Check out the College Analysts, Lead Paint
James Cullen has a great write up on American Express (AXP).
Jane Genova says the Fat Lady is singing at the RI Lead Paint Trial…for the plaintiff
Disclosure (“none” means no position):None
Here are the week’s top stories at Value Investing News
VIN should be “Buffet Investing News” so far in May. Todd Sullivan explains why too much Buffett may be a bad thing.
Joe Ponzio details his reasoning for buying the small company stock of Graham Corporation, the unique attributes of small caps, and why he decided to sell when he did.
On Wednesday the 7th, Dr Pepper Snapple Group (DPS) officially began to trade. Its $25 price tag is lower than many expected after the soft-drink maker was spun-off of its parent company, Cadbury Schweppes.
88% invested in financials…
Garmin is the dominant player in the fast growing GPS market. The company has delivered nearly 50% annual earnings growth since 2003, and is expected to grow at 17% per year going forward. With it’s current 11 P/E, is Garmin a textbook example of growth at a reasonable price?
Wesco Annual Meeting, May 7, 2008
It sounds crazy that Warren Buffett and Jim Rogers might have something in common besides intellect and wealth. Buffett has owned the Washington Post for 35 years, Coca-Cola for 18 years.
I thought Shai Dardasti’s personal reflections from 20,000 feet were spot on and worth thinking about. I have a few other companies that are royalties on various activities that I would add to the list, and I bet you do too.
I finished David Einhorn’s investing “novel” Fooling Some of the People All of the Time this afternoon, and I have nothing but praise.
First Eagle Funds Conference Call
In this series of blog posts, I will walk through all 25 of the biases Mr. Munger identifies, and then adapt them for the modern entrepreneur. In each case I will start with relevant excerpts of Mr. Munger’s speech, and then after that add my own thoughts.
Here is why Oil shouldn’t go to $200 a barrel. Notice I didn’t say won’t go to $200, as betting against a commodity in this market is tantamount to financial suicide.
Barron’s recently caught up with Tananbaum, 42, at his midtown office, which houses a portion of his art collection, including the spacesuits by artist Tom Sachs shown in the photo at right.
Barron’s: What is happening in the credit markets, where conditions since August have been very tough?
Morningstar chat with Legg Mason’s Bill Miller.
Secret strategies of the game, with Neil Chriss, Hutchin Hill Capital; David Einhorn, Greenlight Capital Management and CNBC’s Becky Quick
What is Jerry Yang doing? It is one thing to thumb your nose at Microsoft’s (MSFT) Ballmer, but, to do it at Icahn? Jerry, you are officially out of your league…
Yang replied to Icahn’s letter today:
You see, Ballmer ultimately has to play nice because he did not want a mutiny of Yahoo (YHOO) employees when he took over. Icahn, however, could care less. Ballmer will sit back and let Carl get his knuckles dirty beating Yang’s head into the ground and still get what he wants.
Carl does care about Yahoo, he only wants to make a buck. Yang is operating like Carl wants to own Yahoo. The “you do not understand” line must have had Carl howling. No, Jerry, it is you who do not understand who you are no up against. Do what Carl says or he will take control of the board and you will be reading about the already determined outcome in the papers. This is hard ball now and Icahn makes the rules…
By the time this is over, Yang and his cohorts will beg Ballmer to come save them. Anyone want to guess the deal get done for less than $33? You think Microsoft is not buying shares on the open market at $25 to $27?
$37…. really Jerry? It would be another decade before Yahoo saw shares trade at that level. Walk away Jerry, you already took care of yourself.
Here is more:
Disclosure (“none” means no position): None
What is Jerry Yang doing? It is one thing to thumb your nose at Microsoft’s (MSFT) Ballmer, but, to do it at Icahn? Jerry, you are officially out of your league…
Yang replied to Icahn’s letter today:
You see, Ballmer ultimately has to play nice because he did not want a mutiny of Yahoo (YHOO) employees when he took over. Icahn, however, could care less. Ballmer will sit back and let Carl get his knuckles dirty beating Yang’s head into the ground and still get what he wants.
Carl does care about Yahoo, he only wants to make a buck. Yang is operating like Carl wants to own Yahoo. The “you do not understand” line must have had Carl howling. No, Jerry, it is you who do not understand who you are no up against. Do what Carl says or he will take control of the board and you will be reading about the already determined outcome in the papers. This is hard ball now and Icahn makes the rules…
By the time this is over, Yang and his cohorts will beg Ballmer to come save them. Anyone want to guess the deal get done for less than $33? You think Microsoft is not buying shares on the open market at $25 to $27?
$37…. really Jerry? It would be another decade before Yahoo saw shares trade at that level. Walk away Jerry, you already took care of yourself.
Here is more:
Disclosure (“none” means no position): None
A follow up to yesterday’s post on whether or not it might be time to look at the sector. You may want to check it out before going on.
Here is an interview with MBIA (MBI) CEO Jay Brown. It should be noted Brown was not at the helm when things went south.
Part 1
Part 2
What I took from this was the dire valuations currently being given to their portfolio’s. Should these estimates, currently “8 times worse than what we saw in January” not come to pass. The upside here is tremendous.
These are beginning to look very appealing. I think perhaps waiting until early summer (1 more quarter) to see how the businesses are doing is the thing to do…
Disclosure (“none” means no position):None
Based on the lack of chatter about it out there, it would seem that the stunning changes at the website for Sears Holdings (SHLD) have gone unnoticed.
Sears is looking to make their site, Sears.com a “go to” site for all consumers needs and its 20% plus growth implies they just may be succeeding.
Notables:
* December 2007 when Sears.com partnered with Alliance Entertainment Corporation (AEC) to offer movies and music to its online shoppers. Sears.com now houses more than 250,000 titles
* February 2008, a co-branded site hosted by Digital River. Customers can purchase and immediately download to their PC or laptop software programs ranging from finance,
games, security and system utilities.
* April 2008, Sears.com expanded its For the Home Online Store by partnering with ArtSelect.com. Sears’ customers now have a complete art gallery and custom frame shop at their fingertips. After finding a favorite art piece, visitors can create a custom finished product by choosing the mat and frame. The design can be viewed against a wall color, saved in a gallery, or shared with friends. Featuring more than 300,000 image options for art prints and canvas reproductions, as well as mirrors and tapestries, the
frame shop fits any style of home decor.
* April 2008, Sears.com partnered with Baker & Taylor to offer an online book assortment consisting of more than 600,000 products. Customers can order books in advance of release date.
So, how is the site doing? At an estimated $2.6 billion in sales, Sears ranks as the largest mass merchant retailer online after Amazon.com (AMZN) and is the seventh-largest online store in the U.S., according to revenue estimates from online consultants and Internet Retailer’s annual Top 500 guide.
Shoppers that visited Sears.com and Kmart.com at least once in February rose 20%, to 14.7 million vs last year. That makes Sears’ Web business the 2nd fastest growing site among mass merchants vs 2007, after Costco (COST) at 23%, according to Nielsen Online.
Sears.com alone drew 12.3 million visitors in February, up 28% from 2007. That makes it fastest growing Web site among retailers besting Amazon’s 17% increase.
When traffic from Kmart and Lands’ End is added, Sears Holdings is drawing about 18 million people to its Web sites each month. Only Amazon at 47.7 million, Target (TGT) at 22.6 million and Wal-Mart Stores (WMT) at 21.3 million draw more people, according to Nielsen.
All of the above information is from before the new initiatives have been implemented.
Back in January, Jim Barr, previously for seven years the general manager of Microsoft’s (MSFT) MSN Shopping on MSN.com, was named SVP in charge of Sears’ online business. Then the company said, “Jim will be responsible for leading a new organization focused on innovative business architecture design, merchandising planning/operational development and technology solutions integration,” the company says.
Paul Miller, who joined Sears as senior vice president of direct commerce in November 2006 from Williams-Sonoma Inc., will report to Barr, the company says.
Clearly Barr is making fast and dramatic changes to the site and based on results to date, so far so good..
Disclosure (“none” means no position):Long SHLD, WMT, None
Those who ever played football can remember that when tackling, never watch the runners head, watch his waist. For those thinking about about investing based on today’s housing numbers, don’t watch the headline, look at the meat of the numbers.
Housing starts increased 8.2% to a seasonally adjusted 1.032 million annual rate, besting economists expectations of April starts to drop by 1.4% to a 934,000-unit annual rate (yet another reason to doubt economists). The 8.2% increase was the largest monthly climb since a 14.0% jump in January 2006.
But, the increase was driven by multi-family units (apartments). Simply put, folks are not buying houses and the sudden surge in foreclosures mean more folks are looking for apartments to rent.
A much closer look shows April single-family housing starts decreased 1.7% to 692,000. Construction of housing with two or more units soared 36.0% to 340,000; within that category, homes with five or more units (multi-family) were 40.5% higher.
Now it is good news for a simple reason that any economic activity is good as it provides jobs and does mean folks are not homeless. But, if we are hoping for a housing rebound, not yet.
It is good news for companies like Sherwin Williams (SHE), USG (USG) and Owens Corning (OC) because whether the dwelling houses 1 or 5 families, all of the above company’s materials will be used to build it.
Toll Brothers (TOL) released preliminary Q2 results and reported a 30% drop in home-building revenue earlier this week. CEO Robert I. Toll, said current customer traffic is “the worst we’ve ever seen” and said would-be buyers are “scared.”
Not so sure they are scared but “opportunistic”. They know they have the sellers by the cahones and are taking Watergate ‘s H.R. “Bob” Halderman’s advice, “When you have got your competition by the balls…squeeze”.
Acting nervous is just a ploy to soak builders or sellers out of more concessions. I know some people looking now and all comment how sellers are willing to do just about anything “including coming to our house and packing for us”.
At the end of the day the news is good, but, not the potentially “end of the pain” news the headline might suggest.
Disclosure (“none” means no position):Long SHW, OC, None
Those who ever played football can remember that when tackling, never watch the runners head, watch his waist. For those thinking about about investing based on today’s housing numbers, don’t watch the headline, look at the meat of the numbers.
Housing starts increased 8.2% to a seasonally adjusted 1.032 million annual rate, besting economists expectations of April starts to drop by 1.4% to a 934,000-unit annual rate (yet another reason to doubt economists). The 8.2% increase was the largest monthly climb since a 14.0% jump in January 2006.
But, the increase was driven by multi-family units (apartments). Simply put, folks are not buying houses and the sudden surge in foreclosures mean more folks are looking for apartments to rent.
A much closer look shows April single-family housing starts decreased 1.7% to 692,000. Construction of housing with two or more units soared 36.0% to 340,000; within that category, homes with five or more units (multi-family) were 40.5% higher.
Now it is good news for a simple reason that any economic activity is good as it provides jobs and does mean folks are not homeless. But, if we are hoping for a housing rebound, not yet.
It is good news for companies like Sherwin Williams (SHE), USG (USG) and Owens Corning (OC) because whether the dwelling houses 1 or 5 families, all of the above company’s materials will be used to build it.
Toll Brothers (TOL) released preliminary Q2 results and reported a 30% drop in home-building revenue earlier this week. CEO Robert I. Toll, said current customer traffic is “the worst we’ve ever seen” and said would-be buyers are “scared.”
Not so sure they are scared but “opportunistic”. They know they have the sellers by the cahones and are taking Watergate ‘s H.R. “Bob” Halderman’s advice, “When you have got your competition by the balls…squeeze”.
Acting nervous is just a ploy to soak builders or sellers out of more concessions. I know some people looking now and all comment how sellers are willing to do just about anything “including coming to our house and packing for us”.
At the end of the day the news is good, but, not the potentially “end of the pain” news the headline might suggest.
Disclosure (“none” means no position):Long SHW, OC, None
So, an email from Vikram Pandit sheds some light into his plans and based on its content, it does not appear he plans to break the bank up.
Dear XXXXXX,
I want you to be among the first to know about the bold steps we are taking at Citi to be the premier, global, fully integrated financial services firm.
Our objective is to create for our customers an experience in which services are seamless, payments and transfers effortless, and distances meaningless. My commitment – and the commitment of everyone at Citi- is to work tirelessly around the world and around the clock to deliver outstanding value and service as we continue to earn your trust and that of every customer we serve.
We are proud of our enduring strength as a global financial institution, striving to successfully meet the needs of clients like you in more than 100 countries. As always, we look forward to continuing to serve you – wherever you are and wherever you need to be.
Sincerely,
Vikram Pandit
CEO, Citi
I think the only conclusion that one can draw from this is that he plans to go ahead with the “supermarket” concept. You cannot offer the scope of services he is alluding to if you bust the bank into 3 or 4 pieces. Shedding “unnecessary” businesses is the plan while keeping the core operations together.
We’ll see..
Disclosure (“none” means no position):Long C
Leucadia (LUK) disclosed in an SEC filing last night that on May 14th they purchased an additional 68,100 shares of investment bank Jefferies (JEF) at $17.80 a share.
This brings their total ownership to 44,342,100 shares
Disclosure (“none” means no position):None
Bonds, Asset Managers, Sotheby’s, biofuels
– Good, See ya’
– This is true
– This is a nice pick….
– Most of what is said about them is bunk. Listen to those placing large bets there…
Bonds, Asset Managers, Sotheby’s, biofuels
– Good, See ya’
– This is true
– This is a nice pick….
– Most of what is said about them is bunk. Listen to those placing large bets there…
Upgrades
Yahoo! (YHOO)- Collins Stewart Sell » Hold
Enerplus Res Fd Trust (ERF)- UBS Neutral » Buy
Harvest Energy Trust (HTE)- UBS Neutral » Buy
Temple-Inland (TIN)- Longbow Neutral » Buy
Packaging Corp (PKG)- Longbow Neutral » Buy
SanDisk (SNDK)- Needham Hold » Buy
Sina (SINA)- Kaufman Bros Hold » Buy
TNS Inc (TNS)- Sun Trust Rbsn Humphrey Neutral » Buy
Sina (SINA)- Citigroup Hold » Buy
TeleTech (TTEC)- RBC Capital Mkts Underperform » Sector Perform
Plains Exploration (PXP)- UBS Neutral » Buy
TiVo (TIVO)- Friedman Billings Underperform » Mkt Perform
GATX (GMT)- Morgan Keegan Mkt Perform » Outperform
Cellcom Israel (CEL)- Jefferies & Co Hold » Buy
Ituran Location and Control (ITRN)- JP Morgan Neutral » Overweight
Chevron (CVX)- UBS Neutral » Buy
Syneron Medical (ELOS)- Merriman Curhan Ford Neutral » Buy
Downgrades
Salary.com (SLRY)- Needham Buy » Hold
Brocade (BRCD)- Caris & Company Buy » Average
China Netcom (CN)- Deutsche Securities Hold » Sell
StatoilHydro (STO)- HSBC Securities Overweight » Neutral
Spirit Aerosystems (SPR)- Cowen & Co Outperform » Neutral
Knight Transportation (KNX)- UBS Buy » Neutral
Marchex (MCHX)- Susquehanna Financial Positive » Neutral
CEC Entertainment (CEC)- KeyBanc Capital Mkts Buy » Hold
Salary.com (SLRY)- Wachovia Outperform » Mkt Perform
Iomai (IOMI)- Rodman & Renshaw Mkt Outperform » Mkt Perform
Ctrip.com (CTRP)- Susquehanna Financial Positive » Neutral
Upgrades
Yahoo! (YHOO)- Collins Stewart Sell » Hold
Enerplus Res Fd Trust (ERF)- UBS Neutral » Buy
Harvest Energy Trust (HTE)- UBS Neutral » Buy
Temple-Inland (TIN)- Longbow Neutral » Buy
Packaging Corp (PKG)- Longbow Neutral » Buy
SanDisk (SNDK)- Needham Hold » Buy
Sina (SINA)- Kaufman Bros Hold » Buy
TNS Inc (TNS)- Sun Trust Rbsn Humphrey Neutral » Buy
Sina (SINA)- Citigroup Hold » Buy
TeleTech (TTEC)- RBC Capital Mkts Underperform » Sector Perform
Plains Exploration (PXP)- UBS Neutral » Buy
TiVo (TIVO)- Friedman Billings Underperform » Mkt Perform
GATX (GMT)- Morgan Keegan Mkt Perform » Outperform
Cellcom Israel (CEL)- Jefferies & Co Hold » Buy
Ituran Location and Control (ITRN)- JP Morgan Neutral » Overweight
Chevron (CVX)- UBS Neutral » Buy
Syneron Medical (ELOS)- Merriman Curhan Ford Neutral » Buy
Downgrades
Salary.com (SLRY)- Needham Buy » Hold
Brocade (BRCD)- Caris & Company Buy » Average
China Netcom (CN)- Deutsche Securities Hold » Sell
StatoilHydro (STO)- HSBC Securities Overweight » Neutral
Spirit Aerosystems (SPR)- Cowen & Co Outperform » Neutral
Knight Transportation (KNX)- UBS Buy » Neutral
Marchex (MCHX)- Susquehanna Financial Positive » Neutral
CEC Entertainment (CEC)- KeyBanc Capital Mkts Buy » Hold
Salary.com (SLRY)- Wachovia Outperform » Mkt Perform
Iomai (IOMI)- Rodman & Renshaw Mkt Outperform » Mkt Perform
Ctrip.com (CTRP)- Susquehanna Financial Positive » Neutral
In a just disclosed SEC filing Sears Holdings Chairman Edward Lampert disclosed that through his RBS Partners hedge fund he purchased shares in both Sallie Mae (SLM) and PHH Corporation (PHH)
PHH Corporation (PHH) is an outsource provider of mortgage and fleet management services. The Company operates in three segments: Mortgage Production, Mortgage Servicing and Fleet Management Services. PHH’s Mortgage Production segment originates, purchases and sells mortgage loans through its wholly owned subsidiary, PHH Mortgage Corporation and its subsidiaries (collectively, PHH Mortgage), which is inclusive of PHH Home Loans. The Company’s Mortgage Servicing segment services mortgage loans that either PHH Mortgage or PHH Home Loans originated, or for which PHH Mortgage purchased the mortgage servicing rights. PHH’s Fleet Management Services segment provides commercial fleet management services to corporate clients and government agencies throughout the United States and Canada through its wholly owned subsidiary, PHH Vehicle Management Services Group LLC, doing business as PHH Arval.
Lampert paid $121 million for just over 6 million SLM shares and $22.5 million for just over 1.4 million shares of PHH.
The filing was an amended filing for the quarter ending 12/31/2007 to report the holdings. Lampert paid roughly $20 a share for the SLM stake currently trading at $21 and $17.80 for the PHH stake currently valued at $19 assuming they have not been sold
Disclosure (“none” means no position):None