The discount chain expects economic uncertainty to continue for the rest of 2012, Chairman and Chief Executive Gregg Steinhafel said on Wednesday.

Shares of Target were up 31 cents to $55.39 in midday trading after rising as high as $56.44 earlier in the session.

“Consumers are not buying more at Target. What’s driving their sales is maybe people are shopping a bit more often,” said Brian Sozzi, chief equities analyst at NBG Productions. “It’s not like people are going in and loading up their baskets as much as they were a couple of years ago.”

Target said it expects sales at stores open at least a year, or same-store sales, to rise about 3 percent this quarter and 3 percent or a little more for the full year. Last year same-store sales rose 3 percent.

Target, which sells basic goods such as soap and paper towels along with limited-edition items from the likes of designer Jason Wu, has been seeing more customers shop using its credit cards, which offer a 5 percent discount and free online shipping.

Industrial output grew 1.1 percent last month, the most since December 2010 and nearly twice the pace expected by analysts polled by Reuters.

The Fed also revised its estimates for prior months, saying production contracted 0.6 percent in March and expanded 0.4 percent in February. The Fed previously said production was flat in February and March.

In April, manufacturing output rose 0.6 percent, bouncing back from a 0.5 percent decline in March. A big increase in vehicle production factored in the gains, with output for motor vehicles and parts up 3.9 percent.

Still, the advance in factory output was broad based. Outside vehicles and parts, manufacturing increased 0.3 percent.

Utilities output increased 4.5 percent. Unseasonably warm weather in the first quarter previously had held down demand for heating, the Fed said.

Capacity utilization, a measure of how fully firms are using their resources, rose to 79.2 percent, the highest since April 2008.

Officials at the Fed tend to look at utilization measures as a signal of how much “slack” remains in the economy – how far growth has room to run before it becomes inflationary.

Benmosche said the shares “will be liquidated after September 4,” according to a transcript of AIG’s annual shareholder meeting on its website. He said the sale would help decrease volatility in AIG’s earnings.

AIG spun off two-thirds of AIA in 2010 as part of a package of asset sales to repay its $182 billion U.S. government rescue. Fluctuations in AIA’s share price have caused large swings in AIG’s earnings since then, with quarterly gains or losses of more than $1 billion commonplace.

AIG sold part of the stake in March, raising around $6 billion and leaving it with 18.6 percent of AIA, one of Asia’s three largest insurers.

Since that sale, which included the lock-up provision, AIA shares have fallen 2.8 percent. At current levels the remainin

Facebook, founded eight years ago by Mark Zuckerberg in a Harvard dorm room, said on Wednesday it will add about 84 million shares to its IPO, floating about 421 million shares in an offering expected to be priced on Thursday.

The additional shares will be sold by early investors including PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel, Accel Partners’ James Breyer and investment manager Tiger Global Management, the company said in a filing.

The company itself has not increased the number of shares it will sell.

Zuckerberg’s voting power will be reduced to about 55.8 percent from about 57.3 percent after the IPO as a result of the issue of additional shares, the company said.

The expanded size, coupled with Facebook’s recently announced plans to raise the IPO price range, would make Facebook the third-largest initial share sale in U.S. history after Visa Inc. and General Motors.

The social networking company is drumming up massive demand for the offering even as slowing revenue and user growth spur questions about the long-term Facebook story.

Those concerns over revenue growth were underscored on Tuesday, when GM said it planned to pull out of advertising on Facebook.

The Commerce Department said housing starts increased 2.6 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 717,000 units. March’s starts were revised up to a 699,000-unit pace from a previously reported 654,000 unit rate.

Economists polled by Reuters had forecast housing starts rising to 680,000-unit rate. Compared to April last year, residential construction was up 29.9 percent.

The housing market is showing some signs of life after collapsing six years ago, but remains hobbled by a glut of unsold homes.

However, rising demand for rentals, which has seen builders breaking more ground on apartment projects, is helping to stabilize the market.

Housing starts last month rose across the board. Groundbreaking for single-family homes increased 2.3 percent. This segment accounts for most of the market. Starts for multi-family homes advanced 3.2 percent.

Despite last month’s overall jump in starts, they remain less than a third of their peak in January 2006. Residential construction in the first quarter grew at the fastest pace in nearly two years and is expected to contribute to economic growth this year for the first time since 2005.

GE shares rose 3 percent to $18.90 in premarket trading. They closed at $18.40 on the New York Stock Exchange on Tuesday.

Raising its dividend and buying back shares are top priorities for GE this year as it tries to repay shareholders for the $12 billion in common stock that it sold in October 2008 during the financial crisis.

GE historically received a dividend from its finance arm but halted that practice in the fourth quarter of 2008.

The GE Capital dividend was subject to approval from the Federal Reserve, which became its regulator in 2011.

GE said on Wednesday the board of GE Capital declared a quarterly dividend of $475 million payable to GE in the second quarter. The special dividend will be paid this year.

“With this announcement, GE Capital will return cash to GE beginning this quarter,” GE CEO Jeff Immelt said in a statement.

“This action demonstrates the strength of GE Capital and the significant actions taken to strengthen its liquidity, capital, asset quality and profitability.”

The planemaker is raking in orders from airlines around the world as they expand their fleets or upgrade to more fuel-efficient jets.

Speaking on a webcast of the company’s annual investor conference, McNerney said Boeing was on track to build 10 787 Dreamliners per month by the end of next year.

Some experts doubt the company can hit its production rate target for the light-weight, carbon-composite airplane that came to market last year after three years of development delays.

Boeing, the world’s largest aerospace and defense company, turned in a stronger-than-expected first-quarter profit last month as it pulled in orders while accelerating production on all its commercial airplane programs.

The company, facing a funding shortfall of $9 billion to $10 billion this year, said on Friday that Goldman Sachs and Jefferies Group would provide it with $3 billion.

Chesapeake’s cash flows have shrunk as natural gas prices slumped to their lowest levels in a decade, putting pressure on the second-largest U.S. producer of the fuel to raise money to fund drilling operations.

Ratings agency Standard & Poor’s said it had cut Chesapeake’s credit rating to “BB-” from “BB,” one notch lower into noninvestment, or “junk,” status. S&P cited shortcomings in the company’s corporate governance practices, concerns about loan covenants and the likelihood of a wider gap between operating cash flow and capital expenditures.

Reuters reported last month that CEO Aubrey McClendon had borrowed at least $1.1 billion against his personal stakes in the company’s wells from lenders who also had dealings with Chesapeake, a deal that analysts and academics said raises possible conflicts of interest.

Ally, the former in-house financing arm for General Motors Co., on Monday announced plans to sell some international operations at the same time that its Residential Capital mortgage unit filed for bankruptcy protection.

Monday’s actions give Ally some flexibility in finding ways to pay back the $12 billion, CEO Michael Carpenter said in a conference call with analysts on Tuesday.

The company could still pursue an initial public stock offering, find private-equity firms to buy out the stake owned by the U.S. Treasury, release capital or pursue acquisitions, Carpenter said.

“We will have created optionality and opportunity as a result of these steps,” he said.

Ally last year filed for an initial public stock offering, but shelved those plans after its mortgage woes mounted and the European debt crisis roiled markets. That has led to speculation that the company might have to sell itself as a whole or in pieces to pay back taxpayers.

Ally has repaid about one-third of the $17 billion it received from the U.S. government and expects to return another third after selling its international auto, banking and insurance operations, Ally has said.

Citigroup Inc. and Evercore Partners Inc. are advising the company on the sale of its international businesses. Ally is looking to sell these operations by year-end, Carpenter said.

GM, the largest U.S. automaker, is interested in buying Ally’s international operations, GM’s chief executive told Bloomberg on Monday.

UBS analyst Colin Langan said on Monday that GM could be interested in parts of Ally’s U.S. operations, such as its dealer wholesale and leasing units. GM could pay $7.6 billion for Ally’s international, dealer wholesale and lease operations, he said.

GM is “probably not” interested in acquiring Ally’s U.S. operations, CEO Dan Akerson told Bloomberg.

“While billings, revenue, margins, and guidance all met or exceeded, signs of accelerated North American revenue shows that the company’s technology efforts around personalization and, to a lesser extent, mobile and rewards, are paying off,” Evercore Partners analyst Ken Sena wrote in a note.

Sena raised his price target on the stock to $17 from $15 and kept a “buy” rating.

Analysts have been particularly concerned that growth was slowing in Groupon’s relatively more mature North American business. However, Groupon said on Monday North America revenue rose 33 percent for the first quarter — the strongest growth in a year.

“Groupon appears to be gaining market share in general,” Benchmark analyst Clayton Moran said.

Groupon’s take rate — which measures how much of the money it keeps after sharing cash with merchants running its deals — rose to 41.3 percent from 40 percent in the previous quarter.

Shares of the Chicago-based company rose $2.55 to 14.29 in trading before the bell on Tuesday. The stock closed at $11.74 on Monday on the Nasdaq.