Consumers sipped Dom Pérignon Champagne, donned Hublot watches and sported Louis Vuitton handbags in record numbers last year, especially in Asia, driving sales at LVMH, the world's largest luxury goods company, to new heights and sharply lifting profitability.
Two years ago, Coach, the venerable American leather goods concern that shares many of Ralph Lauren's problems and opportunities, embarked on a similar turnaround aimed at slashing costs and lifting profitability.
But it said the planned rate increase in the new year would help offset declining revenues from the surcharges, which lag real-time prices and had helped lift profitability over the last year as oil prices plummeted.
Cisco, which relies on other manufacturers to assemble its products, lifted profitability by consolidating its orders with fewer of them and shipping more than 90percentt of what it sold straight from those manufacturers to its customers.
A fund manager at one of the 40 biggest investors in the bank, asking not to be identified until the dust settles, said the threat that a new boss might give up on investment banking would be bad for shareholders, as that is where the bank can lift profitability.
New CEO Antony Jenkins, who took over at the end of July, is in the middle of a review to change the bank's culture and lift profitability.
While Mr. Simon received middling reviews for "The Dinner Party," Mr. Rando's smooth direction was widely praised, and the show, with bankable stars like Henry Winkler and John Ritter, was lifted to profitability by an admiring suburban clientele.
A surprise midquarter report of profitability lifted shares of Hutchinson Technology nearly 30percentThursdayandand may have helped other disk drive stocks as well.
They also say Mr. Arnault, who declined to comment for this article, believes cooperation between the two companies — in negotiating retailing space and pooling advertising budgets, for example — could sharply lift Hermès's profitability.
Joseph LaRocca, a vice president of the retailing group, said that returns of the holiday purchases that many stores rely on to lift them into profitability for the year are expected to be especially high.
According to Global Media Intelligence, studios a few years ago could count on rising DVD sales to lift their properties into profitability in a five-year first trip through the marketplace.
