Dirkyp

Algonquin Power: A Promising Renewable Energy Income Investment

How about the fact that management is the landlord to the company and charges it rent, the fact that management bought a plane using "prepaid expense" funds from the company and now rents it back to the company. Or that management owns a construction company on the side that does work for the company. Or that the trustees all loaned themselves company cash at 3% interest to buy units, with only recourse to the units. Or the fact that they acquired a business owned by management, and also payed a $240,000 extra fee to management for doing the deal, the fact that they have a "Management Agreement" an "Operations Supervisory Agreement" and an "Administrative Agreement".

They said they would internalize management in Q1 and now they said that won't happen - why would they want to?

Lamar Advertising: 8 Reasons Why This Stock Is Toast

How about 1?


On Jan 14 07:35 AM JW Goethe wrote:

> The author, while listing several academic metrics, truly doesn't
> get Lamar Advertising.
>
> The reasons he is wrong, about 8 of them, are too numerous to list.

Pre Device Makes Palm a Short-Term Buy - UBS

I know Goldman thinks it's worth $0.40 per share, or a decline of over 90%.

The Pre is a nice unit but is more or less a me-too product, they can't compete against massive rival's RIM, Nokia, and Apple, and Sprint will likely be the only tier 1 carrier offering it for a long time. And it won't ship for several quarters which means the hype will die down and other devices will be announced.

In the meantime PALM is burning lots of its cash - estimate of $100M over next 4 quarters - they only have $185M or so, and they have $400M in debt so they may have to raise dilutive equity.

So poor consumer environment, smartphone competition heating up significantly, inferior carrier channel, cash burn, and post-CES hype.

My view is that a home run is priced into the stock and that at best they might hit a single before it starts raining and the bankers call the came.

Salesforce.com Unlikely to Sustain Its Current High Multiple

Also note that Goldman has CRM on its conviction sell list with a $21 target price - that won't help. The short interest is going up, and the open interest on the put options is very large - have a look at the May 2009 17.50 put options - 9,064 contracts outstanding and they are trading at 1.70 which means people are paying 1.70 for puts at these levels need the stock to drop in half by May before they make money.

To me it looks like, regardless of the merits, the hedge funds are piling on short positions and may target CRM as their next meal . 62x FY Jan 2010 earnings is VERY rich, and that's IF they manage to grow earning 60%+ in the worst economy in a generation.

1/3 of CRM's business is from small businesses and spending may grind to a halt there.

Great company but way overpriced in my view - what is the upside from here? Say they do hit the numbers and grow earnings by 60% in a brutal economy, fight off competition and price cuts from Oracle/Netsuite, etc. then they are still trading at 62x those earnings. So maybe it could go to $40?? But the downside is probably $10, so I think there are way better risk-adjusted bets out there. Somehow buying something like Intel (just to use an example) at 4.5x EBITDA seems like a better risk adjusted bet.

By the way I am short, for full disclosure.

BCE Takeover: An Opportunity for Opportunism at Teachers?

Think it through:

1) Teachers buys a bunch more stock in the $35 range.
2) Banks walk away/go bust/ or have the British gov't (RBS) or US gov't (Citi) legally let them off the hook
3) Deal falls apart
4) Shares go to $25
5) Teachers loses $10/share on the shares they already own PLUS the $10 per share on the shares they just bought PLUS the $1 Billion break fee.

Try explaining that outcome to the school teachers whose retirement is in your hands.

I think Teachers would argue that they have enough exposure to BCE as it is.

BCE Inc.'s LBO Banks: Where's the Common Sense?

OMERs was not contractually bound to complete the Teranet deal - they could have changed the offer to whatever they wanted.

Teachers on the otherhand cannot legally amend its offer - the only way they can do so is to pay the $1B + break fee - realistically if they did that (which perhaps they should) the banks would scatter and the deal would be off. Plain and simple. All that would happen is that Teachers would be out $1B which would not be politically palitable for the folks at Teachers (try explaining to your board and your school teachers that you just wasted $1B).

The deal is unconditional. The banks are on the hook and the only way out is to beg the government to legislate them out of it (the Brits for RBS and Federal gov't for Citi).

A much more plausible and realistic scenario is for everyone to share the break fee - perhaps just the banks to get themselves off the hook. If they have $16 Billion in loans and have mark to market accounting they could easily have an instant loss of over $1B (the break fee) so why not just front the break fee to Teachers and everyone walk away? Much easier for Citi to right off a few hundred million these days along with the other Billions.

Very simple - deal goes through as is or someone pays $1 Billion.

Keep in mind that BCE is still public so if they get wind that the deal is in trouble they are obliged to disclose it right away or they'll get sued.

Hubris of biblical proportion trying to pull this one off.

Personally I think Bell is a train wreck of a company and Telus and Rogers will eat their lunch, especially with BCE's soon to be crippling debt load - not to mention when that debt has to be refinanced it will probably be at much higher rates.

For shame.

The Paragraph That Changed the World: Will Treasuries Crash?

Complete fearmongering. You can't just add on the liabilities of Fannie and Freddie to the government's debt, because those liabilties are coming onto the government balance sheet with offsetting assets. And new MBSs will be much more secure than the old stuff - lending standards are high now so new mortgages will be done on already deflated home prices and credit quality will be high. All this does is allow banks to start offering lots of mortgage financing to those who qualify, and the bank's cost of capital will be much lower now, so the US Treasury gets high quality loans, the banks get cheap capital, borrowers get a lot of debt available at more attractive rates which will help the housing market stop declining and ultimately start to turn around.