The coffee market continues to expand. Starbucks (Nasdaq: SBUX) announced that it moved $100 million of its Via instant coffee packets in their first 10 months on the market. 

It's an impressive debut, though perhaps the bigger surprise is that it doesn't appear to be disrupting existing means to acquire caffeine jolts. Same-store sales have been trending higher at Starbucks lately and Green Mountain Coffee Roasters (Nasdaq: GMCR) posted a 64% spike in revenue for its latest quarter. 

Time will tell if Via is cannibalizing sales of its flagship barista-tended shops, nibbling away at the market share of the more traditional grocery store brands, or carving out an entirely new market. 

Briefly in the news
And now let's take a quick look at some of the other stories that shaped our week.

  • Sirius XM Radio (Nasdaq: SIRI) raised its revenue and free cash flow targets for 2010, as it posted its fourth consecutive profitable quarter. There's no point in denying the validity of premium radio now.
  • Isis Pharmaceuticals (Nasdaq: ISIS) and Genzyme (Nasdaq: GENZ) got bad news on their promising cholesterol drug, mipomersen. A quarter of clinical trial participants had to drop out as a result of elevated liver enzymes, worse than the 20% that had to bow out in a previous sampling.
  • Data storage specialist STEC(Nasdaq: STEC) posted better-than-expected results, targeting sharp sequential gains in revenue and earnings for the current quarter.
  • Shares of YRC Worldwide (Nasdaq: YRCW) took a 20% hit Tuesday, after the trucking company posted yet another quarterly loss. Concerns over exchange delisting and pension agreements loom, but its CEO claims it has recovered half the domestic business it had previously lost to rivals. Keep on truckin', YRC.

Until next week, I remain,
Rick Munarriz