Chris Ripley

Cashing Out at the Top of a Market Melt-up

What a bunch of rubbish.

Apollo Group's Bid For Realogy Undervalues The Company

I totally agree this is a firesale price. I don't know if we'll get 36 but I will certainly be angry if we don't get 34. Your thesis regarding Silverman simply wanting to cash out is spot on. If you remember, he initially planned on being CEO of the travel distribution services business before the spins. That business wound up going to Blackstone Group instead of being spun off. It seems as if these deals were planned in advance with Silverman's intentions being to simply go to the most likely private equity targets.

The Long and Short of Idearc

As a small business owner I can tell you Yellow Page advertising will be with us for many years to come. I simply could not run my business without a yellow pages ad (several of them in fact). Search based advertising is certainly an attractive venue for advertisement, but it is not the only one nor will it become the only one any time soon. The advantage a yellow page directory has is that it serves a small local market rather than a nationwide market which makes it less vulnerable to the online threat. I'm not arguing that Idearc will experience huge growth, but I don't think revenues are as vulnerable as some may assume.