patrick.net

Pkennedy and E-man

Here is another recommendation.

Buy VISA around $70 and make it a buy and hold. I don't want to get into the detail behind it other than it is a fantastic buy at that price with fundamental and technical support.

I definitely don't want to get into micro managing, but there have been times I would have been interested in having some "upcoming" knowledge, rather than last minute / 1 day late knowledge. I would rather know we're going to be having a fed discussion next week than finding out the day of, what was said.

Visa? It's 25-30% off but is that enough to offset all the new banking regulations? I'll take it though! Thanks!

Well I tossed in a buy for a few visa shares, but this month has been expensive for me due to my brother in law visiting, so I didn't add as much to my savings account as I normally would have. sbux would make my sister in law super duper happy. I could sell some Rig and purchase more Visa if it hits 70.

Hmm starbucks has been on an upward trend for the last couple of years, any reason you're looking at that one?

Pkennedy, E-Man here is a small cap worth exploring, CCME. It was recommended/forwarded by a colleague in Goldman's HK.

- Explosive Growth
- Clean balance Sheet
- unheard of 45% profit margin and 80% ROE.
- 80% insider and exec salaries are stunningly low.
- looks like a hard to penetrate business

I'm not sure what is going on here other the stock looks extremely undervalued (reverse merger) Let's share some thoughts about this one.

Looks interesting. Advertising can be difficult to get into, but a huge outfit can just bully it's way in, and profits for them can be so massive that the bully aspect is a near $0 cost to them.

Chinese business is completely unknown to me. I haven't ever been over to china to really get a good grasp on their culture over there. In general, I see extremely low profit margins on manufacturing in the sub 2% range, which is just plain scary. Although it goes with their work ethic of working hard. Having known many first generation parents they seem to hold these thoughts of small gains over time will pay off. Then I hear of stories of friends going over there for family dinners and spending like $30,000 on a meal! So I'm not exactly sure how money is distributed over there, and how advertising works.

Since I'm in an advertising based company right now, I have gained some in depth knowledge of this area, and it appears that there are two types of companies out there. Those making very little for their ad space, like $1/1000 viewers and eeking out a decent living off thise! and those corporation who can charge $150/1000 viewers. Not too much in between, and the higher rates seem to go directly to those companies that are known, and to those companies who just "assume" they have to pay this much to get any decent advertising. (Eg Apple, Dove, IBM, etc). While companies like google adwords will pay out like $1/1000 views!

One thing I've noticed in advertising is that the US is so far ahead of the game compared with any other countries I've been to. My wife is from Brazil, and we've had some of her family/friends come up here and they are just hammered with ads, they don't know how to deal with them! I've seen this is other countries in the middle east as well. The companies over there seem to be working off our ad models from the 1970's because it works for them. The bigger companies who are multinational are hiring locally, so they get the 1970's advertising as well. It works, because the population hasn't learned to tune it out yet. Each year advertising has to ratchet it up a bit more because we get better at tuning out crap. As for my company, we get some our highest click through rates in these 3rd world countries because of this!

- For me, advertising is hard to break into. New players get just absolutely dismal rates, the "known" players are paid a kings ransom.
- Advertising in other countries seems very very dated in most cases, but it works.
- I'm not sure what the chinese media market looks like, and how effective these ads are.
- On a bright note, these guys have ads in several locations, so they could lose one deal without totally going under and/or starting over.

Those are my primary concerns with a company like this.

Here's some good analysis from someone from seeking alpha. Of course they are self serving but the points should be considered carefully.

http://seekingalpha.com/article/205019-china-mediaexpress-china-s-hidden-gem-part-1
http://seekingalpha.com/article/205022-china-mediaexpress-china-s-hidden-gem-part-2

"CCME's management has strong motivation to meet their 60% growth targets over the next 2 years to acquire another 14M shares reward. By then the total outstanding share of the company will be 54.5M, which at today's stock price, gives the company a market cap of $615M. Assuming that management will meet their growth target, with $140M of cash, and expected earning of $90M this year, the forward PE ex-cash is:

Forward PE(ex-cash) = $(615-140)M/$90M = 5.3

With 3 year earnings growth forecast above 35%, the PEG is a mere 5.3/35 = 0.15 with a free cash flow yield well above 27%. FCF yield above 17% is already fantastic for a Chinese stock.

To get to a 17% FCF yield, the forward PE should be 14 or so. 14 x $90M should give CCME a valuation ex-cash of $1.26B. Adding back the cash of 140M, we have $1.4B. With 54.5M shrs outstanding, my real price target would be $25.7/share."

It's about risk vs. reward and I trust my source, this one is a fantastic buy under $10, but I may consider picking up some now. This one reminds me of Focus Media FCMN with different growth path.

I'm just looking at yahoo, they've been in business since late 2007? 2.5 years?

Does that effect anything, when you look at a company?

According to the 10K, the business commenced operation in Nov 2003. In Oct 2007, they entered into a big agreement to be a stategic alliance partner to establish the rights to advertise. That is around the same time, when the private investor took over a shell public company and take it public through a reverse merger. (where the public company got eaten and taken over by the private party)

The second quarter 2010 results was tremendous. http://finance.yahoo.com/news/China-MediaExpress-Holdings-bw-1991280177.html?x=0&.v=1

Ok, I just read the whole article, pretty interesting article and pretty in depth.

The whole TM business seems to have just added complexity to their business while that company offered little to them and seemed to cash out fairly quickly. They appear to be almost out of the picture now, with everyone pulling their money out and just holding warrants?

Based on my experience with advertising, *if* they have a good sales team, the growth prospective looks doable and most likely without being side tracked with a MA. Direct sales offer *HUGE* potential. Doing direct sales for people on shuttles to the airport, etc could definitely offer them some premium advertising.

Aside from the whole deal with TM, I would say it's a pretty good deal. Of course, as this guy states, TM is the cause of the low pricing to start with.

"That is around the same time, when the private investor took over a shell public company and take it public through a reverse merger.
(where the public company got eaten and taken over by the private party)"

Ok this is a little confusing. TM took over a shell public company (A company that has made it onto the stock exchange but does nothing else really(?)) , the public company became the dominant company at this point? Where does CCME fit into this? What did TM do to CCME at this point? What is TM now?

That aspect got a little confusing.

Here's another company I know of that went public the reverse merger route several years ago; the SF Business Times had a pretty good article on reverse mergers that featured them.

This reverse mortgage makes sense, and I was actually asked to help on setting up some shell companies about 10 years ago for this purpose.

How TM fits into this fold is still confusing to me. They get a shell company, a company that is doing business and Tm and blended them together then pulled out. I'm still not sure how much value they added, or what their true purpose was. It seemed they wanted to hold the stock at 11.50 so they could liquidate their position and hold onto warrants for essentially free.

It's a way of going IPO without going IPO. There's really no public financing as the shares are still closely held. This company is penny pinching frugal.

I love the insider action on this stock, directors buying at 12-13 and the big guy holding 33%.

Well the company looks interesting, and I think I might do a small spend on this. Unfortunately, at this point, spends are essentially coming from monthly savings! Too many good buys and too little money now! argh.

I have a couple of questions on Rig (I can find them myself, I'm just wondering if you know off hand), Rig took a dive during 2008 from roughly 120-150ish down to 50ish during the crash. It recovered to 80ish, while most other stocks seemed to have regained most of their position. Is this primary due to the price of oil never recovering? Are they paid a % of the oil they pump + daily fees? Or is it a flat rental?

From what I've seen, they've basically gotten off on this disaster yet their stock is still held back. Their losses were decently minimal and some of it was even replaced with the relief well operation. Are there other major hurdles on decent recovery on this stock? Or put another way, is there anything major I should be looking out for that might pull the rug out from under this stock?

With such low volume on that stock, I would think putting in any stop loss might be risky! A few people could yank it down quickly without you being aware! Insider trading would be my biggest fear.

Yeah I consider this more of a gamble than what I'm used to, but I also see that there is value here and that at least one accountant has looked at it and given their ok on the financials :)

I have to wait until late next year before I can sell my AMD holdings, this is the cycle I've been waiting for. The new revision will be coming out, and Nvidia has been booted from a couple of markets. They're going to be working on a CPU/GPU combo now, which they'll fail at. The lost income from chip sets (Intel isn't giving them a license), and AMD/ATI having a great product out is forcing nvidia on the defensive which they haven't had to do in a very long time. Nvidia I think will really tank over the next 18 months, both losing more revenue and fighting to keep up with ATI with less R&D. This should help give AMD a good chunk of the GPU market. Their new CPU/GPU combos are coming out and so far they look pretty good.

I'm not sure about their die shrink, but I think they're getting there, it's been slightly delayed. Intel has been doing a great job of their tick/tock strategy, which is die shrink, then CPU architecture upgrade, die shink, then CPU architecture. AMD is competing right now, and they were never about having the biggest/best only a good value proposition. In the last 8 years or so they've been touching the crown processors and surpassing them a few times. They know how to be scruffy, but I think next year they're going to have some good products and decent earnings with their new architecture + die shrink, while Intel only has a new architecture coming out.

SFace was correct on this stock, not making any money. Growing through new share sales. When they do make money it isn't much. They have swapped out a lot of debt though for more favorable terms recently, they're small and lean now. I'm hoping that those numbers will show up next year before they have time to ramp up spending to match income.

"I have a couple of questions on Rig (I can find them myself, I’m just wondering if you know off hand), Rig took a dive during 2008 from roughly 120-150ish down to 50ish during the crash. It recovered to 80ish, while most other stocks seemed to have regained most of their position. Is this primary due to the price of oil never recovering? Are they paid a % of the oil they pump + daily fees? Or is it a flat rental?"

It's all about day rates. Good day rates drives profit and their assets (rigs) are worth more mutliple. If you are in the limosine business and you have a contract worth 100K stream for two years but now an = limosine can only fetch a 50K contract. You'll make a lot less money and the limosines are worth a lot less.

What drives day rates, oil companies desire to explore and replenish their reserve. With good oil prices, Capex by oil companies are expanded. Capex always goes to where it is most efficient, so even though deep exploration is expensive, they are proven to provide the best reserve. The easiet way to figure out where day rates are heading is to look at CapEx budget for Chevron, Exxon, Royal, etc. These budgets flow to drillers. Macondo was producing 50K barrels a day, which gives it a daily revenue of 4M revenue to BP. BP lease the rig for around 500K a day. There are profits to be had for both the upstream oil and drillers if oil prices are high.

Day rates are under pressure as a result of the 6 month drilling ban in the gulf of Mexico. Once the ban is lifted, there will be another run up in price as day rates pressure will be alleviated.

More or less what I expected. Two things that I overlooked and miscalculated were the day rates changes during good/bad times. I figured most contracts were long enough that good/bad times would blend together, and that Capex would be fairly evenly distributed, meaning there would be sudden bursts of exploration. Secondly, I figured that most rigs would be in use, or close to 100% would be making money, leaving little room for growth there.

I figured the only way to increase revenue was a linear slow growth of buying new rigs and placing them online, vs a boom/bust cycle with varying contract terms.

Thanks for the insight here! Energy always seems to be a good investment, and I'm really trying to shore up my knowledge in this industry. News sites either show the technical reasons to buy a stock, or they explain that news is good/bad, but don't often explain indepth why it's good/bad, they just assume you're either in the know, or going to buy because they said it's good.

Energy always seems to be a good investment, and I’m really trying to shore up my knowledge in this industry.
I am still drinking the peak oil Kook-Aid, but you definitely need to go in with one eye opened. A couple of years back I thought natural gas had peaked in the US (ala oil in the 1970's which actually did peak), but got hammered by CHK (along with their CEO, Aubrey McClendon). Thankfully, no margin for me on that one...

Lots of Natural gas, Canada has just masses of it, they started using it all for the tar sands though. When oil dropped, they apparently cut back on usage and that went into the market pushing natural gas down. Or so I've heard anyways, I don't follow natural gas prices much though!

Ahem, I know Canada is just a subsidiary of the US, but first you've got to get it here.
Also, bear in mind, Just three years ago, the conventional wisdom was that U.S. natural-gas production was facing permanent decline. U.S. policy makers were resigned to the idea that the country would have to rely more on foreign imports to supply the fuel that heats half of American homes, generates one-fifth of the nation's electricity, and is a key component in plastics, chemicals and fertilizer....Believing the U.S. would soon need to import liquefied natural gas from overseas, companies such as ConocoPhillips, El Paso Corp. and Cheniere Energy Inc. spent billions on terminals, pipelines and storage facilities.
Also, a quick link to historic production in the US.

Intel and McAfee, what is going on? A strange marriage.

Very strange and slightly alarming.

Last company I worked for had board members from McAfee, and from what I could gather, all those virus companies "shared" all details on all new virus, including the free virus providers. No one wanted to be left out in the cold without knowledge of a new virus, so they all had sharing agreements. No one wanted the liabilities and/or marketing risks associated with "missing" a big one.
At least that is what I gathered.

WHY Intel would want software like this makes little sense, other than they're looking 5-10 years out and realizing they're hitting limits and that they need to follow IBM's path. This could be a disaster for America, if we lose Intel as a hardware designer. It would leave AMD (good for me) as the only one pushing the envelope. It would open up the market to competition as well. Right now x86 is so far ahead of everything else (albeit it's a crappy technology) that no one can catch up. Even Itanium after a decade has made no headway. No other processor technology has even come close. There have been some sweet designs, but no one wants to bother with them.

I'm guessing this is the first of many acquisitions for Intel, which is going to really diversify it's business.

Intel and McAfee, what is going on?
I must say, that threw me for a loop, too.
Here's my take (which I've also seen in news reports & blogs). Smartphone / Tablet OSes will be the dominate, ubiquitous computing platforms of the future. Android and the iPhone OS hold a growing share in this market, but Intel (teamed up with Nokia) will be making a push with Meego (combining their previous Linux efforts -- Moblin and Maemo). The MeeGo OS skews more towards mobile (truly open) computing than the smartphone side of things (restrictive in the application space) . Making sure these mobile systems are secure would add to consumer confidence and help Intel increase its processor share in this market which is dominated by ARM and Mips based chips.

The problem with phones is that very few people develop for them. The applications aren't that difficult to port (to some degree). If your product is successful it can make HUGE profits. Which means successful products will be ported to anything that comes out.

Android is good, but could be run on anything. Apples OS is in the same boat. Same with Microsofts OS.

There are limited numbers of hardware combination's, which makes it easy to port and program for and to switch CPU's for. Think of any of the many consoles out there. The games are great because programs only need to deal with ONE set of drivers to make their games work. They don't have to worry about 500 types of CPU's, video cards, sound cards and all their derivatives. A phone is much like a console in that respect. It has a certain number of applications, it's going to run at a certain speed, it's got a limited number of options.

What does this mean? Phones and tablet PC's aren't tied to any one CPU, which makes investing in them HUGELY risky. Apple, Google, ARM developers, or another design company could come along with a killer product that could win masses of wins and essentially devastate everyone else.

X86 is different. There aren't *ANY* alternatives. There haven't been viable alternatives since day 1! Motorola with it's 68000 chips had a CPU that was *SO* far ahead of Intel, yet it couldn't get itself put into any hardware. It eventually even lost it's longest supporter Apple. Transmeta tried to come up with something. Intel itself tried to break away with the Itanium, but people just wouldn't budge. They aren't going to do it now either.

So Intel has the X86, which is a cash cow with essentially no viable options for anyone to break into the business.

Phones/Tablets are very specific and CAN switch CPU's every couple of years to whoever is best. Market share won here could be gone the next year!

pkennedy says

X86 is different. There aren’t *ANY* alternatives.

RISC processors....

pkennedy says

So Intel has the X86, which is a cash cow with essentially no viable options for anyone to break into the business.

Actually there were several others along with AMD... Cyrix, C&T, Via.

EBGuy says

Intel and McAfee, what is going on?
I must say, that threw me for a loop, too.

Happens all the time around here.

SF ace says

Intel and McAfee, what is going on? A strange marriage.

Think of it this way. The TV you know of today will be replaced with something open to hackers, bugs and viruses of tomorrow. Not sure it makes sense, you cant even get the TV mfg today to put a recording device (Hard Drivce) into they Flat screen TV today to record your programs so you dont need a VCR/DVD recorder.

RISC processors have been around longer than the Itanium and haven't gained any market share. Cyrix and Via are x86 based chipes, or were.

A hardware company purchasing a software subscription based company isn't that common.

CPU's already handle virus blocking, and hacking attempts in many forms. So it's not a very obvious joiningat all.

Yes its been around, RISC was the promised future of desktop computing along with UNIX-OS. Didnt quite happen, large market share, as some wanted.

Like I said, there are no other players to take out x86. Lots of people have tried, they've all failed miserably, even Intel tried with the Itanium, spending 10B on it, but no go.

Phones and small devices are different, because they can be uprooted, so the best player wins. Look at the consoles, they've all been fairly successful, and aside from the xbox360 have been using weird chips and chipset! Phones are the same, as long as a phone has a single OS working, it's good to go.

E-man says:

>>You might be able to pick this up for just above $335k.

But you realize that the 2nd lien of $150k does not just go away, do you not? If you buy at this auction, what you buy is a mortage and not a house.

As a side note, my Visa purchase @70 went through today, although only 50 shares. I'm not sure how low it might go before we hit a bottom, but I'm guessing it won't drop by too much more, even if it follows the market. Next month, I'll see if I can pick up another 50-100 shares or look at CCME instead. Thanks for the heads up on that stock as well.

as long as a phone has a single OS working, it’s good to go.
And that is no small feat as you try to shove more functionality into the phone. Definitely an interesting space to watch as customized RISC chips (most ARM cores) currently own the space. Intel is trying to drop in from above with an x86 architecture (optimized for power consumption, which is where custom RISC chips eat their lunch). If they're successful, they bring all those apps that have bring written and compiled for x86 cores. A betting man, though, might say that it's Intel that is going to get taken out from below, by power efficient ARM cores (disruptive technology?). See this. There are a number of ways to create a power-efficient server chip for hyperscale applications like those that run at Google, eBay, Facebook, and so on. One is to rip damned near all of the guts out of a Xeon processor and make an Atom chip, which Intel has done. Another is to beef up a MIPS or ARM RISC processor aimed at fairly modest workloads so it can handle server workloads. A number of niche server chip makers have deployed MIPS designs, and now it is ARM's turn to take a crack at Intel.

EBGuy, no doubt advances in server CPU technology will percolate up from the low end and low power applications.

@EBguy
The difference between applications for the phone and applications for the PC are generally complexity. Porting applications and maintaining them on another architecture is massively time consuming. However, because the phones are essentially on ONE type of hardware it's relatively easy. The phone doesn't have a USB, printer, RS232, Soundcard, DVI, VGA, joystick port, etc. It has a couple of ports but not much else. There are hundreds of sound cards. Thousands of video cards. Thousands of mother boards. Thousands of 3rd party devices that all need to work in an OS. It's a massive project just for MS to maintain windows. The sheer number of combinations is incomprehensible. They have MASSIVE testing server rooms setup with thousands of computers to test windows.

Computers and phones aren't even remotely close. A phone is a simple device compared with a full blown computer.

AMD was involved in the phone market and has since sold that business. Intel has been in that business many times. A phone is interesting, but it's also a business that you can quickly and easily port everything to. 2 years, and all legacy stuff can be thrown out practically! Not so with computers.

x86 is probably one of the *WORST* computer designs out there. The original 8086 was horrible. The 286 made it worse. 386 even worse. 486/586/pentium4/amd 64 just added to the mess. But it became more and more powerful with each step, but everything is a nail to that processor. Itanium has some great stuff in it, but it never took off.

Same with server machines. Google might use X chip, but not many other companies are in a position to do that. It's expensive to make a chip. Even if it's faster and more power efficient than an x86, the x86 is here today, it's fast today, and it's incredibly cheap today.

CPU and Server chips will likely gain from these markets, but those markets aren't going to ever touch these cpu's. I've been waiting for 20 years. I've used all the 3rd party chips and loved them. The 68000 series was so incredible and I used it for a long time. But the x86 had the R&D due to the market share. It's so complex now, that no one has a chance to enter this market. Nvidia will fail spectacularly.

This market is mature though, and we have little need for more speed. More efficiency would be nice. Servers will drive this. Cores are important, so that will be pushed further as well.

pkennedy, I think we are (mostly) in agreement. I'll try to point out when (and if) we aren't, so we don't end up talking past each other (like engineers are famous for doing!)

A phone is a simple device compared with a full blown computer.
Mostly agree (especially the part about legacy driver support). At the same time, the OMAP processor (variants used in Droid, Nokia N900 and PalmPre) contains multiple, specialized processing cores (a general purpose ARM core + a DSP + audio). This degree of specialization (and integration) meets the needs of mobile computing market (read: power efficient), but does present some challenges when migrating to the next gen platform (have fun porting that DSP code!) I'm not sure how Android handles this (or if it even uses the DSP for video decode, etc.) but I know that Maemo (Nokia linux) has a habit of abandoning older platforms (see N770 -> N810 -> N900). But as you say, that's a virtue, not a vice as it gets us the latest goodies on a new phone/tablet! I think that open source is helping to take the pain out of specialized cores (allows companies to sell chips, not software).

Google might use X chip, but not many other companies are in a position to do that.
I know of a company that took great care in its hardware abstraction layer. They could (and did), fairly easily switch horses (CPUs) midstream depending on a best of breed strategy or target market. The code base could be easily compiled and run across multiple processor types (Alpha, x86, Mips). At the same time, driver support was limited to what was sold with the system and a limited number of options (much easier on the server side).

Speaking of legacy driver support, I recently Ubuntu-ized a relative's computer. I remember having a bear of a time trying to find the correct (internal, removable) wireless driver on XP for this system. Ubuntu didn't load the driver by default as it didn't meet their open source licensing restrictions (I think), but it did allow for a painless install under Hardware Drivers (went out to the intertubez and downloaded it). Very nice (never touched the command line)! No need to consult forums.wtf.windoze.hardware.com as I had to do for XP.

This market is mature though, and we have little need for more speed
Definitely agree with this; it's what Clayton Christansen calls technological overshoot. Time for that crappy ARM CPU to disrupt (or not?!)...

Nvidia will fail spectacularly.
You keep saying this and I have no idea what you're talking about. I've got to look it up (whatever IT is :-)

A single company can do what you're talking about. But they have to be massive in general and usually building their own software. You could put your web server software on any hardware now a days, but the cheapest bang for the buck is x86. Even if it's specialized. Specialized has the draw back that you never know if the company will remain solvent for the next generation. Anything you've "counted on" could be lost.

For the most part, anyone buying any software will stick with x86. Anyone developing their own will stick with x86. The small number in there will move to another platform because it works for them.

None of those technologies will disrupt the PC. While we don't fully appreciate the hardware, we also waste is horrendously with terrible code. There isn't a chance an ARM or other processor will replace the x86.

In a couple of years, many of the x86 patents expire I believe. Nvidia is working on their own CPU/GPU combo. I don't believe they'll get anywhere with it, and it will fail spectacularly. AMD is about to release their next generation architecture for servers, and mobile. Mobile will no only have x86_64 but will have a GPU built in, giving it the power to do fairly intensive graphics without the need of a video card add-in. This will reduce the number of chips in a system (lower cost) and reduce power draw.

Btw, I spend most of my time looking at new hardware and what it can do. I spend a lot of time trying to figure out how to get power usage down as well.

So all new hardware is important to me. Nothing so far has come close to an x86 based system in the last 15 years.

For the most part, anyone buying any software will stick with x86. Anyone developing their own will stick with x86.
This, as much as anything else, is what x86 dominance is about. A credible stack is needed to challenge the Windows (& Apple OS X) x86 program. I imagine a shift to "the cloud" could also change people's perception of what they need for usability. Here's an interesting tidbit, Moorestown (AtoMs targetting the mobile market), will be the first Intel chip to dispense with PCI bus support (polling kills battery life, you don't need it that space). On the handset (& tablet) side of things, MeeGo will be the one to watch for open computing (as opposed to the more restrictive iOS & Android). I agree that on the desktop (and desktop mobile space), x86 will continue to dominate.

Nothing so far has come close to an x86 based system in the last 15 years.
Cell is impressive (especially if you need the float point ops). Shocked to see the dominance of Cell and Nvidia's CUDA based platforms in the HPC (high performance computing) arena. Nvidia currently leads with FLOPS/watt (and add in per $ and per unit volume -- kills the AC bill, though).