipher files that are weakly encrypted.

Farming group sues over the term 'corn sugar'

A group of sugar farmers and refiners are suing corn processors for their attempt to rebrand high-fructose corn syrup as "corn sugar."

The Western Sugar Cooperative, Michigan Sugar Co. and C&H Sugar Company Inc. are asking the U.S. District Court in Los Angeles to end the campaign and order corrective advertising.

The Corn Refiners Association is seeking permission from the federal government to use the new name on food labels.

The lawsuit argues high-fructose corn syrup cannot be marketed as a natural product equivalent to sugar. High-fructose corn syrup consumption has fallen as consumer concerns about it grow.

Unemployment benefit claims rose last week

More people sought unemployment benefits last week, the second rise in three weeks, a sign of the slow and uneven jobs recovery.

Applications for unemployment benefits jumped 25,000 to a seasonally adjusted 429,000 for the week ending April 23, the Labor Department said Thursday. That's the highest total since late January.

PulteGroup loss deepens as fewer homes sold

The spring home-selling season got off to an encouraging start for PulteGroup Inc., even as its loss widened in the first three months of the year as the homebuilder sold fewer homes.

The company said Thursday that net new-home orders rose less than 1 percent versus the January-March quarter last year, when federal tax credits for homebuyers drove an industrywide surge in home sales.

The company reported a net loss of $39.5 million, or 10 cents per share, in the January-March period versus a net loss of $12.5 million, or 3 cents per share, a year earlier. Analysts polled by FactSet expected a loss of 13 cents per share.

BlackBerry maker cuts outlook for quarter

Research In Motion Ltd., the maker of the BlackBerry, is cutting its sales and earnings forecasts for the current quarter, saying phone shipments are going to be fewer than expected. The stock plunged 15 percent on the news.

RIM says it expects shipments of BlackBerrys to be toward the lower end of the previously forecast range of 13.5 million to 14.5 million in the quarter ending May 28, and more of the phones will be cheaper models.

It cut its earnings forecast for the quarter to a range of $1.30 to $1.37 per share, down from $1.47 to $1.55.

Wireless carriers write Congress on data

The nation's four largest wireless carriers say they obtain customer permission before using a subscriber's physical location to provide driving directions and other location-based services, and before sharing a subscriber's location with any outside mobile apps that provide such services.

But in letters to Congress released Thursday, the wireless companies also say they have no power to require independent developers of location-based apps to get similar user consent if these apps don't rely on the carriers themselves to acquire location data. The letters from the carriers — AT&T Wireless, Verizon Wireless, Sprint Nextel and T-Mobile USA — were released one day after Apple admitted that its popular iPhone stores data used to help the device locate itself for up to a year.

Microsoft profits rise 31%, but sales slow

Microsoft Corp.'s latest quarterly earnings rose 31 percent even as sales of its Windows operating system sagged.

The fiscal third-quarter results released Thursday exceeded analyst estimates.

Still, it marks the second straight quarter that revenue in Microsoft's Windows division has dropped from the previous year.

From staff and wire reports