maz

14 Comments

    • ON: Mon Sep 8th 13:07 PM
      Commented on:
      Rating Agency Incompetence Scales New Heights
      Hi Tom,

      Any comments or Mea Culpas on other mistakes like First Marblehead :-)
      View article »
    • ON: Tue Sep 2nd 17:23 PM
      Commented on:
      Chesapeake Energy Called the Market's Bluff
      Come on Guys this is NOT a political forum
      View article »
    • ON: Tue Aug 5th 14:39 PM
      Commented on:
      Winners and Losers from the Mortgage Mess
      Poorly researched article full of careless errors - since when were MBIA and Ambac mortgage insurers? How about the largest mortgage insurer MGIC Investment (MTG) and PMI Group (PMI)?

      I could go on but this article isn't worth it

      It's plain Rong :-)
      View article »
    • ON: Thu Jul 3rd 10:21 AM
      Commented on:
      Tempting Buffett
      Agree that the comment on the stock being down 15% not being the kind of performance to be expected from Buffett is ludicrous. Anyone who has followed Berkshire for any length of time knows that the shares often go down quite a lot - just like any other stock!

      Now if you'd said "value" instead of "price" that would make more sense
      View article »
    • ON: Sun Jun 15th 13:31 PM
      Commented on:
      Status Report: Anheuser-Busch - InBev
      What was the point of this article? It added nothing to the debate that hasn't been hashed out many times over in other articles
      View article »
    • ON: Tue Jun 10th 12:01 PM
      Commented on:
      Stock Analysis: General Electric
      This analysis is a complete WAG as it spends no time looking at the business and until you understand what is both on and off the balance sheet at GE Capital you can't value GE which is in a huge range of financial businesses which are related to the economy & it ain't just about the US economy. They are not out of the woods on mortgage financing which is a lot more than just sub-prime. Their range of business products are here www.ge.com/products_se...

      The range of consumer products here:
      www.ge.com/products_se...
      View article »
    • ON: Mon Jun 2nd 11:40 AM
      Commented on:
      Plenty of Bidding for Borders
      How do you get 1.75m Borders Rewards members? Here's a section from the cc

      How about open rates on your e-mails on reward members. Can can you talk about what's going on there?

      Ed Wilhelm - Borders Group Inc. - SVP, CFO

      They're really holding up about the same as they were. They're running somewhere in the mid 20s percentage wise and this is about where they've been and the program continues to grow and we're over 26 million members now, and growing maybe 27 now and we're still growing at about 140,000 a week on this, and so it continues to grow
      View article »
    • ON: Tue May 27th 14:15 PM
      Commented on:
      First Marblehead Fights to Free Itself from Credit Market Whims
      I'm not so sure that you can look at defaults/delinquencies in the 2005-7 Trusts and extrapolate them to the loans on the banks books as underwriting standards from August 2007 on were tightened up considerably plus the interest rates are higher. Still they could be under-reserved
      View article »
    • ON: Thu May 1st 13:24 PM
      Commented on:
      Hershey: Ripe for Cadbury's Picking
      "Originally Cadbury agreed to spin-off its beverage unit in order to get the deal done. That might not be a concession Hershey has the ability to push for this time around."

      What do you mean here? Cadbury IS spinning off its NA Beverage unit as Dr Pepper Snapple Group with shares (not ADR's) listed on the NYSE - probable symbol DPS. Cadbury-Schweppes will be renamed Cadbury PLC and listed on the LSE. ADR's will trade on the NYSE under the symbol CBY not the old CSG.

      Upshot is that Hershey's will not have to consider the beveragew unit in your scenario as they would be dealing with Cadbury PLC

      Hersheys already makes Cadbury chocolates in the US so it makes sense but I suspect that Cadbury PLC will itself be a very attractive target for larger corporations - more attractive than Hershey.
      View article »
    • ON: Tue Apr 22nd 17:49 PM
      Commented on:
      Raising Chesapeake Energy's Intrinsic Value Estimates
      Although Haynesville is likely very good news for CHK I'd classify Davy's valuation as a guesstimate at this stage & certainly wouldn't take a $75 to $100 valuation to the bank. There is simply too much information missing

      * It relies on NG remaining in the $8 to $10 range yet that much increase in supply may negatively effect price.

      * We have no idea how much lease costs will be to expand from 200,000 to 500,000 acres but we do know that they'll be high as everyone & his dog knows the play

      * There's no guarantee that pull costs will be similar to Barnett

      * Lastly & perhaps most important we have no idea how much dilution and/or increased debt we will have to take on to get to the vast increases in proven reserves. What we do know is that it's highly unlikely that the latest dilution is the last - we've been this route before.

      Morningstar has a more conservative $59 valuation - which may prove low in the end but imo is prudent for the time being
      View article »
    • ON: Tue Aug 21st 15:17 PM
      Commented on:
      Microsoft's Ballmer Starting Own Yahoo-Buying Rumor?
      I honestly think that using the market value reduction as an argument is specious

      1. The time period of 3 months is too short to have any meaning other than market sentiment & has nothing to do with franchise value (as opposed to current price)
      2. The last 5 weeks includes a huge general market sell-of and without comparing your company losses to the market loss they are in a vacuum
      3. Using absolute values (ie $9b loss for MSFT vs. $10b for Google) - using % losses makes far more sense (-3.15% for MSFT and -5.9% for Google)

      Also apart from Susan Deckers recent purchase most of Yahoo insiders seem to be selling (apart from acquisitions at $0 cost which I assume are restricted stock grants) both shares and recently exercised options finance.yahoo.com/q/it...
      View article »
    • ON: Tue Jul 10th 14:42 PM
      Commented on:
      Why I Passed On the Tyco Spinoffs
      I agree that the Covidien valuation misses the mark. Also with spin-offs there is a lot of extra expenses & capex that tend to be short term (one to two years) in nature. Using the pro forma statements will usually result in a lower base FCF and it takes time to go thru and estimate "normalized" figures.

      COV - $54 in a range of $45 to $61
      TEL - $42 in a range of $35 to $48
      TYC - $49 in a range of $42 to $57
      View article »
    • ON: Thu Jan 25th 16:36 PM
      Commented on:
      With All the Focus on Apple's Options Issues, When Will We Hear About Microsoft's?
      One BIG difference - even if MSFT's option practices were similar to AAPL Gates & Ballmer didn't grant themselves gobs of options

      Also Dell is currently under investigation for revenue recognition practices not options
      View article »
    • ON: Mon Jan 22nd 14:07 PM
      Commented on:
      Pfizer Trading Well Below Its Intrinsic Value
      Interesting valuation but what makes you confident that Pfizer can sustain past growth when several of their largest blockbusters have lost patent protection recently or are coming off patent in the next 4 years? Patent protection is a two edged sword (20 years is usefully 9 to 12 years because of long development lead times) because the more success (eg Lipitor) the greater the urgency to find replacements once the patent expires. I'm not necessarily disagreeing with your valuation (although I am more conservative) but I don't see how a regression analysis is a substitute for future business analysis to support the growth assumptions. That method might be more suitable to Coke or Bud's business model.

      Small nitpick: "intrinsic value of $38.50. With PFE trading at around $25, the margin of safety is greater than 50%" - this is a 35% margin of safety as % is based on valuation - or 50% + upside
      View article »
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