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Intuitive Surgical, Inc. Q3 2009 Earnings Call Transcript

There is no other company than ISRG that so exemplifies America's enormous economic potential. Only in the USA can science, engineering, industrial management, marketing and logisitcs be brought together and coordinated to not only improve living standards, but make a ton of money.

Lonnie Smith is a business genius of the first rank.

Five Apple Predictions for 2009

With the dollar in decline, AAPL's cash is losing value sitting on the balance sheet. They need to do something productive in a hurry. Acquiring value-adding companies at currently depressed prices would be good. Investing in higher growth emerging markets like Brazil would also be good. AAPL doesn't give much of anything directly to shareholders, so a big dividend probably not in the cards.

Natural Gas Demand Continues to Decline

Thanks for an informative article.
A couple of questions:
1. How close is the correlation between the manufacturing index and natural gas consumption. Isn't a large part of NG industrial consumption a fixed cost and therefore not greatly affected by volume increases/decreases?
2. You cover industrial NG use (29%) and residential use (20%). What sector uses the remaining 50%? Is it electrical? Isn't most electricity generation by NG for top off for peak demand? If so, then NG use by electric utilities may not correlate with overall demand fluctuations.
3. What are the current import/export numbers for LNG? Does USA have the capacity to export significant quantities of LNG?