Futures Flat; Best Buy Rising, Jos A Bank Falling

APBargain?

Futures for the Dow Jones Industrial Average and Standard & Poor’s 500 index are essentially flat this morning, ahead of Monday’s opening bell.

On the rise are shares of retailer Best Buy (BBY), up 4% in early trading. The company was upgraded to Buy at BB&T Capital, as Patrick Sullivan at Dow Jones Newswires writes:

[BB&T] likes CEO Hubert Joly’s new management team, sees room for margin growth as competitors steal some market share from Apple�products and expects tax rules to level playing field with Amazon. Finally firm says that with retailer’s “depressed current valuation and the very negative investor sentiment surrounding the stock provide an attractive entry point.”

Best Buy’s stock is down about 38% in the past year, though it’s up 40% in the past month. Not one for the faint-hearted.

Hess (HES) stock is up about 6% after two pieces of news this morning: It said it would exit the oil refining business to “complete its transformation from an integrated oil and gas company to one that is predominantly an exploration and production company and be able to redeploy substantial additional capital to fund its future growth opportunities,” according to CEO John Hess. In a separate statement, Hess said that Elliott Associates intends to buy up to $800 million of Hess’ stock.

Also rising are shares of Caterpillar (CAT), up 2.4% after it reported earnings that beat estimates:

The recovery in U.S. building and a wave of emerging-market infrastructure projects are softening the effect of cutbacks in mining capital expenditure. U.S.�construction spending�climbed 7.7 percent in November, the latest government data show.Brazil�plans to spend 1 trillion reais ($491 billion) on projects ahead of the 2014 soccer�World Cup�and 2016 Olympics. China�s next premier,�Li Keqiang, is championing urbanization in what is already the world�s biggest user of construction equipment.

Falling premarket are shares of Jos A Bank (JOSB) after the retailer said it expects its fiscal year 2012 profit to be about 20% lower than 2011. CEO Neal Black seemed to blame everything and everyone — including his customers — for the decline:

Total company sales for the year will be up, but not enough to offset higher marketing expenses and lower gross margin…The fourth quarter started out slowly, as the first two weeks of fiscal November were negatively impacted by the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, the distractions created by the presidential election and the uncertainty of the fiscal cliff. Going into the critical holiday selling season, starting on Black Friday, we believed we had a strong marketing and promotional strategy for the period. However, many of the promotional items and a large part of our holiday assortment were items that sell best in cold weather and the weather was unseasonably warm. Historically, we have had strength with these types of items, but our customers (specifically at our stores) didn’t respond as well to our promotional offers as they had in the past.

He added that despite the disappointments, fourth-quarter and full-year results will still be “very profitable.”