We think that Apple Inc’s (AAPL) late CEO Steve Jobs said it best about Google Inc. (GOOG) when he said “Our lawsuit is saying Google you bleeping ripped off the iPhone, wholesale ripped us off.’ Grand theft! I will spend my last dying breath if I need to, and I will spend every penny of Apple’s $40 billion in the bank (as of 2011), to right this wrong. I’m going to destroy Android, because it’s a stolen product. I’m willing to go...
Read MoreTop 5 ideas of the week: Exelon (EXC) Exelon Corporation’s (EXC) bulls have long touted the company because of its Exelon Generation LLC wholesale power generation subsidiary and because of its large concentration of nuclear power plants as part of its power generating assets. Exelon’s stakeholders need to realize that may have held true in 2008 but isn’t as applicable now. Exelon’s risk profile has changed over the last 5 years thanks to its Constellation Energy Group Inc (CEG) in...
Read MoreAlthough we don’t have a position Alcatel-Lucent (ALU), we know people who do and because Alcatel-Lucent is so cheap, we have kept a loose tab on it over the last couple of years. Alcatel-Lucent was formed in 2006 by the merger of the French telecom equipment firm Alcatel with the U.S. based telecom equipment maker Lucent Technologies. The company’s share price has gone down by over 90% since its 2006 merger due to consolidation in the telecom sector causing headwinds...
Read MoreWe have been following Nokia Corporation (NOK) off and on since 2000 and we considered investing it in 10 years ago when we bought our first cellular phone. We reconsidered it earlier this year when it was trading near US$6/share and we ended up taking a pass at that time. Nokia’s sales volumes have been sagging since 2010 (when Stephen Elop became its new CEO) and because it has been burning cash this year, it had to cut its euro-denominated...
Read MoreResearch in Motion’s (RIMM) stakeholders can celebrate the fact that the company’ Q3 FY2013 adjusted loss of $.22 per share ($114M) was less than the $142M incurred in Q2 2013 and the $192M incurred in Q1 2013. RIMM even had a GAAP profit of $9M ($.017/share), which was better than the $235M loss ($.45/share) in the prior quarter. The company benefited from a $226M recovery of income taxes accrued during the quarter. RIMM’s stakeholders should not read too much in...
Read MoreExelon Corporation’s (EXC) bulls have long touted the company because of its Exelon Generation LLC wholesale power generation subsidiary and because of its large concentration of nuclear power plants as part of its power generating assets. Exelon’s stakeholders need to realize that may have held true in 2008 but isn’t as applicable now. Exelon’s risk profile has changed over the last 5 years thanks to its Constellation Energy Group Inc (CEG) in 2012 as well as the advent of hydraulic fracturing serving...
Read MoreWe previously compared Nokia Corporation (NOK) against Research in Motion (RIMM) back in September and we were able to conclude that while Nokia has no chance in catching up to the Android-iOS smartphone operating system duopoly, at least it has a decent chance of outperforming Research in Motion. While Nokia World’s Lumia Launch may have been another flop by Stephen Elop, at least it released the Nokia Lumia Windows Phone 8 smartphone devices in early November whereas RIMM won’t even release its BlackBerry...
Read MoreAlthough we have demurred with regards to taking a position in Pitney Bowes Inc. (PBI) until February 2013 at the earliest, we can see why a number of notable institutional investors currently hold a position in the company. We have been attracted to PBI’s dividend yield, which is approaching 14% and we can see that its free cash flow yield based on its TTM free cash flows of $450M is 23% (34.6% based on its forecasted FY 2012 FCFs of...
Read MoreTop 5 ideas of the week: Scripps Networks Interactive (SNI) We recommend Scripps Networks Interactive (NYSE SNI) as an Accumulate based on strong revenue and profit growth from lifestyle media content business and ample free cash flows, Fair Value Price of $69.04 per share. Xerox Corp (XRX) We have been following Xerox Corporation (XRX) since the middle of January largely because David Einhorn (Greenlight Capital) had purchased 17M shares of the company in Q4 2011. We have stepped up our coverage of Xerox in...
Read MoreWe have been following Oracle Corporation (ORCL) off and on for the last 13 years and we have seen its shares transition from a go-go growth-oriented tech company into a more-value-oriented business-enterprise software company. We remembered Oracle’s old tagline about how “software powers the Internet.” We can see by Oracle’s performance that software powers Oracle’s top and bottom lines, even after taking into account its 2010 blockbuster acquisition of Sun Microsystems. Oracle gets 73% of its revenues from its software solutions, 12%...
Read MoreOn Monday December 17th, ARMOUR Residential REIT Inc (ARR) had good news and bad news for investors. The bad news is that it had to cut its monthly dividend by 11% from $.09/share to $.08 per share and this will take effect in January 2013. The good news is that it attempted to soften the blow for investors by including a share repurchase authorization of $100M. This represented 5% of Armour’s market cap as of December 18th but investors were displeased to...
Read MoreNokia Corporation (NOK) released its Lumia 920 and Lumia 820 smartphone devices on November 2nd, and the good news about this was that it was only six weeks after Apple (AAPL) released its iPhone 5 smartphone device on September 21st. Unlike Apple, we didn’t see anyone camping out in front of AT&T (T) in order to get their hands on Nokia’s new devices. Nokia’s Lumia 920 and 820 run on Microsoft’s (MSFT) Windows Phone 8 operating system and are exclusive to AT&T...
Read MoreAlthough American Capital Agency’s (AGNC) salad days have passed it by, this isn’t due to anything that could be laid at the feet of the company’s management. We believe that American Capital Agency’s CEO Malon Wilkus has created one of the finest income-oriented investment vehicles with his American Capital Ltd (ACAS) company, as well as its two most well-known mortgage real estate investment trust vehicles AGNC and American Capital Mortgage (MTGE). American Capital Agency was founded in 2008 and in...
Read MoreWe have been following Xerox Corporation (XRX) since the middle of January largely because David Einhorn (Greenlight Capital) had purchased 17M shares of the company in Q4 2011. We have stepped up our coverage of Xerox in October as the company’s shares were trading at a 30% discount to book value. However, we are most certainly aware that just because a company’s shares are trading at a low price to book value does not automatically make it a great value....
Read MoreWhen we saw that Hewlett-Packard’s (HPQ) had to take an $8.85B write-down for its purchase of Autonomy PLC, we weren’t surprised that Frank Quattrone was Autonomy’s lead banker during its sales process. The deal was the second largest deal that Quattrone had advised on, behind only Motorola Mobility’s $12.9B sale to Google (GOOG). Oracle (ORCL) claimed that Quattrone and Autonomy CEO Mike Lynch met with Oracle’s President and HPQ’s former CEO Mark Hurd in an attempt to sell Autonomy to...
Read MoreShares of Research in Motion (RIMM) have skyrocketed upward by over 100% since September 27th when RIMM reported losses that were milder than analyst expectations and because RIMM announced it would meet its January 30th, 2013 launch date target for its BlackBerry 10 smartphone product line. We’re surprised that RIMM’s shares have seen such an upward climb in the last three months because BlackBerry 10 has not even come out yet and we believe that the long lead time between...
Read MoreWe have been analyzing and evaluating Best Buy (BBY) since August because we are amazed at how the company has gone from Wall Street darling to being the butt of investor’s jokes. Best Buy’s FY 2013 EPS have crumbled during the first nine months of the year due to soft revenue performance, gross margin deterioration and restructuring costs. We recently softened our criticism of Best Buy because we presumed that Best Buy’s Founder Richard Schulze would finally issue a formal...
Read MoreWe have been following SUPERVALU (SVU) since 2009 and we sold our position in the company in June 2011. We reentered it in May 2012 because its share price had declined by nearly 50% in that time frame even though it had improved its identical store sales performance from negative 6% in FY 2011 to negative 2.8% in FY 2012. We were disappointed that SVU’s merger discussion talks overshadowed some positives we saw with regards to SVU. We were...
Read MoreTop 5 ideas of the week: Nash-Finch (NAFC) The Nash-Finch Company (NAFC) is the second largest publicly traded wholesale distributor in the United States. Although Nash-Finch also operates 74 company-owned retail grocery stores, it derives nearly 85% of its revenues from its wholesale distribution businesses. Our interest in Nash-Finch was piqued because of its strong presence serving military installations. Xerox Corp (XRX) We have been following Xerox Corporation (XRX) since the middle of January largely because David Einhorn (Greenlight Capital)...
Read MoreClearwire’s (CLWR) shares jumped 70% on October 11th when Sprint (S) and SoftBank announced its merger deal because of the potential for Sprint to acquire the nearly 50% of Clearwire’s shares that it didn’t already own. Sprint recently announced a deal to buy the portion of Clearwire shares that it didn’t already own for $2.90 and Wells Fargo views Sprint’s bid as a starting point for negotiations. According to Joan Lappin of Gramercy Capital, SoftBank acquired control of Sprint in order...
Read MoreIn our previous reports on American International Group (AIG), we analyzed and evaluated the company’s financial rescue at the hands of the US government as well as how investors should view the new AIG. Over the last five months, the US government has been winding down its ownership stake in AIG and we believe that investors should take advantage of the federal government’s need for cash in order to plug its $1 trillion in annual budget deficits by buying shares of AIG....
Read MoreWe recently analyzed and evaluated Best Buy’s (BBY) recent quarterly results and needless to say Best Buy has a long way to go before it regains the momentum that it previously held during the last decade. In an attempt to recreate the beautiful symphony of sales and profit growth that Best Buy enjoyed from 2003-2008, BBY’s Founder and Former CEO Richard Schulze has been floating the idea of acquiring the 80% of BBY that he doesn’t own as part of...
Read MoreWe have been covering Pitney Bowes (PBI) off and on for many years, and have recently begun publishing research on the company. We are attracted to the company’s 13.8% dividend yield and its 23% free cash flow yield. However, we are carefully attempting to identify a “perfect pitch” on Pitney Bowes, since its revenue has been sagging by nearly 20% since 2008 (5.5% Compounded Annual Rate of Decline) due to the soft economy. Also, we have noted that PBI’s Former CEO Michael...
Read MoreWe are impressed that Berkshire’s Book Value Growth has exceeded the S&P 500 and the broad bond market since 1999 despite the challenging environment for stocks, Berkshire’s gargantuan size and the easy money policies of the Federal Reserve pushing up bond prices. We believe that Berkshire’s recent $1.2B share buyback as well as the increased price offered for future buybacks (from 110% of book value to 120% of book value) will bode well for investors.
Read MoreWe have been following Xerox Corporation (XRX) since the middle of January largely because David Einhorn (Greenlight Capital) had purchased 17M shares of the company in Q4 2011. We have stepped up our coverage of Xerox in October as the company’s shares were trading at a 30% discount to book value. However, we are most certainly aware that just because a company’s shares are trading at a low price to book value does not automatically make it a great value. When we first started...
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