Ralph F

Total Rating:
+4 / 0

169 Comments

    • Thu Jul 26th 10:33 AM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      Jeffrey Saut: Defensive Picks to Conquer Rising Inflation
      Why stocks and ETFs with high yields? High yields make the stocks more like a bond, and rising inflation and thus interest rates would hit bond prices.
      View article »
    • Fri Jul 20th 11:24 AM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      Google Sell-Off Offers Opportunity
      You're right that the fundamentals are still v good, but I think William Trent is more realistic on the stock:

      Google's Miss: A Wakeup Call For Investors
      View article »
    • Fri Jul 20th 11:23 AM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      Google's Miss: A Wakeup Call For Investors
      John, I think what you're missing here is that the street was assuming that Google could continue to grow revenue at stunning profit margins. But what's now clear is that Google has to invest to achieve that growth, and the investment takes down the margins. Any way you look at it, future earnings take a hit.
      View article »
    • Fri Jul 20th 10:03 AM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      How to Invest Like Yale's David Swensen
      V. interesting. See also:
      An Endowment Portfolio From Publicly-Traded Vehicles
      etf.seekingalpha.com/a...

      He also talks about how to imitate Swenson with publicly-traded vehicles.
      View article »
    • Fri Jul 20th 09:47 AM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      Google Q2 2007 Earnings Call Transcript
      Note what Microsoft said on its call about search revenue:

      "In our online services business we saw advertising revenue growth of 33%, exceeding our expectations. Search ad revenue benefited from both increased search queries and revenue per search, while display ad revenue enjoyed both increased number of page views and revenue per page view. Overall, online services business revenue grew 19% to $688 million."

      (Microsoft F4Q07 (Qtr End 6/30/07) Earnings Call Transcript)
      View article »
    • Fri Jul 20th 05:24 AM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      Are The Ratings Agencies Really Taking a 'Tough Stance' on Subprime Mortgage Debt?
      Bloomberg had v good coverage of this issue on 2007-05-31:



      <blockquote class="quote"... Boom Masks Subprime Losses, Abetted by S&amp;P, Moody's, Fitch</b>

      2007-05-31 00:08 (New York)
      By Richard Tomlinson and David Evans

      ...The three leading rating companies, all based in New York, say that policing CDOs isn't their job. They just offer their educated opinions, says Noel Kirnon, senior managing director at Moody's.

      ... ``What we're saying is that many people have the tendency to rely on it, and we want to make sure that they don't,'' says Kirnon, whose firm commands 39 percent of the global credit rating market by revenue.

      S&amp;P, which controls 40 percent, asks investors in its published CDO ratings not to base any investment decision on its analyses. Fitch, which has 16 percent of the worldwide credit rating field, says its analyses are just opinions and investors shouldn't rely on them.

      The rating companies apply their usual disclaimer about the reliability of their analyses to CDOs. S&amp;P says in small print: ``Any user of the information contained herein should not rely on any credit rating or other opinion contained herein in making any investment decision.''...

      ...When it comes to CDOs, rating companies actually do much more than evaluate them and give them letter grades. The raters play an integral role in putting the CDOs together in the first place.

      Banks and other financial firms typically create CDOs by wrapping together 100 or more bonds and other securities, including debt investments backed by home loans.

      Credit rating companies help the financial firms divide the CDOs into sections known as tranches, each of which gets a separate grade, says Charles Calomiris, the Henry Kaufman professor of financial institutions at Columbia University in New York.

      Credit raters participate in every level of packaging a CDO, says Calomiris, who has worked as a consultant for Bank of America Corp., Citigroup Inc., UBS AG and other major banks. The rating companies tell CDO assemblers how to squeeze the most profit out of the CDO by maximizing the size of the tranches with the highest ratings, he says.

      ...``It's important to understand that unlike in the corporate bond market, in the securitization market, the rating agencies run the show,'' he says. ``This is not a passive process of rating corporate debt. This is a financial engineering business.''

      Credit raters consult with bankers in determining the makeup of a CDO, and banks make the final decisions, says Gloria Aviotti, Fitch's global head of structured finance...</blockqu...

      The entire article is really worth reading:
      www.bloomberg.com/apps...
      View article »
    • Wed Jul 18th 11:45 AM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      Interactive Q&A: Paul Sylvester, CEO of Manatron Inc. (MANA)
      Thanks for doing this, Paul.

      1. What kind of return on investment do the municipal and local authorities get from purchasing your software?

      2. I assume your product is traditional software. What are your thoughts on software as a service in the government sector?

      3. Outside your direct competitors, are there any publicly traded software companies that you think have great new products that investors haven't appreciated yet?

      Thank you!
      View article »
    • Wed Jul 18th 09:06 AM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      ValueClick Names New CEO; Takeover Hopes Fade
      From JPM Securities (July 17th):
      <blockquote>
      ValueClick announced a significant acquisition yesterday of MeziMedia, the publisher of comparison shopping site Smarter.com and promotional marketing site Couponmountain.com. According to comScore, MeziMedia sites attracted 10.5 million users during the month of June. ValueClick paid an initial $100 million in cash for the company with the possibility for an additional $250 million on an earnout. We estimate that ValueClick will have paid between 6x and 12x 2008 EBITDA depending on the performance of the business over the next 18 months. Our research suggests that Mezi is on pace to generate roughly $55 million in revenue and $15 million in EBITDA this year, up from $40 million in revenue and $10 million of EBITDA in 2006. From a strategic perspective, the deal fits well with ValueClick's Comparison Shopping unit and should be another highly accretive acquisition for ValueClick. We continue to like the stock and reiterate our Strong Buy rating and $35 target.
      </blockquote>
      View article »
    • Wed Jul 18th 09:03 AM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      The Dollar's Impact On Sectors And The Overall Market
      Makes sense that the defensive sectors such as healthcare, utilities, materials, and staples weren't down much. Not sure what to make of the big hit to telecom though.
      View article »
    • Wed Jul 18th 08:55 AM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      Sell Side Response to Yahoo Earnings
      From Bill Morrison of JMP Securities:
      <blockquote>
      We are reiterating our Market Perform rating on Yahoo! following another quarter of mediocre results and lowered FY07 guidance. Yahoo! reported 2Q07 results that were generally in line with their pre-announced guidance, but FY07 OCF guidance was revised lower...

      The investment thesis for Yahoo! continues to hinge on the successful rebuilding of core Yahoo! properties, which is intended to drive a re-acceleration in the branded display business, a continued acceleration in search revenue, and significantly better execution from management. While Panama is clearly driving accelerated search revenue on Yahoo!’s O&amp;O properties, we remain concerned about secular challenges in the display business, including both slowing growth and pricing pressure in the company’s premium inventory as well as the possibility for a significant slowdown in Yahoo!’s premium service business next year due to the AT&amp;T (T - $39.84) renegotiation. We believe that management has a good strategy for stimulating future growth, including attacking the direct response market through its emerging ad network and rolling out Panama internationally. However, we do not believe there are any quick fixes to the problems that Yahoo! is facing - especially on the display side - and a turnaround is likely to take several quarters, in our judgment. The stock traded down 2% to $26.35 in after hours. We continue to believe that the stock is fairly valued in the $26 range with a balanced risk/reward profile and reiterate our Market Perform rating.
      </blockquote>
      View article »
    • Tue Jul 17th 16:18 PM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      John Hussman: Long-Term Investors Should Be Disturbed by This Market's Rich Valuations
      Valuation analysis can never pick a market top or bottom, because the market always overshoots. I agree that you need to judge Hussman -- and also Jeremy Grantham -- on their performance over the entire cycle, because they are always early due to the overshoot but end up with market beating performance due to their sensitivity to valuation and refusal to get caught up in crowd psychology.
      View article »
    • Mon Jul 2nd 12:48 PM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      Interactive Q&A: Mitchell Presnick, Chairman & Chief Executive Officer, Super 8 Hotels (China)
      Thanks for doing this. It's not often we get to hear from people who really know what's going on in China. Can you talk a bit about leisure and business travel in China generally? How fast is demand growing? How is pricing, and are companies (including your own) making reasonable margins?

      Thanks,
      Ralph
      View article »
    • Tue Jun 26th 05:02 AM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      The Solution To Yahoo's Problems: A Private Equity Buyout
      Don't you think that these sorts of arguments applied to AOL 10 years ago? "Just maintain share in an exploding market." But look what happened: AOL's model was wrong, it's people weren't good enough or left, and 10 years later its market share shrunk.

      As you point out, 10 of 26 key YHOO execs have left. I wouldn't want to make the bet you're making.
      View article »
    • Tue Jun 26th 04:54 AM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      Dow Jones Will Sell, But Not to Murdoch
      It's amazing that DJ's board hasn't just grabbed the NWS offer and run with the money. The other newspaper stocks are weak, and the valuation offered for DJ was more than generous. If I was a DJ shareholder, I wouldn't be happy.
      View article »
    • Mon Jun 25th 16:22 PM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      Irish Stocks: 11 Ways to Tap Into the High Growth Nation
      Is there an Ireland ETF or closed-end fund?
      View article »
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