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you know what they say,
the sun shines on every dogs ass at least once..
he is way long overdue to be right.....
thank you
rich
you know of any reason for the move on CTLM?
just joined you in CPSI @ 32.31
Nasdaq up 9 days in row last week?
that is a record that will never be broken,
unless they go to a 9 day week
oh yeah?
..
steve
By the way, did you notice how big volume came into CTLM late in the day and took it back up to $2.21? This puppy is going higher.
yeah ..i saw that and jumped in at 2.19
thanks for the tip.
the group hug happy hour is now over
last call
wow
eln is taking a beating
ENWV BREAKING OUT
sorry about the all caps
i type too loud when i drink
i agree
its a nice change from all the anlkebiting in the past
also does not hurt that is a friday afternoon and the beer is
flowing (g)
i feel a group hug comin
Jacques Cousteau
sold IRIS 16.93
picking up IRIS 15.75
you mentioned it a last year.
i know the area well
Yada yada yada..
still got a little of that fort greene blood in ya (g)
he is good
you can get his weekly wraps here
http://www.raymondjames.com/bloch.htm
greenspan was wearing uggs at the fomc meeting
thanks for the lead on IIIN
got in @ 8.40
sold this am at 9.85
steve
is that why your up all night,every night? (g)
thanks for the info.
i planned to hold for a few weeks but in this market i get
stopped out in a few days.
steve
anyone follow
Fremont General Corporation FMT?
just wanted to know if it might be a good financial play.
harker
i see you were born again today
happy birthday
welcome back
just joined you in deck @24.68
good luck to both of us
tuna
did you hold fuel overnight?
it held strong into the close...
ooooooooooohhhhhh
you said the p word
where too?
i don't have any hills around here.
thanks
just just broke my bubble...(g)
anyone follow banks?
NFB picking up steam
thought you might want to read this from morningstar
Calpine CPN
by Paul Larson
Thesis 03-17-2005
Calpine has incinerated almost as much shareholder value as it has natural gas over the past several years.
Picture yourself in the year 2000. Electricity deregulation is just taking hold, opening numerous markets that were once closed. Most of the previous decade, the price of clean-burning natural gas had hovered near $2 per thousand cubic feet (mcf), making it a very competitively priced fuel. Coal-fired plants run by the lumbering utilities were facing increased environmental scrutiny. The economy was booming, the use of electricity-munching computers was growing fast, and the rolling blackouts in California were icing on the cake, showing that perhaps we had a shortage of electric-generating capacity in the country. What better time to place a giant bet on cheap, clean, natural gas-fired power plants?
Calpine made that bet, spending a whopping $18 billion the past four years to create the nation's largest independent fleet of gas-fired power plants. But several things have gone awry, making the bet turn sour. First, the price of natural gas skyrocketed. It's now near $6 per mcf, almost triple the 10-year average. Although Calpine is partially hedged by its gas production business and can also pass some of the increased costs along, high gas prices have been murder. With gas production in North America showing signs of plateauing, $2 per mcf for gas looks like ancient history. Second, electricity prices have slumped, as it now appears there is no problem with generating capacity, which is why Calpine's capacity utilization hovered around 50% throughout 2004.
After its expensive, ill-timed bet, Calpine's financials are brutally ugly. Operating profit margins (after minority interest) were negative 0.4% last year, a far cry from the 28% it enjoyed in 2000. Despite capacity growing 20% in 2004, EBITDA grew a scant 3% last year. With its aggressive expansion plans, the company has not generated a dime of free cash flow since 1998. Even after netting $800 million from the sale of a large chunk of its natural-gas reserves, the company still burned approximately $500 million in cash last year. With returns on invested capital averaging a meager 1.4% the past four years, the company is actually destroying value as it continues to expand. Debt has swelled to nearly 80% of the company's capital. And with its debt rated several notches below investment grade, Calpine doesn't come close to meeting its high and rapidly rising cost of capital.
With cash leaving faster than it's coming in, Calpine is a sinking ship. As with all sinking ships, the rate of its descent is increasing the further it gets underwater. We have no reservation about tossing the shares in our speculative risk bucket and cautioning investors to tread very carefully.
Valuation
We have said for many months that Calpine's stock is little more than a call option on the company's turnaround. This remains the case today, but the call option is further out of the money, and the time to expiration has shortened. As such, we are lowering our fair value estimate to $0.25 per share. We attempted to use a discounted cash-flow model to value the firm and had limited success. Under what we see as the most likely scenario, our model pointed to a fair value estimate well below zero. Just to get a fair value of zero, one has to be extremely generous, assuming a massive turnaround in the power markets materializes within the next three years, pushing Calpine's operating profit margins to nearly triple what the company has realized the past four years. Given our forecasts for electricity and natural-gas prices, we view the probability of this as very slim. But with gobs of operating leverage piled on top of a large amount of financial leverage, a turnaround could be dramatic. The potential for a large though highly unlikely turnaround is the only thing keeping us from publishing a fair value of zero.
picking up CRAY @2.31
who woke up STEM?
added @ 19.01
good luck
just jumped in NVEC at 19.65
I saw him on charlie rose
impressive speaker
Thanks Rich
i appreciate all your work
steve