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Savient: Risky but Promising Small Cap
If you’ve never experienced the painful symptoms of gout, consider yourself lucky. The buildup of uric acid crystals in joints has been likened to having skewers pushed into flesh.
It’s estimated that over one million people suffer from gout attacks every year - and if a person with a proverbial skewer sticking out of their joints isn’t a motivated buyer, I don’t know who would be.
The company I’m talking about today markets a specialized gout treatment. There are other gout treatments on the market, but this company’s treatment targets chronic cases that haven't responded to other medications. The company has put the potential number of patients at around 172,000, and industry watchdogs have estimated potential annual worldwide sales could range from a low $200 million to upwards of $1 billion. The company has indicated in regulatory filings that the drug would be relatively cheap to manufacture.
I’m talking about Savient Pharmaceuticals (Nasdaq: SVNT)
Right now this company’s stock is beaten up. Sometimes a company will try to sell itself in order to grow. Savient tried to do that, and suffered the consequences of a shareholder overreaction.
Yet there's still some interest in the stock of the company, which recently announced plans to go it alone with its new treatment for gout after it failed to interest any other companies with deep pockets to take it over.
Shares of Savient hit a 52-week low of $10.43 on Oct. 25, and are down about 8 percent this year. But if you had bought the stock five years ago, you could have pocketed a 254 percent gain. If you were able to buy it in May, when it dipped below current levels and sold before the no-buyer news came out, you could have doubled your money.
In late May, Savient announced that it had received FDA approval for its drug — and that the company was for sale.
Such is the world of small-cap biotechs.
I don't think that all is lost with Savient, despite the recent huge bearish over-reaction by investors - a selling spree that led the stock to fall off the cliff on Oct. 25.
FDA approval for a drug is a long, drawn-out and costly process. It can wear down, or financially break, small companies like Savient - not to mention the huge expenses associated with actually starting to manufacture an approved medication.
Based in New Jersey, Savient is a specialty biopharmaceutical company, and it really doesn't have anything in the development pipeline. The company was founded in 1980 as Bio-Technology General Corp. and the name was changed to Savient in 2003. Currently, its only product is Oxandrin, an anabolic steroid that helps patients gain weight after extensive surgery, illnesses or other problems. It hopes to turn Krystexxa for chronic gout into a blockbuster.
It appears that Savient thinks Krystexxa is its ticket to profitability by entering an untapped market. Krystexxa was developed in part through Duke University research, and roughly nine years later, it's about ready to come to market.
Having an 'orphan' drug like Krystexxa to sell has its advantages. Once it reaches market, a company has seven years to sell it without competition. It also gets some nice tax breaks.
Back in 2005 and 2006, now-unprofitable Savient was making money, reporting annual revenue approaching $50 million. But that has changed, with sales hovering around $3 million the past two years as generic competition increased for its product Oxandrin. During those profitable years, Savient also was selling off a British subsidiary, and an Israeli-based manufacturer, as it focused on Krystexxa.
After the one-day sell-off, the stock could prove a bargain, especially since Savient has definitively said that it will begin selling Krystexxa in December with its own sales staff. It has lined up distribution partners and third-party manufacturers for a U.S. launch, with its eyes on rapidly rolling out the product around the world.
Responding to the 44 percent one-day sell-off, company officials said that Savient has $89 million in cash available, although it did report more than $240 million in debt at the end of 2009 — which was about what it had to spend on developing Krystexxa in 2007-09.
Back in September, a Bloomberg News story noted that if the company had attracted a $25-a-share takeover offer, it would be valued at $1.69 billion. On Oct. 27, Cowen & Co.'s Eric Schmidt upgraded Savient to outperform, a couple of weeks after he had cut it to neutral, writing to his clients that Krystexxa alone could be worth $19 a share, pegging the potential annual worldwide sales at $600 million.
Big pharma is always in the market to buy up the little guys who are sitting on a potential pot of gold. Once they determine just how much Savient and its potential big seller are worth, shareholders who buy this undervalued little stock could find it lights up their portfolio - of course that is only if Krystexxa turns out to be the blockbuster that the big fish want to swallow up.
Small Stocks With Potential to Graduate to S&P 500
by David Sterman
The Russell 2000 index is widely seen as a proxy for small cap stocks. Yet the definition of "small cap" can be quite loose. Riverbed Technology (Nasdaq: RVBD), the Russell 2000's largest component, is worth more than $4 billion, while a number of members of the index are worth less than $200 million. Historically, the biggest names in this index eventually graduate, often to the S&P 500, where they become one of the smaller companies in this large company index. Such a move often triggers a nice little gain, as index funds need to buy up shares of any new S&P 500 entrants to ensure that they own the whole portfolio.
So which stocks are most likely to graduate and matriculate upwards? Let's take a look.
The candidates
To gain inclusion in the S&P 500, decision-makers at Standard & Poor's like to ensure that new entrants have a reasonable level of current business and a bright future. Here's a look at the top 10 companies in the Russell 2000 in terms of market value, along with their current sales base and projected growth rates for 2011.
Now, let's take a look at the smallest 10 members of the S&P 500 by market value. Every one of them is worth less than the 10 Russell 2000 components noted above. Yet by annual sales, most of the S&P 500 stocks are far larger, with several sporting annual sales in excess of $10 billion.
To be sure, Standard & Poor's isn't looking to actively boot any of these companies out of the S&P 500. They only do that when a company is acquired, moves its headquarters offshore, or slips into bankruptcy. (Ironically, clothing maker Warnaco (NYSE: WRC), noted earlier in the Russell 2000 table was once in the S&P 500 before it went into bankruptcy). What S&P wants is a company that helps maintain a balanced exposure to various aspects of the U.S. economy. So if an industrial firm exits, another industrial firm is likely to take its place.
The S&P 500's next freshman class
Looking at potential candidates, Riverbed Technology looks like the most logical choice simply because of its $4 billion market value and fast-rising sales base. Then again, the company's focus on data storage management means that it could be a takeover candidate, as M&A activity in that segment is white-hot. And the S&P is unlikely to add a company that will soon be exiting the index.
The company's stock has nearly tripled in value in the past year, a possible turn-off at S&P, which tends to avoid Johnny-come-lately stocks (annual sales for Riverbed didn't even crack $100 million until 2007). Indeed, this stock has risen so fast that it has become disconnected from the fundamentals. So you may want to steer clear, regardless of the S&P 500 prospects.
And you can forget about industrial adhesives firm Nordson (Nasdaq: NDSN), which only trades 178,000 shares a day. Index funds would trample over each other trying to get into this stock, sharply inflating its value -- and S&P likes to avoid that. The sub $500-million revenue bases for Highwoods Properties (NYSE: HIW) and Salix Pharma (Nasdaq: SLXP) are likely too small to warrant inclusion, as well.
If S&P is looking for high-tech exposure (which will likely be the case in light of all the deal-making taking place in high-tech), then Parametric Technology (Nasdaq: PMTC) is the logical choice. Parametric's software helps companies extend the life cycle of existing products through engineering design tweaks, which has enabled Parametric to develop robust streams of recurring revenue. Of importance to S&P, Parametric is consistently profitable and has seen annual sales fall only once in the past six years.
In all likelihood, former S&P 500 member Warnaco is likely the best fit for the index. Annual sales of $2 billion and $200 million in annual EBITDA is nothing to sneeze at, and that brush with bankruptcy is a thing of the past. Nowadays, analysts see a phoenix-like rise and have recently boosted forecasts. Shares trade for a reasonable 13 times projected 2011 profits, and a set of new product lines is expected to help keep sales growing at a +10% pace. Along with Parametric Technology, Warnaco looks set to get a tap on the shoulder from the S&P advisory board. You may want to get in ahead of time.
25 Lessons Learned From Losing $25,000 In One Week
Posted by Timothy Sykes on Sun 31st of Oct, 2010 03:00:40 PM
We still have webinar access available to my upcoming conference, you should check that out as I’ll be discussing a lot of what’s posted below….and you’ll also hear from 13 other expert speakers, including one penny stock promoter himself!
(and you can also save a ton of $ by pre-ordering the DVD package of the conference HERE, save 50% by ordering it now over when it’ll be shipped in early December)
PennyStocking Silver subscribers and TIMalert subscribers know I’ve had an excellent 2008, 2009 and 2010 (see all trades here) but because I’ve been breaking my time-honored trading rules outlined in my instructional DVD packages, this past week I’ve lost roughly $25,000 (see all trades this past week), wiping out gains from the previous 3 weeks so now my trading accounts finished basically breakeven in October…and up a respectable $220,000+, or roughly 50%, in 2010.
As bad as losing $25k in one week is, it’s just a 3% haircut for my account….because while I have made tons of mistakes, my position sizing and quick loss cutting prevented me from losing too much….and you must understand that everyone has different opinions on what “too much” is…
My critics will have you believe that I am a bad trader who has an advantage since my subscribers help push stocks in my direction and I scalp off them for profits. They ignore the fact that my biggest gains are uniformly mistimed and I usually only make bank on my 2nd and 3rd times buying breakouts or shorting breakdowns (detailed post coming, been a bit busy losing my ass lately). And that my subscribers get crushed when I make bad picks and that I should be ashamed of losing so much money while the reality is that I’ve NEVER been a great trader and have ALWAYS endured such losses on stocks that runup in a choppy fashion like this going all the way back to IPIX, TAYD, ANLT and dozens more and if my subscribers listen, they don’t follow my alerts, they LEARN from them.
(judging from near-all-time low cancelation rates lately, my words seem to be having an effect on people…after all, I don’t know ANY other trader who details their mistakes and losses like I do, I’ve lost track whether I’ve made a dozen or two dozen video lessons in the last week or so outlining every single thing I did wrong to help my peeps learn not to repeat them)
My continued inability to stick to my time-honored trading rules is the cause of my losses, not the rules themselves (or else I’d really be feeling even shittier) and the only consolation I take is that PennyStocking Silver and TIMalert subscribers get to see my mistakes in real-time and learn in real-time…and better yet, as I state repeatedly in my DVDs, I FULLY expected my students to become better than and enjoy more success than me because while I have a great strategy and have learned the rules, I know that I have some serious personal failings that prevent me from becoming a great trader…and yet I was dead on in thinking those same personal failings make me a great trading teacher!
NOBODY should be blindly following my alerts as they are for education and learning from the ups and downs of a self-made millionaire is worth a shitload more than $50 or $100/month so you’re welcome for the deal. Those of you who have become accustomed to one ugly clown shouting “buy buy buy” need to rethink your heroes and focus on education rather than wanting to be a talentless puppet.
Thinking positively, thank you to all those who emailed/IMed me and expressed your support in “my time of need”–it always sucks losing so bad in trading, but I did still manage to make nearly $100,000 on the month from these bad boys. I am continually working to stay more disciplined and more importantly, I will remain as brutally honest as ever (how much do other newsletter writers make, why aren’t they talking? We know from industry rumors that Porter Stansberry aka Hyman Roth pulls in roughly $30 million/year but I don’t see him detailing that…”I’m just a retired investor living on a pension….BS)…
And I am VERY proud of several students who not only adapted to price action and bought during breakouts, but also those who waited for the proper afternoon sideways price action in RITT and banked just as I should have, had I followed the rules outlined in my own instructional DVD packages:
Scott W. made $7,500 buying
Netted just over a point on 6833 shares of RITT. $7.42 to $6.379, $7k profit…..Thanks for the heads up!
-MG
While I love highlighting my profits and those who subscribe to my 4 newsletters, I will not shy away from highlighting our losses (check out our combined losses on RITT), if not more (no matter if it’s bad for business or not, it’s the RIGHT thing to do) as this is the yin and yang of trading–the great rewards are possible whether I follow my rules or not, but when I break them, you can clearly see the increased risks of losses.
Welcome to REAL trading, I hope to encourage more people to post their REAL results on Profitly….let the cowards and frauds make up excuses why they shouldn’t be transparent…I’ve heard em all….they don’t even need our pity as they should pity themselves for contributing to and promoting the veil of secrecy that has polluted this should-be-great-industry for far too long. Full transparency is coming whether they like it or not so it’s totally their choice whether they want to be dinosaurs.
(Since we understand some in finance are not legally allowed to be fully transparent…no matter how much you want to be and how ridiculous these “laws” are…we at Profitly are working on a solution…stay tuned for the new site launching in a few weeks)
Rant aside, PennyStocking Silver subscribers got this 30 minute-vide lesson explaining what I did wrong today and this 15-minute video lesson from the other day, but below are 25 simple lessons to be learned from such truly boneheaded losses:
1. Stick to rules you learn over a decade; breaking them opens up a can of worms.
2. When shorting low-float stocks, understand there are traders and forces at work that will do everything possible to squeeze short sellers…do not hate them for these same conniving forces align to create ideal trading opportunities if you learn to use them properly.
3. Position sizing is HUGELY important. I might have lost a ton of $, but the % of my total trading capital is minimal so I reduce risk of “blowing up”…FYI a 3% loss is painful, but not risking my 50%+ yearly gains is more important.
4. As much as I minimized successfully damage to my total account, my position sizing with regards to the stocks I traded was far too large. Taking 20k short positions on PharmAthene, Inc. (PIP) and China Shen Zhou Mining & Resources Inc. (SHZ) is perhaps a bit too much, but on a low float/large spread/lesser-volume stock like RiT Technologies Ltd. (RITT) that hasn’t cracked technical support, it’s suicidal…
5. I’m actually lucky to only lose $20k on RITT for had I held my initial 23k short position from 4.09, I’d be down over $70,000 right now and over $90,000 at the peak. Quick loss cutting is CRUCIAL to staying in the game which I did well here…and I will likely make back all my losses and more when RITT inevitably collapses
6. Most traders on Twitter have accounts the size of a Sharebuilder clients aka pathetic. Do not be influenced by big numbers, the lessons remain the same for traders no matter their account size. One of my subscribers lost $700 on a $7,000 account, his $ loss may be smaller than mine, but his position sizing was FAR too large for his account size. Just because you can’t justify spending a ton of time trading with your puny-sized account, don’t underestimate the lessons small-account trading teaches you as they stay with you forever.
7. Trading penny stocks based on rules isn’t as dangerous as most people believe, but when you break those rules, it becomes very dangerous very fast and very furious.
8. As I was watching my losses pile up on my two biggest losers during this streak, RITT and SHZ, I could’ve gotten out and taken smaller losses, but instead I watched and sat like a deer in headlights thinking I wouldn’t get caught short in a true Supernova…after all, most stocks don’t spike so much and I know from experience I often over-protect…the lesson: ALWAYS over-protect and think to yourself that the stock could pull a $4 to $40 Clean Diesel Technologies, Inc. (CDTID) -like move…that will get you in a much better and safer mindset.
9. Everyone has their breaking point when it comes to losses, think of yours and then slice it in half and stick to that.
10. You can’t help but feeling you NEED to make back your losses ASAP so that all is right with the world and you don’t have to feel so shitty. Ignore this craving, it’s misleading and your psychology is all messed up when you have mammoth losses.
11. Picture losses like these as a breakup from a long-term relationship…hell, it has been a long time since I broke my rules…the point being that whatever you trade next is just a rebound, don’t get married to it because you must remember, you’re all messed up in the head right now so have fun and don’t screw up bigtime again.
12. It’s okay to trade in smaller amounts or even paper trade after severe losses…nothing’s worse or more confidence crushing than severe losses on top of severe losses as the 2nd round of severe losses is only caused by your messed up psychology due to the initial severe losses.
13. Don’t trade like a man, trade like a coward, you’ll be more profitable and be happier.
14. You can hate companies and other traders all you want, but when you have big losses, the fault is entirely yours. Crappy companies, unethical message board people and straight up penny stock manipulation are all a part of the game when it comes to penny stocks, recognize that, don’t hate the game, hate yourself for not better playing the game.
15. Sharing your losses publicly is embarrassing and people will make fun of you, but that’s good–you should be embarrassed and made fun of and even tar and feathered if they’d allow it because you need to be scarred in order to remember these lessons and not repeat the same mistakes! (This is why Profitly is the future even though we will have a private profile feature coming for the true cowards who still want to use the cool upcoming features we’re developing right now)
16. Damn, are there really 25 lessons here or am I just forcing it to make this blog post title work? Nope, there are waaaay more than 25 lessons, dissect EVERYTHING and understand what went wrong
17. ALL of these penny stocks absolutely stink, no matter what anyone, including the company, posts, PRs or says. That doesn’t mean you get to ignore technical analysis as the prices of carcass companies can rise a lot faster than you can remain solvent.
18. As I told PennyStocking Silver subscribers on Friday, people were getting buy-in notices from Thinkorswim on RITT…ALWAYS be scared of being short a stock with these as shorts HAVE to buy, no matter how ridiculous the stock price is.
19. The odds are SHZ and RITT and even PIP will all be 50-75-90% off these spike highs within the next few weeks and months, but see lesson #17, a few weeks/months doesn’t matter when you’re getting squeeeeeeezed now!
20. When volume fades on a Supernova, it’s a good thing as it means the run is likely almost over…unless as was the case with super-low-floater RITT this simple and reliable indicator got short sellers over-confident and helped create the short squeeze aka reliable indicators can invert quickly when too many people know about them and the stock doesn’t do what they expect.
21. Yup, I’m a REAL trader and my strategy ain’t scalable, look what happens when I take $80,000 positions in stocks that only trade a few million dollars worth per day…that doesn’t mean $80,000 worth of shares can’t be traded on this pattern, it just means that it must be spread out over various people who are both shorting and longing depending on what suits them better aka the longs baaaaanked on this and somebody who invested $80,000 at $4ish is nearly $60,000 richer right now aka why I teach ALL angles even though I’m not particularly great at buying breakouts.
22. Penny stocks are damn predictable when they fit certain patterns; it’s your duty to learn those patterns and more importantly, step out of the way or even reverse course when you find yourself on the wrong side of the pattern.
23. Lately, there have been a TON of short squeezes, recognize the market environment change and adapt…or perish.
24. A lot of my shorting was using this new firm I just recently began trying out…when trying new firms, trade conservatively for you have not mastered their software, rules or subtleties and this increases your risks.
25. SHZ and PIP have already tanked hard…RITT is gonna be a grrrrreat short soon….shhhh don’t tell too many people or else finding shares to short will be difficult!
BONUS 26. Undisciplined losses are tough to take, but what makes them tougher is the opportunity cost of missing other great trades. You cannot afford to waste money AND time on these non-ideal patterns…focus Daniel-son, focusssss
Bogus Hearings, Fictitious Court Proceedings
No, this isn’t another Fraudclosure case — it is about an action by the Pennsylvania Attorney General’s office against a debt collection company that used bogus “hearings” and fake “courtroom” in an attempt to mislead or fool consumers into believing they were in court:
“Attorney General Tom Corbett today announced that a consumer protection lawsuit has been filed against an Erie debt collection company accused of using deceptive tactics to mislead, confuse or coerce consumers – including the use of bogus “hearings” allegedly held in a company office that was decorated to look like a courtroom.
Corbett said the civil lawsuit was filed by the Attorney General’s Bureau of Consumer Protection against Unicredit America Inc., with corporate and business offices located at 1537 West 39th St., Erie, also identified as the “Unicredit Debt Resolution Center.”
“This is an unconscionable attempt to use fake court proceedings to deceive, mislead or frighten consumers into making payments or surrendering valuables to Unicredit without following lawful procedures for debt collection,” Corbett said. “Consumers also allegedly received dubious ‘hearing notices’ and letters – often hand-delivered by individuals who appear to be Sheriff Deputies – which implied they would be taken into custody by the Sheriff if they failed to appear at the phony court for ‘hearings’ or ‘depositions’.
According to the lawsuit, fictitious court proceedings were used to intimidate consumers into providing access to bank accounts, making immediate payments or surrendering vehicle titles and other assets – sometimes dispatching Unicredit employees to consumers’ homes in order to retrieve documents or have consumers sign payment agreements.
Corbett said Unicredit allegedly used civil subpoenas to summon consumers to an office in Erie, which included an area referred to by Unicredit employees as “the courtroom.”
The fake courtroom allegedly contained furniture and decorations similar to those used in actual court offices, including a raised “bench” area where a judge would be seated; two tables and chairs in front of the “bench” for attorneys and defendants; a simulated witness stand; seating for spectators; and legal books on bookshelves. During some proceedings, an individual dressed in black was seated where observers would expect to see a judge.”
The Attorney General’s Office is asking a judge to freeze the company’s assets and order it to cease operations.
Once again, I find myself pining away for jail time for the people involved . . .
Mirant: Many Questions, One Conclusion - This Stock Is Undervalued
by: The Manual of Ideas November 01, 2010
Electricity producer/wholesaler Mirant (MIR; $10.61 per share; MV $1.5 billion), which reports 3Q10 earnings this Friday (November 5), is in the process of merging with rival RRI Energy (RRI; $3.76 per share; MV $1.3 billion). Both companies appear materially undervalued on a standalone basis, with each trading at less than half of tangible book value and less than $200K per megawatt of electrical generating capacity, compared to a range of $300-700K for industry participants Dynegy (DYN), NRG Energy (NRG), Calpine (CPN) and AES Corp. (AES):
Mirant: Comparable Company Analysis1
Company /
Ticker Market
Value Enterprise
Value2 Generating
Capacity EV /
Generating Capacity MV / Tangible Book Net Debt /
Tangible Book
AES Corp. / AES $9.5 bn $28.9 bn 40,529 MW $712,000 per MW 2.0x 2.9x
Calpine / CPN $5.6 bn $14.8 bn 24,738 MW $600,000 per MW 1.2x 2.0x
NRG Energy / NRG $5.1 bn $10.2 bn 24,005 MW $425,000 per MW 1.1x 1.1x
Dynegy / DYN $0.6 bn $3.8 bn 12,221 MW $313,000 per MW 0.2x 1.2x
Averages: $513,000 per MW 1.1x 1.8x
Mirant / MIR $1.5 bn $1.4 bn 10,076 MW $141,000 per MW 0.4x 0.0x
RRI Energy / RRI $1.3 bn $2.5 bn 14,581 MW $174,000 per MW 0.4x 0.3x
1 - Based on closing share prices as of October 29, 2010. All balance sheet values are as of June 30, 2010, except for Calpine (as of September 30, 2010). Generating capacity is based on recently available data.
2 - Enterprise value includes net pension liabilities, net derivatives, restricted cash, funds on deposit and investments. AES enterprise value includes $14.6 billion of non-recourse debt.
Lots of questions may be on investors' minds including the following:
1) Why is Mirant issuing shares to buy RRI when its own stock appears to be materially undervalued?
2) Are Mirant's assets inferior to its competitors as suggested by the above valuation table?
3) Is there a cross-read from Blackstone's recent bid for Dynegy? (Blackstone is offering an implied >$300k per MW of Dynegy's generating capacity - more than twice Mirant's valuation)
4) Is Mirant "doomed" given historically low natural gas prices (which correlate with electricity prices) and declining "dark spreads," i.e. the narrowing of the spread between electricity prices and the price of coal (major fuel source used by Mirant to produce electricity)?
5) Why is Mirant spending ~$500 million to build 760 MW of gas-fired capacity at Marsh Landing in California ( >$650k per MW), when the company's implied valuation is ~$150 per MW?
The clue to some of the above questions may be Mirant's dependence on coal as a fuel source (~80% of total fuel used). But, then again, the acquisition of RRI should change that as the combined company, to be called GenOn Energy, will have nearly 40% of capacity based on natural gas (with another ~30% dual-source).
Be it as it may, Mirant is one of the best-capitalized companies in the industry, and the balance sheet of the combined Mirant/RRI will carry less leverage than either of DYN, NRG, CPN or AES. While Mirant's trading multiples are negatively affected - and rightfully so, to an extent - by relatively heavy reliance on coal in electricity generation as well as declining benefits of hedging in 2011 and beyond, earnings-based valuation measures can be notoriously misleading. Analysts expect Mirant to earn $1.54 EPS this year but only $0.12 next year as a large portion of hedging benefits goes away. The assumption in analysts' expectations, of course, is that "dark spreads" will remain depressed in 2011. With the price of electricity correlated with hard-to-predict natural gas prices, we question analysts' ability to forecast dark spreads with precision. We can envision a scenario in which dark spreads surprise on the upside just as Mirant and RRI are starting to benefit from merger-related cost synergies ($150 million, to be fully realized starting in January 2012) . The result would be financial performance that might necessitate a material upward adjustment in the Street's valuation of the combined entity, GenOn. The below table provides estimate ranges for the fair value of Mirant as implied by the valuation of its competitors:
Mirant - Estimate of the Equity Fair Value Range
Fair Value Multiples Estimated Fair Value
($ in billions) Low High Low High
Valuation based on…
…comparable EV / generating capacity multiples:1 $313K/MW $534K/MW $3.2 $5.4
Add: Cash 1.8 1.8
Add: Derivate assets, net 0.7 0.7
Add: Funds on deposit 0.2 0.2
Less: Debt (2.6) (2.6)
Less: Pension liability, net (0.1) (0.1)
Estimated equity value of Mirant - based on generating capacity (1):2 $3.3 $5.5
$22 per share $38 per share
Valuation based on…
…comparable price / tangible book multiples:3 0.4x 1.5x $1.8 $6.4
Estimated equity value of Mirant - based on tangible book (2):2 $1.8 $6.4
$12 per share $44 per share
Estimated equity value of Mirant - average of (1) and (2):2 $2.5 billion $5.9 billion
$17 per share $41 per share
1 - See comparable company table. Low value multiple is based on Dynegy's recent multiple, high value estimate on 25% discount to recent multiple of AES.
2 - Based on shares outstanding of 146 million.
3 - See comparable company table. Low value multiple is based on two times Dynegy's recent multiple, high value estimate on 25% discount to recent multiple of AES. Note that Dynegy is significantly more leveraged than Mirant and may be considered a distressed equity.
With a strong balance sheet and a market valuation barely in excess of one-third of tangible book value, the current Mirant offers strong downside protection and above-average upside, in our view. The pending merger with RRI has been approved by Mirant and RRI Energy shareholders on October 25. While it remains subject to clearance by the U.S. Department of Justice, Mirant management expects to “complete the merger by the end of the year.” Although Mirant shareholders might be giving away more value than receiving in the 100%-stock merger (based on relative undervaluation of Mirant versus RRI stock and the unfavorable treatment of ~$2.7 billion of Mirant's federal NOLs), the merger reduces Mirant's dependence on coal versus natural gas, which may prove beneficial over time.
In summary, the above questions may hint at possible reasons why "Mr. Market" is valuing Mirant at a discount to its peers. While not all answers are favorable to Mirant, our conclusion is that the risk-reward implied by Mirant's share price is attractive. By the way, this also seems to be the view of John Paulson, whose hedge fund owns more than 12% of the company.
October's Worst Performing Small Caps: Which Will Rebound?
by: StreetAuthority November 01, 2010
by David Sterman
At the end of every quarter, I like to look back over recent market laggards. Most of the stocks that took a recent deep hit are likely to stay depressed, but some are the victim of investor over-reaction and poised for a rebound.
With that in mind, let's looks at the five worst-performing small caps during the past month. All of these stocks are in the Russell 2000 Index of small caps, and each sport a market value of at least $300 million.
Savient Pharmaceuticals (Nasdaq: SVNT)
This biotech soared +83% in the third quarter. Roughly a third of that gain came on just one day in September when it received FDA approval for Krystexxa, a gout drug which targets patients for which other gout treatments have proven ineffective. Some analysts think Krystexxa represents $200-250 million in annual sales, while others peg it as a $750 million annual revenue opportunity. Global Hunter Securities figures the market niche is roughly $400 million. Savient announced back in May that it would put itself up for sale, and the FDA nod in September made it that much more attractive.
But earlier this week the company announced that a few potential buyers had decided to pass on an acquisition, and the company took itself off the block. Analysts believe the company's stock had simply become too expensive, sporting a market value of $1.4 billion. That figure now stands at $800 million. All of the sudden, this stock is now more reasonably priced for a deal. So those potential bidders could well return to the table with an offer of around $18 -- roughly +50% above the current price, but -20% lower than where the stock traded just last week. With FDA approval already in hand, and the gout treatment market increasing in size, shares now look quite attractive -- with or without a deal.
But a word of caution: If a buyer doesn't emerge in the next six months, Savient may need to raise more cash to launch Krystexxa commercially. And that's never a good thing for shares.
Coldwater Creek (Nasdaq: CWTR)
Retailers generally report that same store sales rose or fell by a few percentage points compared to a year earlier. But when this retailer of women's apparel and jewelry announced that same stores fell a whopping -20% in its fiscal third quarter ended October, investors ditched the stock, sending shares down more than -30% on October 19.
You can't pin all the sales weakness on the company. Women's apparel sales are apparently slumping at other retailers as well. Yet Coldwater Creek's shortfall is likely to yield collateral damage. The retailer needs to sharply discount now-bloated inventories while figuring out a way to regain its merchandising touch. And the timing is lousy, heading into the all-important holiday shopping season. This stock is now quite cheap, trading at less than 0.3 times trailing sales, but is unlikely to rebound anytime soon.
Infinera (Nasdaq: INFN)
This maker of optical networking chips reported very robust third-quarter results in the middle of October, but management said fourth quarter results would not be nearly as impressive.
Suddenly, a stock that had risen from $8 to $12 over the summer was once again an $8 stock. The reason for the downbeat view: major customers have finished recent network upgrades and wouldn't need many more of Infinera's chips in the near-term. Of further concern, the company had been signing up an average of four new major customers from the third quarter of 2008 to the first quarter of 2010, according to Goldman Sachs. Yet in the past two quarters, that figure has slumped to one and two, respectively. And that means sales will likely be pressured for at least a few more quarters until the company can secure more new customer wins.
Citigroup's Kevin Dennean remains as a lonely bull on the stock, sticking by his "Buy" rating. His recently lowered target price of $13.50 represents more than +50% upside from current levels. But even Dennean concedes that there are few positive catalysts in the near-term. This is a stock to re-visit this winter when fourth quarter results are announced and 2011 guidance is issued.
Earlier this week's Infinera's rival, Oclaro (Nasdaq: OCLR) issued similarly tepid fourth quarter guidance, and shares also look like dead money in the near-term.
Dex One (Nasdaq: DEXO)
A large debt load continues to scare off investors at this publisher. I noted back in August that caution was warranted, and that notion still applies.[Read: "4 Rebound Stocks Worth a Closer Look"] But it's still worth listening to the company's November 9 conference call. If cash flow is holding up better than some investors fear, then this stock would start to look like a deep value play.
Of the stocks profiled here, Savient Pharma looks to be the most appealing, regardless of whether or not a suitor re-emerges.
Dex One's recent fall indicates that recent quarterly trends are weak. But if management can point to robust cash flow on the upcoming conference call, then shares, which have fallen nearly -80% this year, could see new life. But before jumping in, listen for management commentary about any near-term debt obligations.
Yongye International: A Highly Enticing Chinese Stock
by: StreetAuthority November 01, 2010
by Nathan Slaughter
It's pretty simple really.
You sell products, you bring in revenue. Subtract whatever cash was spent on those products (cost of goods sold) and you have gross profit. The larger the gross profit, the more earnings are left over once all the other day-to-day expenses are paid.
For many companies, the cost of goods sold can really eat into the bottom line. Think of the mountains of grains and sugar that cereal maker Kellogg's (NYSE: K) has to procure. The company took in $12.6 billion in revenue last year, but spent more than $7.2 billion (57%) on raw ingredients that went into all those boxes of Rice Krispies and Frosted Flakes.
Even firms with smaller budgets have to cope with volatile price fluctuations or shipment delays that can create havoc on production schedules.
But one upstart Chinese company has decided to cut out the middleman almost entirely.
Yongye International (Nasdaq: YONG) is an up-and-coming player in the green agriculture movement. The firm sells organic crop nutrients and animal feed supplements derived from lignite coal. Lignite coal is the most expensive input in the firm's business model, accounting for about 50% of its production costs.
So rather than continue paying a fat mark-up to its suppliers, Yongye bypassed them entirely by buying its own lignite coal mine earlier this year. It also just cut the ribbon on a new manufacturing facility right next door to the mine, which will soon be rolling out 30,000 tons of plant and animal nutrient each year.
This vertical integration will have a dramatic impact on Yongye's profitability -- much like a lemonade salesman planting a grove of lemon trees in his backyard.
Management doesn't give us any specifics, but a +15% to +20% expansion in gross margins is reasonable. With sales already soaring, earnings should soar even more in the near future. Not that the Yongye needs any help in that department. Revenue doubled from $46 million to nearly $90 million last quarter, which helped net income quadruple to $24 million, or $0.54 per share.
Of course, numbers are just numbers -- it's the catalysts driving them that matter.
In a recent article about the wheat shortages in Russia, I mentioned that there will be an estimated 1.1 billion more mouths to feed by the end of the decade. That kind of population growth is what is partly fueling surging commodity prices. [Read the article here]
And in this case, Yongye is in an enviable position because many of those mouths will be in China.
The firm's Shengmingsu brand nutrients are proven to shorten harvest times and boost crop yields, enabling farmers to get the most productivity out of their land. Cucumber output, for example, can rise as much as +22% -- and get to market nearly two weeks earlier.
Most of China's rural farmers rely heavily on local stores for supplies, and Yongye is making the most out of this distribution channel. The firm negotiates with these independently-owned stores to prominently display (and push) the Shengmingsu brand. By the end of 2010, Yongye will have converted 23,000 stores, a powerful +152% increase for the year. And the company is just now spreading its footprint outside its core territory in the Hebei region of northern China.
Yongye's shares, at $8, are trading at just 15 times trailing earnings, fine for a slow-moving giant, but highly enticing for a young company that's delivering racy triple-digit earnings growth. The stock can be had for a PEG ratio of just 0.2 -- one of the most discounted valuations you'll find.
Looking ahead, the company has several big-picture factors working in its favor, not the least of which is the fact that Chinese growers, which have just one-third as much arable land as other countries per-capita, must feed one-fifth of the world's population.
I see the shares climbing above the $10 mark in the next 12 months, which would represent gains of +25% or more from current levels -- and even more in the long-run.
Colgate-Palmolive: Near Term Forex Issues Won't Impact Long Term Super Growth
Linked here is a detailed quantitative analysis of Colgate-Palmolive Co. (CL). Below are some highlights from the above linked analysis:
Company Description: Colgate-Palmolive Company (Colgate) is a major consumer products company that markets oral, personal and household care, and pet nutrition products in more than 200 countries and territories.
Fair Value: I consider four calculations of fair value, see page 2 of the linked PDF for a detailed description:
1.Avg. High Yield Price
2.20-Year DCF Price
3.Avg. P/E Price
4.Graham Number
CL is trading at a discount to 1.) and 3.) above. The stock is trading at a 16.1% discount to its calculated fair value of $91.57. CL earned a star in this section since it is trading at a fair value.
Dividend Analytical Data: In this section there are three possible stars and three key metrics, see page 2 of the linked PDF for a detailed description:
1.Free Cash Flow Payout
2.Debt To Total Capital
3.Key Metrics
4.Dividend Growth Rate
5.Years of Div. Growth
6.Rolling 4-yr Div. > 15%
CL earned two stars in this section for 1.) and 3.) above. A star was earned since the Free Cash Flow payout ratio was less than 60% and there were no negative Free Cash Flows over the last 10 years. CL earned a star for having an acceptable score in at least two of the four Key Metrics measured. The company has paid a cash dividend to shareholders every year since 1895 and has increased its dividend payments for 47 consecutive years.
Dividend Income vs. MMA: Why would you assume the equity risk and invest in a dividend stock if you could earn a better return in a much less risky money market account (MMA)? This section compares the earning ability of this stock with a high yield MMA. Two items are considered in this section, see page 2 of the linked PDF for a detailed description:
1.NPV MMA Diff.
2.Years to > MMA
CL earned a star in this section for its NPV MMA Diff. of the $2,603. This amount is in excess of the $500 target I look for in a stock that has increased dividends as long as CL has. If CL grows its dividend at 12.5% per year, it will take 3 years to equal a MMA yielding an estimated 20-year average rate of 3.4%. CL earned a check for the Key Metric ‘Years to >MMA’ since its 3 years is less than the 5 year target.
Memberships and Peers: CL is a member of the S&P 500 and a member of the Broad Dividend Achievers™ Index. The company’s peer group includes: Procter & Gamble Co. (PG) with a 3.0% yield, Kimberly-Clark Corporation (KMB) with a 4.0% yield, and Clorox Corporation (CLX) with a 3.2% yield.
Conclusion: CL earned one star in the Fair Value section, earned two stars in the Dividend Analytical Data section and earned one star in the Dividend Income vs. MMA section for a total of four stars. This quantitatively ranks CL as a 4 star-buy.
Using my D4L-PreScreen.xls model, I determined the share price would need to increase to $139.09 before CL’s NPV MMA Differential decreased to the $500 minimum that I look for in a stock with 47 years of consecutive dividend increases. At that price the stock would yield 1.46%.
Resetting the D4L-PreScreen.xls model and solving for the dividend growth rate needed to generate the target $500 NPV MMA Differential, the calculated rate is 6.9%. This dividend growth rate is below the 12.5% used in this analysis, thus providing a margin of safety. CL has a risk rating of 1.50 which classifies it as a low risk stock.
Demand for household and personal care products is generally stable and not affected by changes in the economy. Within personal care products, CL has focused the oral care category and has a worldwide toothpaste market share of approximately 45%. The company is also adept in utilizing sophisticated promotional tools. Near-term the CL changes in the Venezuelan bolivar could negatively affect results, but long-term the company should see above-industry-average growth with more resources being allocated to faster-growing markets. I plan to add to my position while the stock is trading below my fair value price of $91.57 and as my allocation allows. For additional information, including the stock’s dividend history, please refer to its data page.
Disclaimer: Material presented here is for informational purposes only. The above quantitative stock analysis, including the Star rating, is mechanically calculated and is based on historical information. The analysis assumes the stock will perform in the future as it has in the past. This is generally never true. Before buying or selling any stock you should do your own research and reach your own conclusion. See my Disclaimer for more information.
Full Disclosure: At the time of this writing, I was long in CL (1.9% of my Income Portfolio). See a list of all my income holdings here.
This article originally appeared on The DIV-Net October 25, 2010.
Strong Futures — Sell the News?
Busy week –elections, Fed Meeting, QE2, October NFP. Futures are strong, global equity indices are up ~1% (more in Asia, less in EuroZone).
The question facing traders is whether or not this is a “Sell the News” situation. Is this a peak excitement moment, or is this the continuation of the year end rally that started in October.
Be back shortly . . .
Stocks: Betting on a triple play
By Blake Ellis, staff reporterOctober 31, 2010: 10:43 AM ET
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- October was another strong month for markets, but uncertainty kept stocks in a tight range over the past week.
Now, some of that uncertainty is about to fade.
The first week of November brings three events that have the potential to shake up markets: the Federal Reserve's meeting, the midterm elections and the release of the government's October jobs report.
"We have a triple play coming up," said Doug Roberts, a chief investment strategist at Channel Capital Research. "These three events are going to overshadow everything else."
While the S&P 500 and Dow logged their best October in several years, major indexes simmered in the last week of the month as investors stayed on the sidelines amid a raft of economic reports.
"We've seen all that we need to see of the economic data, there are no surprises now -- it's still the weakest recovery we've seen in generations," said David Sandell, portfolio manager at Leeb Capital. "It's clear that we need more help, and whether it comes out of the Fed or out of Washington remains to be seen, but likely we'll see it from both."
Elections: Wall Street is banking on a win for Republicans in Tuesday's midterm elections, a change that many investors believe to be pro-business and therefore a boost to the market.
"There's pretty decent certainty that Republicans will take over the House, but the question is whether they will take over the Senate," said Roberts. "Either way, the results will lift a little bit of uncertainty."
The Fed is widely expected to launch another round of monetary stimulus in an effort to boost the economy.
Just the anticipation of the move -- referred to as quantitative easing -- has pushed the S&P 500 up 11% since the Fed's intentions were announced in August. Now the question is how big the injection will actually be.
"People are wondering, 'is it going to be $500 billion? $1 trillion? $2 trillion?'," said Roberts. "If the size of the stimulus is less than expected then you might have a little bit of a sell-off, but the market would accept a smaller amount positively if [the Fed] indicates continuity with it and says it won't stop until they achieve their goals."
Jobs report: The third piece of the triple play is the government's closely watched jobs report.
Since the extent of quantitative easing is expected to be known by the time the jobs report is released Friday, investors will be eyeing it for signs of whether the Fed's action was warranted.
Employers are expected to have added 45,000 jobs in October after cutting payrolls by 95,000 the month before. The unemployment rate is expected to hold steady at 9.6%.
Home run?: If the midterm elections result in a power change, the Fed provides an appropriate boost to the economy and the jobs report shows signs of life, stocks will likely get a significant lift -- at least for the short-term.
"Everything has to fall into place correctly next week to continue going higher," said Alan Lancz, president of Alan B. Lancz & Associates.
Monday: A report on personal income and spending is due before the market open. Economists surveyed by Briefing.com expect income to have risen 0.3% in September after jumping 0.5% in August.
The Institute for Supply Management's manufacturing index for October is on tap in the morning and is expected to have edged down to 54 from 54.4 in September. Any number above 50 indicates growth in the sector.
Construction spending is forecast to have ticked down 0.5% in September, following a rise of 0.4% in August.
Tuesday: On top of midterm elections, the FOMC meeting begins and BP is slated to report results.
Wednesday: The FOMC's rate decision is due at 2:15 p.m. ET. Economists expect the Fed to leave key interest rates unchanged at a range of between 0% and 0.25%.
Why the Fed's bold move won't work
Payroll services firm ADP is forecast to report that employers in the private sector added 25,000 workers to their payrolls in October after cutting 39,000 in the previous month. Outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas issues its report on planned job cuts in October.
Factory orders are due from the Commerce Department. Orders are expected to have edged up 0.6% in September after slipping 0.5% in August.
The ISM services sector index for October is expected to have ticked up slightly to 53.6 from 53.2 in September.
Auto and truck sales are due throughout the day, and the government's weekly oil inventory report is also released Wednesday.
Time Warner (TWC, Fortune 500), AOL (AOL), CVS Caremark (CVS, Fortune 500) and News Corp. (NWSA) are all on tap to release earnings.
Thursday: The government's weekly jobless claims report comes out Thursday, with 450,000 Americans expected to file new claims for unemployment, after 434,000 were filed in the previous week.
October same-store sales figures from major retailers are due in the morning, along with a report on third-quarter business productivity from the Commerce.
Results from Cablevision (CVC, Fortune 500), DirecTV (DTV, Fortune 500) and Sirius XM (SIRI) are on deck.
Friday: In addition to the government's big jobs report, the National Association of Realtors releases its pending home sales index, a measure of sales contracts for existing homes.
The index is due before the start of trading and is expected to have risen 0.5% in September after rising 4.3% in August.
A report on consumer credit is forecast to show a decline of $3.8 billion in September, following a drop of $3.3 billion in the previous month.
Apple Sues Motorola, Escalating Cellphone Wars
Apple sued rival Motorola claiming the Droid smartphone maker infringes on three iPhone patents.
Cupertino, California-based Apple [AAPL 300.98 -4.26 (-1.4%) ]says Motorola[MOT 8.16 0.03 (+0.37%) ] is purposefully using its touchscreen software, as well as other display technologies.
"Motorola's infringing activities have caused and will continue to cause Apple irreparable harm, for which it has no adequate remedy at law, unless Motorola's infringing activities are enjoined," Apple said in a nine-page filing on Friday with the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Wisconsin.
Schaumburg, Illinois-based Motorola said it has not yet reviewed Apple's filing, but that it intends to "pursue our litigation to halt Apple's continued infringement."
"Motorola has a leading intellectual property portfolio, one of the strongest in the industry, and we intend to vigorously defend ourselves in this matter," the company said in a statement to Reuters.
The suit comes after Motorola sued Apple in Delaware court earlier this month, asking a judge to declare it is not infringing on certain Apple software patents.
Copyright 2010 Thomson Reuters.
Special Report: For GM IPO, the government is back-seat driver
By Clare Baldwin, Soyoung Kim and Kevin Krolicki
NEW YORK/DETROIT | Mon Nov 1, 2010 1:31am EDT
NEW YORK/DETROIT (Reuters) - Steve Girsky remembers sitting at his kitchen table in New York on the eve of President Barack Obama's election when he realized that General Motors was going to run out of cash.
"I put down my pad," said Girsky, a banker brought in by the United Auto Workers union to report on GM's finances. "I turned to my wife and said, 'Remember this night. This is the night we figured out GM's going out of business.'"
Two weeks later, the same realization was sinking in across America as the chief executives of GM, Ford and Chrysler -- and the head of the UAW -- flew to Washington to ask Congress for an unprecedented bailout. By November 2008, GM was on a path to become "Government Motors," with the U.S. Treasury its majority shareholder.
As Girsky put it, "the situation got infinitely more complicated" -- a controversial $50 billion bailout, a 2009 bankruptcy and an arc that took Girsky, 48, from a well connected industry analyst to the ultimate GM insider: a board member and the senior executive in charge of strategy.
Two years after Girsky's kitchen table reckoning, the agenda for GM remains dominated by the U.S. election cycle as the automaker reaches the final stage of preparation for an initial public offering to pay some of the roughly $40 billion it owes American taxpayers.
The Obama administration and GM executives say the White House has stayed good to its pledge to refrain from meddling in the day-to-day management of this 102-year-old industrial enterprise with 600,000 American workers and retirees and 12 percent of the global car market.
But a review of key events leading up to GM's IPO and interviews with people involved inside and outside the company show that the U.S. government has been running key aspects of the landmark stock deal and exerting tight oversight on management decisions seen as crucial to its success.
On the biggest questions surrounding the IPO, including its speed and size, the fees paid to the bankers and the potential involvement of offshore investors, the U.S. Treasury has called the shots, people involved in the process say.
That in turn has added a layer of complexity to a deal expected to rank as one of the top IPOs of all time by size. It also leaves open the possibility that the Treasury Department will remain an invisible hand that guides other decisions down the line, which could concern some investors.
"I'm sure that there will be some institutional investors, and even some individual investors, that it scares away," said Morningstar analyst David Whiston, who nevertheless sees a good chance for GM to be worth enough to make taxpayers whole on the bailout.
GM, its advisers, the banks and the U.S. Treasury declined to discuss the IPO and related issues publicly, citing U.S. securities regulations.
Since May, the Obama team has pushed GM and bankers to have the IPO ready for the fall. People familiar with the plans say a road show for investors will begin after congressional elections on Tuesday, which are expected to reflect voter backlash against Democratic incumbents.
That timetable represents the first step in an exit strategy for the U.S. investment in GM that was vetted by outgoing White House economic adviser Larry Summers in 2009.
The initial plan projected that GM would launch an IPO in late 2010 that would allow the U.S. Treasury to sell 20 percent of its common stock in the automaker, reducing its ownership to below majority at 49 percent. The strategy called for subsequent sales that would get the government out of GM entirely before the end of the next presidential term, according to people involved in the process.
Summers "really wanted it understood that the government was going to be out by eight years. I think everybody's hope and expectation was that we would be out a good deal faster, maybe in the three- to five-year time frame," said former autos task force chief Steven Rattner.
Brazil steps toward post-Lula era with Rousseff
By Stuart Grudgings
SAO PAULO | Mon Nov 1, 2010 4:20am EDT
SAO PAULO (Reuters) - Brazil's president-elect Dilma Rousseff vowed to step up the fight against poverty without forfeiting economic stability in Latin America's largest nation when she takes over from her charismatic former boss on Jan 1.
Rousseff, who based her campaign on extending the legacy of outgoing President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, convincingly won her first election on Sunday as Brazilians put aside doubts over her character and voted for continued economic success.
The career civil servant must now form her transition team and cabinet as she emerges from the long shadow of Lula and prepares to govern the South American powerhouse as it faces challenges to its prosperity, including a painfully strong currency that is punishing exporters.
In a sign of the changing of the guard, Lula laid low after Rousseff's victory on Sunday, leaving her to bask in the moment she became the first woman elected to lead Brazil.
Rousseff, 62, paid homage to Lula in her victory speech, pledging to extend what she dubbed a "new era of prosperity." She also set out twin goals for her rule -- eradicating poverty while maintaining Brazil's hard-won economic stability.
"We cannot rest while there are Brazilians who are hungry, while there are families living on the street, while poor children are abandoned to their fate," the former leftist militant told cheering supporters in the capital Brasilia.
Rousseff, who will be sworn in on January 1, handily won Sunday's runoff election with 56 percent of the vote. Her rival, Jose Serra of the centrist PSDB party, took 44 percent.
Rousseff has yet to win the affection that Brazilians have for former metalworker Lula. But she ran a solid campaign in which she trumpeted Lula's achievements and faced down corruption allegations and questions over her religious faith.
"It's historic. Brazil elected a factory worker and now a woman. Dilma will be a mother for the Brazilian people," said Ivoni Klock, a government worker who celebrated in Brasilia.
BARRIERS TO SUCCESS
Despite pledging not to cut social or infrastructure spending, Rousseff went out of her way in her victory speech to stress her commitment to responsible economic policies and promised Brazil's government would not live beyond its means.
She was flanked by Wall Street darling Antonio Palocci, a former finance minister under Lula who is expected to be handed a top post by Rousseff and who may be put in charge of managing her transition team.
Financial markets have taken Rousseff's rise to the presidency in stride and are likely to react calmly on Monday. In the long term, though, investors worry that Brazil could suffer from Rousseff's insistence that the economy does not need major reforms to keep growing at a robust pace.
"We expect a continuation of the decent economic policies carried out by Lula, but unfortunately there seems to be no room for the structural reforms that Brazil needs to optimize public spending," said Alberto Bernal, head of research at Bulltick Capital Markets.
Rousseff will inherit an economy that is among the world's hottest emerging markets but which may struggle to maintain such lofty growth rates as it runs up against barriers such as its poor infrastructure and suffocating bureaucracy.
Politically-difficult reforms such as tackling the bloated social security system appear to be off Rousseff's agenda, even though her coalition will enjoy expanded majorities in Congress. Instead, she is expected to focus on easing specific bottlenecks in the economy, such as its sclerotic tax system.
Rousseff will continue to push Lula's flagship initiatives, including reforms to give the state a greater role in developing vast new oil wealth and ambitious infrastructure plans as Brazil prepares to host the 2014 World Cup and the Olympics two years later.
The first clues on her priorities will come in the weeks ahead as she picks her cabinet, likely to have a familiar look to Lula's. The inevitable horse-trading will also provide an early test of whether she has the clout and charisma to manage an often unruly coalition.
For Brazil's centrist opposition, the defeat is also likely to mark the end of an era as its de-facto leadership passes from the 68-year-old Serra to fresh-faced 50-year-old senator Aecio Neves, widely seen as a future presidential contender.
"For those who think we are defeated I want to say to you that we are now only starting the real battle," a defiant Serra said in his concession speech on Sunday night.
(Additional reporting Isabel Versiani in Brasilia and Alonso Soto in Sao Paulo; Editing by Todd Benson and Anthony Boadle)
China and India lead the way as Asia shows strength
By Simon Rabinovitch and Yoo Choonsik
BEIJING/SEOUL | Mon Nov 1, 2010 4:38am EDT
BEIJING/SEOUL (Reuters) - Growth in China and India powered ahead last month, providing welcome support for the global economy at a time of sluggishness in the United States and most of Europe and a faltering in Japan's recovery.
Two surveys of Chinese executives showed broad-based strength in the manufacturing sector of the world's second-largest economy and helped boost Asian shares outside Japan by 1.7 percent.
The official purchasing managers' index (PMI) rose to a six-month high in October of 54.7 from 53.8 in September, easily beating market forecasts of 52.9.
A figure above 50 denotes expansion; a reading below 50 indicates contraction.
The strength of the official PMI was especially striking because the index normally heads down in October, said Yu Song and Helen Qiao, economists at Goldman Sachs.
"The fact that the PMI went up despite this seasonal bias suggests real activity growth was likely to have been exceedingly strong in October," they said in a note.
The survey showed that manufacturers continued to run down stocks last month to meet rising domestic orders, which Ting Lu with Bank of America Merrill Lynch said was a reflection of strength in construction and consumption.
"These readings bode well for a recovery of output in coming months," Lu told clients.
A companion PMI produced by Markit for HSBC painted a similar picture, rising to 54.8 from 52.9 -- one of the largest month-on-month rises in the history of the survey.
Calling the official PMI one of the best leading indicators of the economy, Lu said the October report supported his forecast of 9.3 percent year-on-year growth in gross domestic product in the fourth quarter and 10.3 percent for all of 2010.
In contrast, the United States reported on Friday that its economy grew at a tepid 2.0 percent rate in the third quarter, reinforcing expectations that the Federal Reserve will agree this week to ease monetary policy by embarking on a new program of bond purchases.
The HSBC Markit PMI for India, Asia's third-largest economy, rose to 57.2 in October from 55.1 in September.
"The manufacturing sector remains supported by strong local consumption growth, and growing employment suggests that domestic demand will remain robust," Frederic Neumann, co-head of Asian Economics Research at HSBC, said in a statement.
STRONG KOREAN EXPORTS
Not all the economic news from Asia was rosy.
The South Korean manufacturing sector shrank for the second month in a row as the HSBC/Markit PMI fell to 46.7 in October, the lowest since February 2009, from 48.8 in September.
New export orders also fell below the boom-bust line of 50 for the first time since February 2009.
But actual exports from Asia's fourth-largest economy rose 29.9 percent in October from the same month last year.
That surpassed the 21.9 percent increase economists had expected and boosted investor confidence in the export-dependent economy. Shares in South Korea's top automakers shot to record highs, while the won rallied against the dollar.
"It bodes well for the economy and solid overseas demand will continue to be a major driver for economic growth," said So Jae-yong, an economist at Hana Daetoo Securities in Seoul.
Together with a jump in inflation to a 20-month high of 4.1 percent in the year to October, the data also strengthened the case for a rise in interest rates this month.
South Korea's PMI mirrored that for Japan, released last Friday, which showed that manufacturing contracted for a second consecutive month as slowing demand and a rising yen led to the first drop in export orders in more than a year
(Writing by Alan Wheatley, Global Economics Correspondent; Editing by Neil Fullick)
Four Smacked-Around Stocks Likely to Rise Again: John Dorfman
October 31, 2010, 9:20 PM EDT
By John Dorfman
Nov. 1 (Bloomberg) -- Stocks that have been smacked around often make the best buys.
I regularly compile a casualty list of stocks that have been beaten up in the previous quarter, and that I think have excellent recovery potential. This fits with my favorite investment technique, which is to buy stocks of good companies on bad news that I believe is temporary.
The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index rose 11 percent in the third quarter. A quarterly decline of 10 percent was enough to relegate a stock to casualty status this time.
Among approximately 2,100 U.S. stocks with a market value of $500 million or more, 92 were down 10 percent or more in the third quarter. Most of them flunked my basic value criteria: a stock price 15 times earnings or less, and debt less than stockholders’ equity.
Among the 19 banged-up stocks that met my criteria, I recommend four.
Let’s start with Sanderson Farms Inc. The Laurel, Mississippi-based chicken producer was down 15 percent in the third quarter, and 18 percent since I recommended it Feb. 21.
Clearly, my recommendation was badly timed. A poor U.S. harvest contributed to a 53 percent increase in the spot price of No. 2 yellow corn in the past eight months. High prices for feed grains make the lives of chicken farmers harder.
Tough Times
Also, the economy hasn’t rebounded as strongly as I thought it would. My notion that people would buy more chicken proved premature. It’s still Hamburger Helper time.
I jokingly define the long term as that period of time over which I am proven right. In the case of Sanderson Farms, I think that day will still come. Over the next few years I believe corn prices will moderate, and some measure of prosperity will return to the U.S.
Today, Sanderson Farms shares sell for about $42, which works out to less than nine times earnings and 0.5 times revenue. Those valuations make me feel very comfortable.
The price ratios at Skechers USA Inc. are even better: six times earnings and 0.5 times revenue. A year ago I said it would be a “small mistake” to buy Skechers. Since then the stock has dropped about 12 percent while the S&P 500 has gained about 12 percent.
Following a 36 percent decline in the third quarter, I consider Skechers is a better buy than it was when I wrote about it earlier. Analysts expect earnings to climb to about $2.90 a share this year compared with $1.16 in 2009. The Manhattan Beach, California, company had a hit with Shape-Ups, an athletic shoe that promised to help customers “get in shape without setting a foot in a gym.”
Sneaker Sales
Now the No. 2 U.S. sneaker maker behind Nike Inc., Skechers is opening more stores this year, bringing its total to about 300.
Amedisys Inc., the largest U.S. home-nursing provider, fell 46 percent in the third quarter. Propelling the drop were allegations that the Baton Rouge, Louisiana, company may have improperly billed Medicare.
The company is suffering through investigations by the Securities and Exchange Commission, the U.S. Justice Department and the Senate Finance Committee. I predict the controversy will end in a negotiated settlement. Amedisys will probably pay a fine, but not one that cripples the company.
Health care in the U.S. is too expensive. Amedisys and its competitors help to reduce the need for hospitalizations, thus saving the health-care system a lot of money. When it comes to cost containment, I see this company as part of the solution, not part of the problem.
Legal Trouble
Amedisys had a 21 percent return on equity last year and has reported profits in 11 consecutive years. In the past five years, its earnings per share rose at a 29 percent annual clip. Yet because of its legal woes, the stock now sells for less than six times earnings.
Beckman Coulter Inc., located in Brea, California, makes laboratory instruments and supplies. For the past five years, it has sold, on average, for 18 times earnings.
Today investors can buy it for 14 times earnings. The stock fell 19 percent in the third quarter, hit by a triple whammy. In June the company received a warning letter from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration concerning failure to pre-clear one of its medical-test products. In July it announced earnings that fell short of analysts’ expectations. And in September, Chief Executive Officer Scott Garrett resigned.
The circumstances surrounding Garrett’s departure were unclear. The company said that his leaving was “not related to one event or issue.” A search for a successor is underway.
A year from now, I suspect that all three of those adverse events will be forgotten.
Disclosure note: I own shares in Amedisys personally and for clients. I have no long or short positions in the other stocks discussed in today’s column.
(John Dorfman, chairman of Thunderstorm Capital in Boston, is a columnist for Bloomberg News. The opinions expressed are his own. His firm or clients may own or trade securities discussed in this column.)
--Editors: Steven Gittelson, Charles W. Stevens
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To contact the writer of this column: John Dorfman at jdorfman@thunderstormcapital.com.
To contact the editor responsible for this column: James Greiff at jgreiff@bloomberg.net
Republicans Poised to Win Mid-Term Elections: Survey
Gaining strength as the campaign draws to a close, Republicans are poised for enormous gains in the 2010 mid-term elections, according to new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll.
The poll shows that likely voters prefer a Republican-controlled Congress by a solid 49 percent to 43 percent margin. Among all registered voters, Republicans lead 46 percent to 44 percent, reversing the two percentage point edge that Democrats enjoyed earlier this month.
Underlying voters' desire to jolt a Democratic-controlled Washington is overwhelming unhappiness over near-10 percent unemployment and weak growth after the Great Recession; fully 84 percent of voters call themselves dissatisfied with the economy. The poll results point toward a reshaped post-election landscape with far-reaching implications for President Obama's agenda, and for his party across the country.
"The Democrats are about to feel the full force of the tidal wave," said Democratic pollster Peter Hart, who conducts the Journal/NBC survey with Republican counterpart Bill McInturff. "It's going to change things from the White House to the courthouse."
Indeed, Mr. McInturff said the poll results augur "a larger election for Republicans than 1994," when his party gained more than 50 House seats. This year, Republicans need a net gain of 39 seats to recapture control of the House.
Underlying those assessments are a wide disparity in Republicans' favor in enthusiasm of their partisans and in the views of key swing voter groups. Some 70 percent of Republicans report a high level of enthusiasm about the election, compared to 58 percent of Democrats.
Independents currently favor Republicans for Congress by a massive 60 percent to 31 percent margin. That exceeds the margin by which independents backed Democrats in their 2006 breakthrough to recapture both the House and Senate.
Mr. Obama's overall approval rating is 45 percent. That approximates the standing of Presidents Reagan and Clinton before their mid-term election setbacks in 1982 and 1994, respectively.
But the president receives just 32 percent approval from independents and 38 percent approval among whites. That's an especially worrisome sign for Democratic Congressional candidates, since the minority voters who fueled Mr. Obama's 2008 victory traditionally turn out at lower rates in mid-term elections.
The implications for governance in Washington and for the Republican Party's political future remain unclear. The poll shows that, while 39 percent of voters view the Democratic Party positively, negatively, only 34 percent view the Republican Party positively.
"The Republican brand has not been repaired," Mr. McInturff said.
With Democrats controlling both the White House and Congress, however, the Republican brand has only limited relevance to this week's election outcome. The poll shows that Republicans have succeeded in making a lightning of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
Likely voters view Ms. Pelosi unfavorably by a two-to-one margin. Among independents, just 8 percent view the Speaker positively, compared to 61 percent who view her negatively.
The telephone survey of 1,000 voters, conducted Oct 28-30, carries of margin for error of 3.1 percentage points.
© 2010 CNBC.com
Online Brokers Upgrade Retail Investor Tools
Businessweek.com's latest look at new technologies for online investors presents trading sites that offer tools and strategies once reserved for professional traders By David Bogoslaw
Institutional investors can deploy ultra-high-speed stock trades and complex strategies cooked up by PhDs to make their market bets. How can the little guy hope to keep up? As part of an ongoing series on the latest tools and technologies available to online investors, Businessweek.com surveyed the efforts by online investing sites to equip smaller investors with advanced weapons to help narrow the gap.
Websites such as such as Fidelity, TD Ameritrade (AMTD), and tradeMONSTER have come through with features that online traders couldn't have dreamed of little more than 10 years ago. New functions not only enable them to use advanced strategies such as identifying stocks whose options have unusually high volume on any given day, but also suggest ways to hedge trades. In some cases, investors can pretest trade outcomes and share trading ideas online with peers. They're even gaining access to dark pools, the private trading platforms that institutions use to execute most orders because they accommodate far bigger blocks of shares and have minimal impact on stock prices.
Institutional investors typically have access to advanced screening, charting, and analytics tools that individual traders lack, as well as sophisticated research and ways to scan the market in real time for unusual activity in stock options and regarding volatility. Obviously, retail investors are still far from having the arsenal of trading tools and techniques that big hedge funds use, but they at least have more ways to deal with an increasingly unpredictable market.
"It provides a lot of comfort so I can decide whether I like a trade from the outset" before executing it, says tradeMONSTER customer Greg Jensen about TradeLab, an analytical tool the site offers that shows how a trade would perform under specified conditions such as implied volatility. Jensen is a founder and chief trainer of investing education site Options Animal.
Do-it-Yourself Stock Screeners
Fidelity has a proprietary tool that gives customers access to 13 private exchanges with greater liquidity than the public market and lets active traders choose which trading venue their trade will be sent to. A separate Fidelity tool matches institutions' resting limit orders with customer orders that get filled at the national best-bidder offer and execute instantly. E*Trade Financial (ETFC) and TradeKing offer access to dark pools for portions of their retail order flow.
Almost all online brokers offer screening tools that narrow the investment universe from over 7,000 stocks, more than 1,000 exchange-traded funds, and thousands of mutual funds to a select few that meet investors' needs. The number of criteria for which traders can screen vary from more than 100 at Fidelity to 43 at TD Ameritrade. Strategy Builder, launched last March by online trading site TradeKing, lets customers construct their own stock screeners, based on dozens of fundamental and technical filters. Once you find stocks that meet selected criteria, you can save the screen and back test its output against up to five years' worth of historical market data, comparing how the screened stocks would have performed vs. any available market benchmark. Users can be alerted daily, weekly, or monthly if the list of stocks that meet their selected criteria changes. Sharing your screens with other TradeKing customers can generate discussion on TradeKing's own forums and spur strategy revisions based on others' input.
TD Ameritrade's online clients can screen for stocks, options, exchange traded funds, or mutual funds. The platform integrates research from Morningstar (MORN), Standard & Poor's (MHP), and Credit Suisse (CS) into the screening process. For example, a click on Morningstar Analyst Favorites brings up a short list of preferred ETFs based on whatever criteria you enter, and you can open a Morningstar report that shows an analyst's buy and sell targets and when the ETF price and rating were last updated. You can compare up to five ETFs side-by-side, based on specified criteria. Morningstar also provides a Premier List of favored mutual funds, while Standard & Poor's and Credit Suisse provide research on individual stocks.
Trading Volume Slightly Down in 2010
Online brokers are encouraging use of ETFs by offering lots of them commission-free. TD Ameritrade is the most generous, with 101 ETFs chosen by Morningstar that are commission-free as long as you own them for at least 30 days. Fidelity offers 24. TD Ameritrade plans to add "commission-free" to its list of screening criteria for ETFs in the near future.
Daily trading volume appears to be slightly down for the most part this year vs. 2009. Fidelity reports 227,222 daily average commissionable trades year-to-date through September—essentially flat, with 228,038 for the same period in 2009. E*Trade averaged 150,530 daily trades in the first nine months of the year, down 16.6 percent from 180,596 in the prior-year period. TD Ameritrade had an average of 370,000 daily trades year-to-date through September, compared with 376,000 last year.
It's hard to tell how much use online brokerage clients are making of the institutional-grade tools. TradeKing's Strategy Builder averages 10,000 client hits per month, which includes clients back-testing strategies and viewing other people's models. Roughly two-thirds of TD Ameritrade's 5.5 million clients access research reports on the platform and its clients on average perform over 1.5 million screens on stocks, ETFs, mutual funds, and options per month. Schwab.com (SCHW) says it has seen average monthly hits to online screeners jump roughly 250 percent over the last year since it introduced advanced options strategies and screening for implied volatility, although it would not provide exact numbers. TradeMONSTER wouldn't provide usage data but says it has experienced a large inflow of customers from other online brokers, attracted by its new tools and competitive prices.
Back-testing of individual trades and portfolios is another offering that's more in demand among retail traders. Fidelity, E*Trade, and TD Ameritrade offer these functions, which in some cases are less powerful than versions offered through the broker's downloadable software.
Experts and Traditional Research
Fidelity has broadened its research offering for online investors by coaxing such financial risk firms as RiskMetrics Group—now part of MSCI (MSCI)—and Audit Integrity into the retail marketplace for the first time. Their research enables customers to evaluate stocks according to environmental, social, and corporate governance metrics, along with financial audit risk and so-called "vice alerts," for exposure to gambling, tobacco, or alcohol. Audit Integrity gives stocks a financial audit score and shows the percentage of companies with the same score that have faced shareholder lawsuits or significant financial restatements recently. Fidelity also offers reports from Integrity Research Associates, which rates research providers, based on the accuracy of their recommendations.
Schwab.com offers research more selectively from outfits such as S&P, Credit Suisse, and Ned Davis, as well as online seminars about how to use the research and what to look for. Schwab also publishes online commentaries by in-house options expert Randy Frederick. E*Trade Financial supplements traditional research from S&P, BNY Jaywalk, and others by encouraging social media activity. The platform links to market commentary blog SeekingAlpha and—through a partnership with the website Minyanville—Buzz & Banter, which puts clients in touch with "credible insiders" in the investing world, says Kevin Delo, head of product management for E*Trade's active trader platform.
TradeKing eschews traditional research offered by brokerages. "The online clients we serve prefer to do their own homework and research, and not read the preformatted ones," says Don Montanaro, TradeKing's chief executive officer. His platform offers free access to MarketGrader.com, which analyzes 5,500 U.S. listed companies and generates upgrade and downgrade recommendations.
Choosing Among Four Key Priorities
Getting a deeper view into market activity has become important to retail traders, who believe such tools can boost their ability to compete with institutional investors. LiveAction, a new offering from tradeMONSTER, lets traders scan the market for unusual volume in call or put options and unusually high volatility in options. Based on a customer's selected investing ideas, LiveAction's StrategySeek tool provides alternate strategies that fit the view a trader has of a particular stock. The TradeLab tool takes it a step further by letting you test your strategy before placing a trade, based on making priorities of four factors: safety, profit, the probability of a given outcome, and total return.
A more aggressive investor would want to emphasize profit and return while a more conservative investor would list safety and the probability of an outcome as his top concerns.
"Nobody's ever been able to test their strategy before they place the trade. As an individual investor, I want to know the probability of this making money, or losing money, or breaking even," says Travis McGee, director of education at tradeMONSTER.
Retail traders also want a clearer sense of what their peers are doing because stock price fluctuations mostly reflect the outsized trades of institutional investors, says Franklin Gold, who heads Fidelity's active trading business. Orders by Fidelity Customers is a tool that shows order flow among Fidelity's more than 12 million clients, updated roughly 40 times during trading hours and at least every 30 minutes. Users can get a quick sense of market sentiment by seeing the ratio of buy orders to sell orders.
Stop-Limit Orders, Trade Triggers
"It's important to see not only what investors are buying and selling, but the degree of bullishness or bearishness among them," says Gold. "Oftentimes we see retail customers buying into weakness."
On some online platforms, individual traders can place more complex trades, another advantage that institutional investors have long enjoyed. E*Trade customers can now place orders akin to buy- and sell-stop trades, triggered only when a particular index such as the Nasdaq Composite reaches a specified level.
TD Ameritrade customers can place stop orders that are triggered when a stock hits a particular price—higher or lower—and they can issue stop-limit orders that won't execute if the price doesn't hit the chosen level. Users can also place conditional orders by which money made from the sale of one stock is automatically used to buy shares of another stock. Trade triggers let you set a market condition for a trade to execute such as an order to sell a highly correlated stock if the market falls 100 points, and they set the expiration date for that trigger. Traders can "set a whole sequence of events without having to be at the computer every moment," says TD Ameritrade Chief Executive Michael McGrath.
TD Ameritrade gives each client a $100,000 fake account to "paper trade" until they are confident enough to use real money. It's a safe way to introduce more complex products such as futures and foreign exchange trades to customers who may not understand them much without exposing them to excessive risk. "We want a lifetime relationship with our clients. You don't want a retail investor to put on a heavily leveraged [trade]," says Peter Sidebottom, executive vice-president of product, marketing, and client experience at TD Ameritrade.
Social Media and Mobile Device Apps
Just as important as bells and whistles is the overall user experience a platform provides. Some platforms make you leave the task you're engaged in to look into tutorials if you don't understand something. TradeMONSTER lets you click on a little yellow question mark, causing the relevant education article to pop up. If you want more detail, click again for a deeper layer of detail. "All the while, you're still watching real-time quotes," and less likely to miss the trade you're trying to do, says tradeMONSTER's chief executive, Wade Cooperman.
Online brokers have responded to customers' growing demand for social media and mobile device applications. E*Trade scales its entire platform to iPhones and will soon apply it to Android phones. TD Ameritrade's MyTrade has 50,000 customers discussing trading strategies with peers and matching trades—"more than the number of people that would be listed as followers on the Facebook sites of any one of our competitors," says Sidebottom. Investools, which TD Ameritrade acquired as part of its June 2009 purchase of options education firm ThinkOrSwim, is a learning community with an estimated 40,000 members, at which people exchange ideas about what they're learning and how to get better at trading and investing. There's also a women's investing group with nearly 500 members.
With individual investors still spooked by the market meltdown of 2008-09 and by the sudden plunge in major indexes on May 6, the advanced tools that online brokers are providing could be a carrot that draws more people back to stocks—and gets them back in the habit of trading online.
Bogoslaw is a reporter for Bloomberg Businessweek's Finance channel.
Rousseff wins presidential vote, succeeding Lula
Dilma Rousseff, Lula’s protege, is first female president of Brazil
By MarketWatch
LONDON (MarketWatch) — Dilma Rousseff has been elected the first female president of Brazil, taking the helm from her exceedingly popular mentor Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who oversaw one of the fastest growing economies in Latin America.
With nearly all votes counted, Rousseff of the governing Workers' Party won 56% of the total compared to 44% for her opponent Jose Serra of the Social Democratic Party, according to media reports early Monday, citing official results.
Sunday’s runoff election came after the 62-year-old Rousseff failed to win outright the first round held in early October.
Rousseff vowed in her victory speech to make eradicating poverty, in which millions of Brazilians still live, her priority, according to the BBC.
In recent years, Brazil has attracted international investors with its stable government, rapid growth and wealth of natural resources, including oil, metals and agricultural commodities. Still, the nation is plagued by poor infrastructure, red tape, corruption, as well as a sharp divide between the haves and the have-nots.
Lula, who is stepping down after two consecutive terms and enjoys very high approval ratings, threw his support behind Rousseff, giving her a big boost with voters.
“In the absence of a strong third-party candidate, Rousseff’s campaign has effectively framed the election as a binary choice between continuing the current administration’s policies or reverting to the more unpopular policies of the last PSDB [Social Democratic Party] government, led by Fernando Henrique Cardoso,” wrote Christopher Garman from political-risk consultancy Eurasia Group in a note published a few days before the election.
“At the end of the day, with President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva’s approval rates at 81%, the desire for continuity remains the most important force in the election,” Garman said.
On Friday, ahead of the vote, the benchmark Bovespa stock index ended up 0.5% at 70,673.30. The index is up only 3% so far this year, underperforming other local indexes. For instance, Chile’s IPSA index is up 37% this year and Argentina’s Merval has gained 30%.
Dollar slips vs. most rivals in Asian trade
By Lisa Twaronite, MarketWatch
TOKYO (MarketWatch) — The dollar slipped against rivals in Asian trading Monday, giving back all of an earlier jump against the yen.
The dollar reportedly rose as high as ¥81.55 on the EBS trading platform — a high so brief it wasn’t captured by all data feeds — from about ¥80.40 at the stock market open.
Rumors of currency intervention percolated, but when no confirmation was forthcoming, the trend began to reverse. By late afternoon, the dollar was back down to ¥80.47. It was at ¥80.48 in late North American trading on Friday. See real-time currency quotes and tools.
The Nikkei Stock Average had opened lower, then spiked 1% in the first minute of trading. The yen’s move down corresponded with that spike. Read Asia Markets for more on yen and Japanese stocks.
The policy-setting Federal Open Market Committee meets Tuesday and Wednesday, and is widely expected to announce a second round of quantitative easing — so-called QE2.
The Bank of Japan will meet shortly after the Fed, on Thursday and Friday. That meeting had originally been scheduled for later this month.
“As the BoJ has front-loaded the next monetary policy meeting to 4-5 November, right after the U.S. FOMC decision on 3 November, eyes should be on whether the BoJ can take a bold easing step that matches the Fed’s expected quantitative easing,” said Tomoko Fujii, senior FX strategist at Bank of America Merrill Lynch.
“We expect the BoJ’s QE expansion to be insufficient to push USD/JPY higher, but we think the step will probably help curb the pace of USD/JPY drops in coming months,” she said in a note to clients Monday.
The dollar index /quotes/comstock/11j!i:dxy0 (DXY 77.02, -0.25, -0.32%) , which measures the U.S. unit against a basket of six major currencies, fell to 76.961 from 77.205 late Friday.
The euro /quotes/comstock/21o!x:seurusd (EURUSD 1.3954, -0.0007, -0.0501%) rose to $1.3974 from $1.3908 late Friday, and the British pound /quotes/comstock/21o!x:sgbpusd (GBPUSD 1.6064, +0.0020, +0.1247%) bought $1.6035, compared with $1.6033.
Lisa Twaronite is MarketWatch's Tokyo bureau chief.
London stocks cheered by Chinese data
Ryanair declines on lack of visibility for the fourth quarter
By Aude Lagorce, MarketWatch
LONDON (MarketWatch) — London stocks rose on Monday as strong Chinese manufacturing data helped boost the mining sector and investors awaited the verdict of the U.S. Federal Reserve on a potential new round of quantitative easing.
The FTSE 100 Index /quotes/comstock/23i!i:ukx (UK:UKX 5,687, +11.47, +0.20%) gained 0.9% to 5,724.90 on the first session of the month after rising 2.3% in October.
Investors are awaiting two major events on the other side of the Atlantic this week. On Tuesday mid-term elections are expected to shift control of Congress to Republicans and on Wednesday the Fed is likely to launch a new bond-purchase program.
Data showing that Chinese manufacturing expanded at the fastest pace in six months reassured investors about the strength of the global economic recovery and lifted the heavily represented commodity sector on the FTSE 100.
Shares of Rio Tinto PLC /quotes/comstock/23s!a:rio (UK:RIO 4,073, +36.50, +0.90%) /quotes/comstock/13*!rio/quotes/nls/rio (RIO 65.12, -0.09, -0.14%) advanced 1.7%, Vedanta Resources PLC /quotes/comstock/23s!e:ved (UK:VED 2,084, +9.00, +0.43%) added 1.2% and Xstrata PLC /quotes/comstock/23s!a:xta (UK:XTA 1,235, +25.50, +2.11%) gained 2.4%.
One of the main movers on Monday was Ryanair Holdings PLC /quotes/comstock/23s!e:rya (UK:RYA 3.98, -0.15, -3.68%) /quotes/comstock/15*!ryaa.y/quotes/nls/ryaay (RYAAY 32.63, -0.10, -0.31%) , which declined 3.4%. Europe’s largest low-cost airline reported a 32% increase in second-quarter profit and lifted its guidance for the year but cautioned it has little visibility on ticket prices in the fourth quarter.
In the financial sector, shares of Royal Bank of Scotland Group PLC /quotes/comstock/23s!a:rbs (UK:RBS 45.56, +0.95, +2.13%) /quotes/comstock/13*!rbs/quotes/nls/rbs (RBS 14.38, +0.20, +1.41%) gained 2.6% and those of insurer Aviva PLC /quotes/comstock/23s!a:av. (UK:AV. 402.60, +4.50, +1.13%) rose 3%.
Aude Lagorce is a senior correspondent for MarketWatch in London.
China to trim state-run companies by 2015
By Chris Oliver, MarketWatch
HONG KONG (MarketWatch) – China will more than halve the number of large state-owned enterprises during the next five years as part of the goals set out in its economic blueprint for the period ending 2015, the state-run China Daily reported, citing a local media account.
Among targets, the 12th Five-Year Plan will seek to reduce the number of centrally administered state-owned enterprises to 30 to 50 from about 123 currently, the report said.
Only those SOEs with world-recognized brands, strong international competitiveness and significant intellectual property will be eligible to continue under their current structures, the report said. The account cited Li Baomin, an official at a research arm under the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission of the State Council.
Remaining SOEs will also be required to show a well-governed corporate structure, Li was cited as saying at a forum in Beijing on Oct. 30, the report said.
Chris Oliver is MarketWatch's Asia bureau chief, based in Hong Kong.
Thinking of Buying Winter Tires? Prices May Jump
The cost of tires, gloves and condoms is set to rise following a 65 per cent jump in the price of natural rubber in the past year.
The surge is the result of heavy rains in the main rubber-producing region of south-east Asia, which have disrupted rubber tapping.
The rubber price has tripled in two years, surpassing the record level set in 1952 when fears about the potential spread of the Korean War triggered panic buying. That is putting pressure on manufacturers to raise prices or face lower margins.
Major tire companies including Bridgestone, Michelin, Goodyear [GT 10.22 -0.34 (-3.22%) ] and Continental have raised prices by 5-15 per cent this year – and some businesses have announced a further round of price increases.
Continental is to put prices up by 5 per cent from the start of next year, citing “the currently very high price level for the main types of natural rubber used in the production of car tires”.
Goodyear last week reported a loss for the third quarter in spite of its highest sales in two years, sending the shares tumbling 12 per cent in two days.
Adam Glickman of Condomania, one of the largest speciality condom retailers in the US, said the price of condoms had risen 10-20 per cent in the past year and manufacturers were warning of further increases.
The branded condom market is dominated by SSL International [SSL-LN 1162.00 2.00 (+0.17%)], the London-based company that owns the Durex brand and is being acquired by Reckitt Benckiser [RB-LN 3523.00 15.00 (+0.43%)], as well as Church & Dwight [CHD 65.85 -0.41 (-0.62%) ] of the US and Australian-listed Ansell.
Lim Cheong Guan, executive director of the world’s biggest rubber glove manufacturers, Malaysia’s Top Glove, said it was forced to raise prices “in order for us to sustain our business”.
The benchmark rubber price, ribbed smoked sheet 3 or RSS3, was quoted last week at $4.05 per kg in Bangkok, according to the Rubber Research Institute of Thailand, just short of the all-time high from April of $4.10 per kg. Analysts expect prices to remain high.
While supply has disappointed, demand is rebounding from the lows of the financial crisis.
Global light vehicle sales will rise 10.5 per cent this year, according to consultancy JD Power, while tiremaker Pirelli estimates demand for truck tires has risen by more than a half in markets such as China so far this year.
Jom Jacob, senior economist at the Association of Natural Rubber Producing Countries, said he expected the tight situation in the rubber market to worsen: “The concerns over natural rubber supply are likely to persist until the end of 2011.”
Copyright 2010 The Financial Times Limited
US Public Pensions Face Day of Reckoning
In 2006, US regulators, reacting to the 2000 stock market crash and the so-called “perfect storm”, implemented broad rules for corporate defined benefit pension plans on liability valuation and financial reporting (SFAS 158), and on funding (the Pension Protection Act).
Today, there is a similar focus on the epic underfunding of defined benefit plans at US state and local governments, estimated at $1,000 billion to $3,000 billion, as accounting regulators have proposed more prominent disclosure of shortfalls on sponsors’ annual financial statements. Some observers caution, however, that the new principles will fall short and merely perpetuate current methods which greatly understate governments’ pension liabilities
The US public sector, excluding the federal government, employs more than 19 million people – 15 percent of the labor force – and their pension plan assets, according to the Federal Reserve, were $2,557 billion in June 2010, down from $3,198 billion at year-end 2007.
By any measure that total is not enough. Wilshire Associates estimates that as of June 2009, state plans were just 65 percent funded, while local government plan funding stood at 74 percent. Wilshire’s estimates do not reflect the 30 percent rise in the broad US stock market since then, but few dispute that plans are still badly underfunded.
In recent years many states have moved to shore up their DB plans by changing benefits for current and future employees, and a few have even dared to scale back payments to retirees. Others have issued dedicated pension bonds. Government pensions are emotional issues in a number of the state political races decided this week.
Adding to the tension, in June 2010 the Government Accounting Standards Board proposed a reporting and valuation framework to highlight governments’ pension disclosures. Many of the proposals echo the requirements imposed on corporate DB plans in 2006.
One essential change in Gasb’s 50-page proposal is to report the liability for unfunded pension benefits on the government’s balance sheet – a promotion from their current footnote status. “As a result of the employment exchange each year, the employer incurs an obligation to its employees for pension benefits… [and] that net pension liability is measurable with sufficient reliability for recognition,” states Gasb’s Preliminary Views.
Among the 190 comments on the proposals are many objections: some governments contend that footnote disclosure is adequate; others that because pension liabilities are so large and volatile, adding them would create more distortion than clarity. Others argue that the extent of responsibility to meet all estimated current and future liabilities is not clear, offering as evidence legal battles in Colorado and New Mexico that may grant governments a way to reduce their obligations for future benefits.
But Gasb left essentially untouched the method by which governmental plans value their liabilities – based on actuarial assumptions for asset returns, rather than a discount rate that reflects the near certainty that pension obligations will have to be paid.
Most government plans assume an 8 percent rate of return on investment; corporate plans, by contrast, are required to value liabilities at a high-grade corporate bond rate, currently below 5 percent. (The Gasb proposal would, however, require the portion of public plans’ liabilities that are chronically underfunded to be valued at municipal bond rates – currently between 3.5 and 4 percent.)
“State and local governments are being granted a special privilege, to use discount rates that understate the true economic value of their liabilities,” says Joshua Rauh, associate professor of finance at the Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University, and a pensions scholar.
“The discount rate should reflect the certainty that the governments will have to pay them, and that is certainly no less risky than the rate on a state or local government bond.” Under both current and proposed rules, Prof Rauh explains, the value of the liability is based on the risk a pension plan takes with its assets, when the two rates are in fact independent.
In a recent paper written with Robert Novy-Marx, associate professor at the University of Rochester, Prof Rauh estimates that state pension plan liabilities alone, valued at treasury bond rates, came to $5,000 billion as of June 2009, while assets were just $1,940 billion. “This ‘pension debt’ dwarfs the states’ publicly traded debt of $940 billion,” he writes. City pension plans, he estimates, add another $383 billion aggregate underfunding.
One large public plan, the $35 billion New York City retirement system, supplements its disclosures based on conventional actuarial returns with several alternative calculations, including one based on a risk-free discount rate, in an effort to represent the certainty that the pension liabilities will be paid.
For June 2008, citing the most recent report, the plan’s funding ratio was 85 percent using actuarial discounting, but just 65 percent with Treasury-based valuation; since 1999 the difference between the two has ranged from 10 percent to 20 percent of assets at market value. While deficits under current methods have been publicized, “people have not come to realize how important this government accounting issue is”, says Prof Rauh.
“It traces back to the idea that there are limits on how much the governments can borrow. But by not measuring the pension liabilities realistically, it creates a huge loophole and exposure for taxpayers.”
Chinese Manufacturing Expands at Fastest Pace in Six Months
November 01, 2010, 5:48 AM EDT
By Bloomberg News
Nov. 1 (Bloomberg) -- China’s manufacturing expanded at the fastest pace in six months in October, indicating the economy can bear more gains in the yuan and interest-rate increases to cool price pressures.
A purchasing managers’ index released by the logistics federation rose to 54.7 from 53.8 in September, with input prices climbing the most in six months. A second PMI, from HSBC Holdings Plc and Markit Economics, jumped to 54.8 from 52.9.
Asian stocks rallied on signs of sustained momentum in the world’s fastest-growing major economy. China may secure growth of 10 percent this year even after raising interest rates last month for the first time since 2007, according to the median estimate of analysts surveyed by Bloomberg News.
“Economic activities remained strong, while inflation pressures continued to mount,” said Liu Li-Gang, a Hong Kong- based economist at Australia & New Zealand Banking Group Ltd. “Inflation is far from peaking, which could invite another interest-rate hike by December.”
The Shanghai Composite Index closed 2.5 percent higher, after climbing 12 percent last month as the best global performer. The MSCI Asia Pacific Index also rose.
The reading in the logistics federation’s PMI compared with 53.8 for both the previous month and the median forecast of 13 economists surveyed by Bloomberg News.
An index of input prices rose to 69.9 in October from 65.3 in September, the biggest gain of 11 sub-indexes. Manufacturers’ new orders are near boom levels, boosted by domestic spending, including the construction of welfare homes and accelerated work on stimulus projects, the logistics federation said.
Export Orders
In contrast, a measure of new export orders slipped to 52.6 from 52.8. A reading above 50 indicates an expansion.
Today’s reports added to a central bank statement last week in highlighting the economy’s momentum. Growth quickened in the third quarter from the second, the People’s Bank of China estimated, without giving a number.
Inflows of money from abroad are complicating management of the economy after a record expansion in credit in 2009 that added to asset-bubble risks. Inflation accelerated to 3.6 percent in September, the fastest pace in 23 months, and property prices have made record gains this year.
On Oct. 19, the central bank raised rates from crisis levels. It severed the yuan’s peg to the dollar in June, letting the Chinese currency gain more than 2 percent since then.
Overheating Risks
In the first three months of 2010, an 11.9 percent expansion from a year earlier fueled concern that the Chinese economy faced overheating risks. Growth slowed to 10.3 percent in the second quarter and 9.6 percent in the third as the government reined in credit growth. An energy-efficiency drive in industry and a crackdown on real-estate speculation may also cap the nation’s expansion.
Manufacturing growth “is set to moderate in the coming months” because of rising commodity prices and government measures including last month’s interest-rate increase and restrictions on property purchases, Isaac Meng, a Beijing-based economist at BNP Paribas, said before today’s release.
Crude steel output fell in September from a year earlier as mills such as Hebei Iron & Steel Co. cut production due to power usage limits. Heavy industry will continue to report weaker gains in output because of the energy campaign, National Bureau of Statistics spokesman Sheng Laiyun said Oct. 21.
The government-backed PMI, released by the Beijing-based China Federation of Logistics and Purchasing and the National Bureau of Statistics, covers more than 820 companies in 20 industries, including energy, metallurgy, textiles, automobiles and electronics. The HSBC survey covers more than 400 manufacturing firms.
--Li Yanping and Zheng Lifei. Editors: Paul Panckhurst, Lily Nonomiya.
To contact Bloomberg News staff for this story: Zheng Lifei in Beijing at lzheng32@bloomberg.net; Li Yanping in Beijing at yli16@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Chris Anstey at canstey@bloomberg.net
Stocks poised to open higher
By CNNMoney.com staffNovember 1, 2010: 6:09 AM ET
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- U.S. stock futures were higher before the opening bell as investors anticipate another round of economic and earnings reports, ahead of Tuesday's midterm elections and Wednesday's Fed announcement.
Dow Jones industrial average (INDU), S&P 500 (SPX) and Nasdaq (COMP) futures all showed modest gains ahead of the market's open. Futures measure current index values against perceived future performance.
The Dow is coming off its best October since 2006, although stocks ended mixed on Friday after government estimates showed the U.S. economy grew at a sluggish 2% annual rate in the third quarter.
Stocks have been climbing since late August on expectations of additional stimulus from the Federal Reserve, and bets that Tuesday's Congressional elections will favor the Republicans.
But the tone has been more cautious recently, with stocks mostly moving sideways over the last week, as investors take a wait-and-see attitude ahead of the election and the Fed's highly-anticipated policy statement on Wednesday.
Economy: A report on personal income and spending comes out before the bell, while a key manufacturing index is expected shortly after the market opens.
Economists expect the Commerce Department to report that spending by individuals rose 0.4% in September, according to consensus estimates from Briefing.com. Personal income is expected to have risen 0.3% in the month.
The Institute for Supply Management's manufacturing index for October is expected to have eased to 53.6, from 54.4 in September. Any reading above 50 indicates growth in the sector.
Separately, government data is expected to show that construction spending fell 0.5% in September.
Companies: Home improvement retailer Loews Corp. (L, Fortune 500) is among the companies due to report quarterly earnings results Monday morning.
Other companies scheduled to post results later this week include BP (BP), MasterCard (MA, Fortune 500), Pfizer (PFE, Fortune 500), CVS Caremark (CVS, Fortune 500) and WellPoint (WLP, Fortune 500).
World markets: European shares rose in early morning trading. The CAC 40 in France, the DAX in Germany and Britain's FTSE 100 were all up about 1.0%.
Asian markets ended their session mixed. Japan's benchmark Nikkei index dropped 0.5%, while the Hang Seng in Hong Kong rose 2.4%. The Shanghai Composite ticked up 2.5%.
Currencies and commodities: The dollar fell against the euro and the British pound, but was slightly higher against the Japanese yen.
Oil futures for December delivery were up 52 cents to $81.97 a barrel.
Gold for December delivery rose to $1363.80 an ounce.
Bonds: Prices on U.S. Treasuries rose Monday, pushing the yield on the benchmark 10-year note down to 2.60% from 2.61% late Friday.
CCI Negotiates $10M Equity Line Financing From Dutchess Capital LLC
CCI Negotiates $10M Equity Line Financing From Dutchess Capital LLC
Nov. 1, 2010 (PR Newswire) --
SAN ANTONIO, Nov. 1, 2010 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Competitive Companies Inc. (CCI) (OTC Bulletin Board: CCOP) announced today that it is entering into an Equity Line Financing Facility in the amount of $10,000,000 with Dutchess Opportunity Cayman Fund, Ltd.
During the 36-month term of the Equity Line Facility, Dutchess will be required at the option of CCI to purchase up to $10,000,000 of CCI common stock. Each drawdown will be priced based on the then-current stock price in accordance with an agreed-upon formula. CCI will control the timing and amount of any share sales to Dutchess. In accordance with SEC regulations, CCI will file an S-1 Registration allowing for the selling of the shares to Dutchess. William H. Gray, the CCI's Chief Executive Officer (CEO) negotiated the transaction in which no commissions or compensation is to be paid by CCI as a result of signing the Equity Line Facility.
"The completion of this $10 million facility with a well-established Investor such as Dutchess is a clear indication of investor optimism behind CCI's plan to complete its business objective of building and supporting the development of a 4G network in America's Heartland," said Gray.
CCI has already negotiated and signed a letter of intent with a multi-conglomerate utility cooperative in the State of Illinois comprising of more than 14,000 members. The equity line will assist CCI in completing its agreement with the multi-conglomerate cooperative. Dutchess has been successfully funding public companies through Equity Line Facilities for over ten years.
Douglas Leighton, Managing Director of Dutchess, stated, "We believe in management's efforts and this financing facility provides inexpensive and flexible access to capital for CCI. Regardless of the ever-tightening capital markets, Dutchess continues to finance the growth of public companies, regardless of their size."
About Dutchess Capital
Dutchess Capital is an investment manager which provides creative financing for public companies. Founded in 2000, funds managed by Dutchess have made over $200 million in direct investments in companies throughout North America, Europe and Asia.
For almost a decade, Dutchess has been a global leader in Equity Line Facilities (ELF) and has transacted in excess of $1.6 billion in such financings worldwide. The ELF is a flexible financing structure by which publicly traded companies can raise capital quickly, efficiently and with less dilution than most traditional offerings.
About Competitive Companies, Inc.
Competitive Companies, Inc. (CCI) is a Nevada Corporation with offices in San Antonio, Texas, Eau Clair, Wisconsin and Scottsdale, Arizona. The Company began operations in 1998 to provide telecommunication services including data, voice and video to multiple dwelling units (MDU's) in tier one markets. As Congress passed "open access" legislation, larger capitalized organizations made it difficult for the Company to compete in that market. Thus, CCI refocused on rural communities nationwide to build and finance wired and wireless data and voice applications through a unique entity known as the "Broadband Innovation Fund" . Additionally, the Company continually evaluates new products for rural markets based on technology convergence and customer demand. These new services include a variety of bundled wireless IP applications for rural residence, business, and government consumers. CCI has assembled a strong management team with extensive communications industry, financial, and business management experience. For more information on the Company, please visit http://www.cci-us.com.
Forward-Looking Statements:
This press release contains statements that are "forward-looking" and are made pursuant to the Safe Harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 and federal securities laws. Generally, the words "expect," "intend," "estimate," "will" and similar expressions identify forward-looking statements. By their very nature, forward-looking statements are subject to known and unknown risks and uncertainties that may cause our actual results, performance or achievements, or that of our industry, to differ materially from those expressed or implied in any of our forward-looking statements. Statements in this press release regarding the Company's business or proposed business, which are not historical facts, are "forward-looking" statements that involve risks and uncertainties, such as estimates and statements that describe the Company's future plans, objectives or goals, including words to the effect that the Company or management expects a stated condition or result to occur. Since forward-looking statements address future events and conditions, by their very nature, they involve inherent risks and uncertainties. Actual results in each case could differ materially from those currently anticipated in such statements. Investors are cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date they are made.
SOURCE Competitive Companies Inc.
William Gray, Investor Relations, 1-888-284-4531, ir@cci-us.com
Source: PR Newswire (November 1, 2010 - 6:00 AM EDT)
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Calibrus, Inc. Announces Launch of Ground-Up Redesign of Its Social Expression Site JabberMonkey.com, Integrating Its Provisional Filed Patent Video Chat and Video Navigation
Calibrus, Inc. Announces Launch of Ground-Up Redesign of Its Social Expression Site JabberMonkey.com, Integrating Its Provisional Filed Patent Video Chat and Video Navigation
Nov. 1, 2010 (PR Newswire) --
TEMPE, Ariz., Nov. 1, 2010 /PRNewswire/ -- Calibrus, Inc., located in Tempe, Arizona, a development company in Social Online Networking and Mobile Applications and leader in Third Party Verification Services (TPV), today announced the launch of the redesigned Social Expression site JabberMonkey.com. JabberMonkey is a social expression that allows any individual to express their opinions on any subject. With enhancements to look and navigation, the improved JabberMonkey integrates cutting edge SEO URL formatting and their provisional filed patent Video Chat and Video Navigation.
With this launch, the team at Calibrus brings together an extremely user friendly interface that showcases not only the Video Scroll Control and video chat functions but their seamless integration with the design and feel of the JabberMonkey site. With no applications to download, the JabberMonkey site offers full video chat capabilities without the compatibility downsides inherent in applications requiring a downloaded component for functionality. By showcasing Calibrus' video chat function, JabberMonkey.com displays the company's technology in a working environment with an ease of use and quality not available in an in-browser environment.
While the new JabberMonkey offers these features, the inherent purpose of all these developments is for revenue generation for the JabberMonkey platform. Behind the scenes, built into the platform, is an SEO friendly environment. As each user generated post and response shows up on the JabberMonkey site, a unique URL is created. Each URL is created using a format which incorporates key words related to the UGC (User Generated Content) in the post. This allows search engines to immediately incorporate the UGC posted on JM and enhance the search engine ranking in a real-time environment. While this type of URL creation is the mainstay of many news sites in their story specific URL creation, the use of it in individual posts as done in the JabberMonkey environment allows Calibrus to maximize the ad revenue potential of the site while UGC as is being created. By example, when a topic is timely, breaking news or sports event, the ability to dynamically create URLs with key words specific to the posts allows services like Google Ad Words to offer up content relevant advertising which is much more time relevant and produces higher click through rates and revenues for JabberMonkey.
Calibrus, Inc. C.E.O. Jeff Holmes said, "The new look and navigational design elements of the JabberMonkey site is a result of focus group research conducted over several months. The feedback we have received on the redesign has been extremely positive. We are excited to begin attracting users to JabberMonkey, allowing them to express themselves on topics or current news events which they care about or have an emotional connection and enjoy communication tools such as free video voip calling with any friend in the world."
ABOUT CALIBRUS - Calibrus, Inc. (OTC Bulletin Board: CALB) develops products and services in Social Online Networking, Mobile applications, Third Party Verification, Hosted Call Recording and IVR Services. Calibrus operates the JabberMonkey website (www.jabbermonkey.com), a premier site for expressing and gathering public opinion on a global scale. For more information on Calibrus visit the Calibrus website at www.calibrus.com.
Forward-looking statements in this release are made pursuant to the "safe harbor" provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Investors are cautioned that such forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties, including without limitation, continued acceptance of the Company's products, increased levels of competition for the Company, new products and technological changes, the Company's dependence on third-party suppliers, and other risks detailed from time to time in the Company's periodic reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
SOURCE Calibrus, Inc.
Eric Miller, Investor Relations of Calibrus, Inc., +1-720-220-0037, emiller@calibrus.com
Source: PR Newswire (November 1, 2010 - 6:00 AM EDT)
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MacroSolve Announces Prominent Business Leader David Lawson Joins Its Board of Directors
MacroSolve Announces Prominent Business Leader David Lawson Joins Its Board of Directors
Nov. 1, 2010 (Marketwire) --
TULSA, OK -- (Marketwire) -- 11/01/10 -- MacroSolve, Inc. (OTCBB: MCVE) (OTCQB: MCVE), a leading provider of mobile apps, solutions and technologies, announced today that David R. Lawson has joined its Board of Directors. He joins the board following MarcroSolve's receipt of a landmark mobile technology patent.
Mr. Lawson is a prominent Tulsa-based business person who holds board seats at leading corporate, educational, and non-profit institutions. He has held numerous executive positions at companies in industries ranging from finance to technology.
Currently Chairman of the Board of Trustees at the University of Tulsa, Mr. Lawson also sits on the boards of Heat Transfer Equipment Corp. and Pinnacle Packaging Company. He has served as President and CEO of Capital One Auto Finance, Inc., Summit Acceptance Corporation, and Western National Bancorp. Mr. Lawson has also held board seats at Western Venture Capital, Summit Acceptance Corporation, Zag Inc., Valen Technology, Inc., Dealer Track, Ameriban, Inc., and Texas Capital Bancorporation. He is also on the board of the Alzheimer's Association.
"We are pleased to welcome David Lawson to our board of directors. He joins our prominent board which includes former executives of Fortune 100 companies. With the award of our mobile technology patent from the USPTO, MacroSolve is positioned to capture a unique position in the market for mobile technologies and David Lawson's presence on our board will be of great benefit as we execute our plans. We look forward to Mr. Lawson's value added guidance on our board," stated MacroSolve president and CEO Clint Parr.
Mr. Lawson added, "We've seen the development of MacroSolve as a leader in mobile technologies and apps. I believe the company is at a very exciting and critical juncture in its growth. They have a fantastic team in place and I'm pleased to be a part of their success."
About MacroSolve
MacroSolve, Inc. is a pioneer in delivering mobile apps, technologies, and solutions to businesses and government. Founded in 1997, the company has an extensive network including the top name brands in wireless hardware and software as well as wireless carriers. Leveraging its intellectual property portfolio, MacroSolve is positioned to become the leader in delivering mobile business apps, a market projected to grow by double digits to an aggregate of $11.6 B by 2012. The company operates through its subsidiaries including Anyware Mobile Solutions (http://www.goanyware.com) and Illume Mobile (http://www.illumemobile.com). For more information, visit MacroSolve (http://www.macrosolve.com) or call 800-401-8740.
Safe Harbor Statement
This press release contains projections of future results and other forward-looking statements that involve a number of risks and uncertainties and are made pursuant to the Safe Harbor Provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Important factors that may cause actual results and outcomes to differ materially from those contained in the projections and forward-looking statements included in this press release are described in our publicly filed reports. Factors that could cause these differences include, but are not limited to, the acceptance of our products, lack of revenue growth, failure to realize profitability, inability to raise capital and market conditions that negatively affect the market price of our common stock. The Company disclaims any responsibility to update any forward-looking statements.
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Investor Contact:
Dilek Mir
(310) 591-5619
Email Contact
Company Contact:
April Sailsbury
(918) 388-3529
Email Contact
Source: Marketwire (November 1, 2010 - 6:00 AM EDT)
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TransMedia Group Retained to Publicize PuntoMio's Expanding Online Shopping Capabilities for Consumers and U.S. e-Tailers in Latin America
TransMedia Group Retained to Publicize PuntoMio's Expanding Online Shopping Capabilities for Consumers and U.S. e-Tailers in Latin America
Nov. 1, 2010 (PR Newswire) --
MIAMI, Nov. 1, 2010 /PRNewswire/ -- SkyShop Logistics, Inc. (OTC Bulletin Board: SKPN), the largest private postal network in Latin America which delivers more than 55 million mail items per month, has retained TransMedia Group, a leading international public relations firm, to publicize its expanding cross border online shopping and delivery services in Latin America.
SkyShop Logistics, formerly known as SkyPostal Networks, Inc., said TransMedia Group's (www.transmediagroup.com) initial publicity campaigns will focus on new strategic partnerships with SkyShop's online shopping portal, PuntoMio.
SkyShop's consumer offering, PuntoMio (www.puntomio.com), gives international residents a U.S. address in which they can receive purchases made from online merchants in the U.S.
TransMedia will promote PuntoMio's partnership with a major U.S. retailer and launch its international site, which PuntoMio will manage. PuntoMio's Global e-Cart product (www.globale-cart.com) gives U.S. merchants integrated options with which to sell to international clients, while avoiding risks in cross-border transactions like credit card fraud, costly and complex shipping and import procedures. The U.S. merchant sells to the international shopper in the U.S. and SkyShop assumes full responsibility for shipping, clearance and delivery.
TransMedia will also publicize a co-marketing agreement which PuntoMio will soon be announcing with one of the leading financial institutions in Mexico in which it will offer the PuntoMio service to nearly two million clients.
Besides generating media exposure about SkyShop's strategic partnerships, TransMedia will publicize its overall integrated shopping solutions which allow U.S. merchants to offer their international customers a simplified and cost effective buying experience from the moment of purchase to the cross-border delivery of products.
Carla Pardo, TransMedia's Hispanic Media Relations Director said the name SkyShop Logistics better reflects the company's position as the leading cross border shopping facilitator, which capitalizes on its well established, efficient and low cost international delivery network.
SkyShop's solutions cater to two audiences: the International online shopper who otherwise could not buy from U.S. e-tailers and U.S. merchants that want to access foreign consumers with an interest in purchasing U.S. merchandise without the complexities inherent in cross-border transactions.
PuntoMio facilitates the experience of the online international shopper and U.S.-based Internet merchants, from purchase through cross-border delivery. PuntoMio is designed to be the only web address international shoppers need for all online purchases from the United States.
CONTACT:
Carla Pardo (Mexico) 561-750-9800 x229
Natalia Penheiro (Brazil) 561-750-9800 x230
SOURCE TransMedia Group
TransMedia Group: Carla Pardo(Mexico) +1-561-750-9800 x229; Natalia Penheiro(Brazil) +1-561-750-9800 x230
Source: PR Newswire (November 1, 2010 - 5:20 AM EDT)
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Coastal Pacific Announces Signing of Definitive Option Agreement for Santa Rita Property
Coastal Pacific Announces Signing of Definitive Option Agreement for Santa Rita Property
Nov. 1, 2010 (Business Wire) -- Coastal Pacific Mining Corp. (OTCBB: CPMCF) ("Coastal Pacific” or the “Company"), announced today the signing of a definitive option agreement in respect to earning a 50% interest in a group of two claims, encompassing 1200 Hectares, known as Santa Rita (“Property”).
The Property is situated in the District of Acobambilla, Province of Huancavelica, Department of Huancavelica, in the Republic of Peru; approximately 200 km southeast of Lima.
An October 2009 NI43-101 Technical Report (“Report”) on the refers to several vein mineralizations characterized by elevated silver, lead and zinc content with averages of 290 g/t, 65% and 7% respectively. Based on the Report, the Property has open pit potential with an excess of 1,300,000 tons of mineralization identified with a current potential value of over $350,000,000, based on approximately $500 per ton head grade. It has wide veins and a surface manto which are attractive features of the Property. There is potential of a much larger manto underlying the one at surface, which could be immense in size.
The Report identifies an initial exploration program on the Property, which the Company intends to undertake as soon as the requisite funds have been raised. Coastal Pacific has already received expressions of interest in the financing of Company’s two current projects, and is actively seeking to close these financings.
The Company will be releasing additional details on the Santa Rita option agreement shortly. Mr. Bucci, President of Coastal Pacific, adds “We are extremely pleased that we were able to reach a mutually beneficial agreement with Mr. Hans Peter Flueck, the owner of the Claims. The potential on the Santa Rita property, combined with the merits of our Hotstone property, leave our Company in an enviable position of incredible growth potential.” Mr. Bucci indicates further “We’ll be releasing additional details over the next couple of days on the specifics of the structure of this new opportunity, further details on the Property and our plans for it, and progress on our financing initiatives.”
About Coastal Pacific
Coastal Pacific activities are to explore, develop and mine gold and silver resources in North and South America. As its primary focus, Coastal Pacific will joint venture with companies having reserves to develop and produce. Currently the Company is in a joint venture agreement in Ontario, Canada.
Our philosophy is to participate with companies who are in the later stage of exploration and are ready for development. Gold and silver have been used as money for over 3,000 years. History has shown that in periods of market downturns gold and silver have proven to be a dependable hedge for investors against both inflation and any monetary crisis.
Coastal Pacific Mining Corp.
927 Drury Ave NE
Calgary, Alberta T2E 0M3
Web: www.coastalpacificminingcorp.com
For information: info@coastalpacificminingcorp.com
Cautionary note:
FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS: “Safe Harbor" Statement under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995: Statements relating to the company’s business activities and other statements in this press release are forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Such statements are based on current expectations about the Company’s business. Words such as expects, anticipates, intends, plans, believes, estimates and similar words and expressions are intended to identify such forward-looking statements. These statements involve risks that are difficult to evaluate. Actual results can vary from descriptions herein due to many factors including changes in metal prices and business conditions; changes in laws and regulations; problems encountered in exploration and obtaining permits; changes in the competitive environment; technological advances; shortages of skilled workers, drill rigs and equipment; the need for additional capital and other risks listed in the Company’s Securities and Exchange Commission filings under "risk factors" and elsewhere. Forward-looking statements speak only as of the date they were made. The Company does not undertake any obligation to update forward-looking statements.
Coastal Pacific Mining Corp.
Joseph Bucci, President, 403-612-3001
joebucci@coastalpacificminingcorp.com
Source: Business Wire (November 1, 2010 - 3:00 AM EDT)
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Black Hawk Exploration Schedules Additional 37 Hole Auger Drill Program
Black Hawk Exploration Schedules Additional 37 Hole Auger Drill Program
Nov. 1, 2010 (PR Newswire) --
FOX ISLAND, Wash., Nov. 1, 2010 /PRNewswire/ -- Black Hawk Exploration (OTC Bulletin Board: BHWX) announced today that with the successful completion of its financing of October 19th, 2010, it will proceed with its drill plans for an additional 37 auger sites on 5 additional dump sites at Dun Glen. Black Hawk submitted an amendment to the existing exploration permit to add the additional drill sites and expects approval of the amended permit mid-November. Our previous drill program results announced August 30th, 2010 confirmed $580,000 in gold and silver reserves. The estimate was based on 442 ounces of gold valued at $1,200 per oz. and 2,936 ounces of silver at $18 per oz.
Black Hawk has engaged Stonehouse Construction and Drilling who completed our successful August 2010 program, to complete the expanded 37 site November 2010 project at Dun Glen.
About Black Hawk Exploration
Black Hawk is a diversified metals and energy exploration company with its current focus on lithium, gold and silver discovery through its Clayton Valley and Dun Glen holdings. Black Hawk is committed to an aggressive program of value added property acquisition, project generation, asset diversity and building shareholder value.
"Safe Harbor" Statement
Under The Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995: The statements in all press releases that relate to the company's expectations, with regard to the future impact on the company's results from new projects in development, are forward-looking statements. A complete disclosure of our "SAFE HARBOR" statement is posted on our website at www.BlackHawkExploration.com under the heading "NEWS."
SOURCE Black Hawk Exploration
Kevin M. Murphy, CEO of Black Hawk Exploration, +1-253-973-7135, CEO@BlackHawkExploration.com
Source: PR Newswire (November 1, 2010 - 1:00 AM EDT)
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American Manganese Inc. Retains Wolfe Axelrod Weinberger Associates LLC as Its Investor Relations Agency
American Manganese Inc. Retains Wolfe Axelrod Weinberger Associates LLC as Its Investor Relations Agency
VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA, Nov. 1, 2010 (Marketwire) -- American Manganese Inc., (TSX VENTURE:AMY)(PINK SHEETS:AMYZF) (the "Company") is pleased to announce that it has retained Wolfe Axelrod Weinberger Associates LLC ("WAW") as its investor relations agency effective immediately.
Among the duties to be performed for the Company are the following:
a. act as a strategic advisor on issues relating to communications with the investment community; b. prepare a comprehensive fact sheet summarizing the Company's corporate and financial profile; c. endeavor to arrange meetings with qualified brokers, money managers, etc.; d. directly handle all shareholder calls and enquiries from shareholders and investors.
Mr. Larry W. Reaugh, President & Chief Executive Officer of the Company, stated, "We've retained Wolfe Axelrod Weinberger Associates to assist us in communicating our unique opportunity to the financial community to improve investor awareness. We believe an active investor relations program will broaden our investor exposure, provide us with seasoned experience in this area and assist us in increasing shareholder value."
Mr. Stephen Axelrod, CFA, Managing Member of Wolfe Axelrod Weinberger Associates, LLC said, "We are pleased to be representing American Manganese; a unique mineral resource Company that is focused on providing a world-class domestic source for a critical strategic metal-Manganese. Manganese is the fourth most consumed industrial metal and an essential component in steelmaking." Mr. Axelrod will have direct responsibility for the account.
"We believe the story is very timely given the concern about the availability of secure sources of various strategic metals and in the progress the Company has made in recent months to advance its Artillery Peak Manganese project and its expected progress moving forward. We look forward to working closely with management in relaying the Company's value proposition to the investment community."
The term of the appointment of WAW as investor relations firm shall be for a term of one (1) year at a fee of $10,000 per month, plus reasonable expenses and the appointment is renewable at the option of the Company for an additional one (1) year. In addition, the Company will grant 533,333 incentive stock options, to be priced at the closing price on today's date, which will vest in accordance with the Company's Incentive Stock Option Plan.
About Manganese:
China controls electrolytic manganese production (EMM) supplying and producing 97.44% of the world's needs (2.6 billion pounds per year).
There is no substitute for manganese in steel (total manganese market greater than 30 billion pounds per year, fourth largest traded metal).
Manganese is the most critical metal at risk to supply and restriction in the United States as there is no US production. EMM's greatest uses are the upgrading of specialty steel (47%), and the manufacture of aluminum alloys (32%) and electronics (14%).
China has a 20% export duty on EMM and the US has a 14% import duty; the current world price for Electrolytic Manganese Metal is about $1.50/lb. Manganese resources are declining in China.
The overall manganese market grew at 8% per year to 30 billion pounds up to 2008. EMM market grew at 26% per year from 2003 - 2008 to 2.6 billion pounds per year.
About American Manganese Inc.:
American Manganese Inc. is a diversified specialty and critical metal Company focusing on potentially becoming the lowest cost producer of electrolytic manganese from its Arizona Manganese Project.
About Wolfe Axelrod Weinberger Associates:
Wolfe Axelrod Weinberger Associates brings to its clients thirty years of successful investor relations experience and an extensive network of contacts. Mr. Axelrod has previously purchased shares, for his own account, in the Company through private placement as well the open market.
Wolfe Axelrod Weinberger Associates looks forward to working closely with American Manganese Inc., to accomplish its long-term objective of increasing shareholder value. Stephen Axelrod will oversee this effort directly for the Company.
On behalf of Management
AMERICAN MANGANESE INC.
Larry W. Reaugh, President and Chief Executive Officer
This news release may contain certain "Forward-Looking Statements" within the meaning of Section 21E of the United States Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. All statements, other than statements of historical fact, included herein are forward-looking statements that involve various risks and uncertainties. There can be no assurance that such statements will prove to be accurate, and actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. Important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from the Company's expectations are disclosed in the Company's documents filed from time to time with the TSX-Venture Exchange, the British Columbia Securities Commission and the US Securities and Exchange Commission.
The TSX-Venture Exchange has not reviewed and does not accept responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.
American Manganese Inc. President and CEO 604-531-9639 604-531-9634 (FAX) www.americanmanganeseinc.com Wolfe Axelrod Weinberger Assoc. LLC CFA 212-370-4500 212-370-4505 (FAX)
Source: Marketwire Canada (November 1, 2010 - 6:02 AM EDT)
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MacroSolve Announces Prominent Business Leader David Lawson Joins Its Board of Directors
MacroSolve Announces Prominent Business Leader David Lawson Joins Its Board of Directors
Nov. 1, 2010 (Marketwire) --
TULSA, OK -- (Marketwire) -- 11/01/10 -- MacroSolve, Inc. (OTCBB: MCVE) (OTCQB: MCVE), a leading provider of mobile apps, solutions and technologies, announced today that David R. Lawson has joined its Board of Directors. He joins the board following MarcroSolve's receipt of a landmark mobile technology patent.
Mr. Lawson is a prominent Tulsa-based business person who holds board seats at leading corporate, educational, and non-profit institutions. He has held numerous executive positions at companies in industries ranging from finance to technology.
Currently Chairman of the Board of Trustees at the University of Tulsa, Mr. Lawson also sits on the boards of Heat Transfer Equipment Corp. and Pinnacle Packaging Company. He has served as President and CEO of Capital One Auto Finance, Inc., Summit Acceptance Corporation, and Western National Bancorp. Mr. Lawson has also held board seats at Western Venture Capital, Summit Acceptance Corporation, Zag Inc., Valen Technology, Inc., Dealer Track, Ameriban, Inc., and Texas Capital Bancorporation. He is also on the board of the Alzheimer's Association.
"We are pleased to welcome David Lawson to our board of directors. He joins our prominent board which includes former executives of Fortune 100 companies. With the award of our mobile technology patent from the USPTO, MacroSolve is positioned to capture a unique position in the market for mobile technologies and David Lawson's presence on our board will be of great benefit as we execute our plans. We look forward to Mr. Lawson's value added guidance on our board," stated MacroSolve president and CEO Clint Parr.
Mr. Lawson added, "We've seen the development of MacroSolve as a leader in mobile technologies and apps. I believe the company is at a very exciting and critical juncture in its growth. They have a fantastic team in place and I'm pleased to be a part of their success."
About MacroSolve
MacroSolve, Inc. is a pioneer in delivering mobile apps, technologies, and solutions to businesses and government. Founded in 1997, the company has an extensive network including the top name brands in wireless hardware and software as well as wireless carriers. Leveraging its intellectual property portfolio, MacroSolve is positioned to become the leader in delivering mobile business apps, a market projected to grow by double digits to an aggregate of $11.6 B by 2012. The company operates through its subsidiaries including Anyware Mobile Solutions (http://www.goanyware.com) and Illume Mobile (http://www.illumemobile.com). For more information, visit MacroSolve (http://www.macrosolve.com) or call 800-401-8740.
Safe Harbor Statement
This press release contains projections of future results and other forward-looking statements that involve a number of risks and uncertainties and are made pursuant to the Safe Harbor Provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Important factors that may cause actual results and outcomes to differ materially from those contained in the projections and forward-looking statements included in this press release are described in our publicly filed reports. Factors that could cause these differences include, but are not limited to, the acceptance of our products, lack of revenue growth, failure to realize profitability, inability to raise capital and market conditions that negatively affect the market price of our common stock. The Company disclaims any responsibility to update any forward-looking statements.
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Investor Contact:
Dilek Mir
(310) 591-5619
Email Contact
Company Contact:
April Sailsbury
(918) 388-3529
Email Contact
Source: Marketwire (November 1, 2010 - 6:00 AM EDT)
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B2 Digital, Inc. Clarifies Plans to Issue Stock Dividend of B2 Digital Shares to Its Shareholders
B2 Digital, Inc. Clarifies Plans to Issue Stock Dividend of B2 Digital Shares to Its Shareholders
Oct. 31, 2010 (GlobeNewswire) --
MESA, Ariz., Oct. 31, 2010 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- B2 Digital, Inc. (Pink Sheets:BTDG) is pleased to announce that at a meeting of the Company's Board of Directors held on October 25, 2010, the directors of B2 Digital, Inc. approved a 10% stock dividend on our Common Stock.
B2 Digital, Inc. has filed the Issuer Company-Related Action Notification Form with FINRA in compliance with Rule 6490 and SEA Rule 10b-17.
Shareholders of record at the close of trading on November 5, 2010 will be issued ten additional restricted shares of B2 Digital, Inc. Common Stock for each one hundred shares of Common Stock held on the November 5, 2010 record date.
The Board resolution is as follows:
WHEREAS, the Company will issue shares of common stock at Ten (10) shares per One-Hundred (100) shares as held by the shareholders on the date of record to be November 5, 2010. The payable date shall be November 12, 2010, and only shareholders with One-Hundred (100) are more will be eligible for this stock dividend.
About B2 Digital, Inc.
B2 Digital is dedicated to seeking acquisitions and joint ventures within the resource sector and in particular mining properties that contain gold and silver reserves. Management of its subsidiary has many years of experience in the exploration and operations of mining assets. B2 Digital is currently in the process of divesting itself of some of its technology assets. More information on B2 Digital can be found at:
http://www.b2digital.us.
This press release contains statements (such as projections regarding future performance) that are forward-looking statements as defined in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Actual results may differ materially from those projected as a result of certain risk and uncertainties, including but not limited to those detailed from time to time in the Company's filings with Pink Sheets.com. Mining projects are subject to numerous risk factors including changing regulations, volatile commodity prices, and other factors that may preclude production should commercially viable reserves be established on a property and exploration plans dependent on funding and approval of any required permits.
CONTACT: Atlanta Capital Partners, LLC
David Kugelman
866-692-6847
Source: Globe Newswire (October 31, 2010 - 5:27 PM EDT)
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