BAGAKOAA; 7 November 2011 It's A Bull On Paxil

Post 531 CLICK HERE To See Past PostsNovember/2011

Last night was trash night at our house. Not usually a newsworthy event, but with construction going on, everything seems to be newsworthy. As you could see from the pictures of late it's a pretty good size project. After I finished the blog last night and was locking up, I decided to take out the cans. Cans are now plastic, but I remember the day they were metal cans.

 

I remember vividly dad putting out the cans and they had spring securing devices to keep the raccoons out. That did not help much as the raccoons just knocked the cans over and the trash was evenly spread along the gutter like a raccoon smorgasbord.

 

Dad got smart and put about 50 pounds of free weights on top of the cans to secure the lids. The coons would just sit atop and rock back and forth till the cnas fell over. One night we heard the cans rocking back and forth so dad got one of his sample bow and arrows our of the car (He was the rep for Black Hawk Archery back then cirica 1966) and shot the poor buggar right off the top of the can.

blackhawk 

Mr. Coon scooted over to our crab apple tree and sat up and pulled the target (No spur on it) out and went back to digging in the trash. Dad said, "If that Bast... want the trash that bad, he can have it." True story, but I digress.

 

I was getting the trash cans when I realized our brilliant contractors found a neat place to park about 200 2X4s, in front of the gate leading out of the back yard. Now I had moved a lot of the wood, but is was still on the walk to front of the house. The two recycle bins went easy as they were relatively light.

 

When I got to the driveway I realized our contractors thought a great place to put a stock of debris was where the walk connected to the driveway. This made it an interesting chore to get the cans to the street. I managed to get the two recycle bins over the mound of junk without requiring a tetanus shot. Then came the refuse can which was much heavier. (Thousands of pounds of dog gunkers.) I managed to get that out to the street. Then came the green waste can. That is grass clippings, palm tree shards, dead plants, trees etc. Well Miguel, our wonderful gardener was busy this week as the green waste can was weighing in at about 110-120 pounds. I know the weight as it is about what the bails of third cut alfalfa weighed when I worked at Serrano Creek Ranch many moons ago.

 serrano

It did a number on my back and I still felt it this morning. After remembering what that pain was across my back, we got Jack rolling and took a shower. (I know I have not been swimming even though the pool is throwing off huge flumes of steam every morning.) We got Jack to school and was in the office by 7:30, early by my standards.

 

We started the day by cleaning up some paperwork for Ellen to finish the budget. Yes its budget time. It was good chance for me to clean up the desk and work on my "to do list". I lost mine when I upgraded my iPad and iPhone. (BTW just ordered the new 4S and should have in by the end of the week.) We got all that done and decided to work through lunch on business and a couple of portfolio tune ups.

 

We also snuck out to help the wife move Christmas decoration from storage to the big truck. Fortunately that was next door to the office so it was only a few minutes. She had a ton of running around to do today. I picked up McDs for Jack and I picked up some huge baked potatoes from a new place called BJs. It was quick easy meal so Jack could get on with his homework and Devin and I could unload the Christmas Boxes. After a bit of TV here I am putting the finishing touches on the blog.

It's a Bull on Paxil

 

Talk about a slow sluggish day. We called the low volume but got the direction wrong. We thought quasi interesting news out of Europe would make fund managers skiddish, but instead some acquisition and earning news gave some inertia to the positive side and we finished a half a point up. Yesterday we suggested a little spike in consumer credit and we got a nice surprise as it was way up.  That should mean good news for retailers.  We guessed the Greek PM would submit his recognition (Good catch Hutch) and that will still happen soon, but we did not think the Italian PM would be in the same boat. Perhaps they could form their own new country called Greetaly of Deadbeatia.

 

Once people n Europe had gone to bed, our market made the comeback and the volatility index calmed down. Oil and Gold had nice day. Oil peaked a bit when Russia said to the world, don't you mess with Iran. That would be interesting bed buddies. There were some very bullish comments from one Jim Dunn at Wells Capital. Technically speaking (If you read the charts) we have about 6% more on the upside before we start hitting our first lines of resistance. (12,850 on the Dow and 1,370 on the S&P).

 

Some of the bargains of a month ago are slowly disappearing, but there are some nice values on the table. We are still liking AAPl at 400. GLD at 175 helps us sleep at night. Exxon is looking good below 80. In fact we think there is a lot of safety margin built into that price. Look at AMZN trading below its 20 day and 50 day average. It is screaming, "buy me buy me". UN is priced fairly but not a bargain. MSFT looks better each time we look at it. We are up 4% in a week and it look like it's got a ways to go. We are liking our reentry into the postsecondary education market with our pick of BPI. After an exciting run up to $83.50 last week, UA is just moving sideways but we still like it. And NUAN still looks good below $26.00 We think the iPhone 4S and fourth quarter sales will be good for Apple and Nuance. We are long in all of the above. Sizeable positions we might ad.

 

Are you a Groupie for Groupon

 

It's funny how we did the IPO for GRPN more than a week ago and we are just now getting questions. Profitless Tech stocks are not my thing usually. One of our regular readers asked my opinion, suggesting it's a bit over priced so here in italics is what I had to say. Thanks for the question Lionel:

 

Overpriced might be a bit harsh.  They are priced richly, but maybe for good reason.  I read the S1 today at lunch.  Here is the link if you want to do your own homework.

  

I get the business model, bit it does concern me that they had to restate earnings though the underwriting phase of the IPO.  That could be to make their Go To Market guys feel uber comfortable with the documents.  I do not believe it was a request from the SEC.  Regardless my back end itches when I hear "restate earnings".    I don't get all of their metrics and how they drive EBITDA, but I did like line three of the S1 table:

 

SORRY TABLE WILL NOT SHOW

 

 

That would be the cumulative customers and they are seeing a 300% growth and a 400% growth from repeat customers.  That means the service is pretty sticky.  This business model has a lot of appeal to higher margin service oriented users or retailers using the traditional keystone 100% gross margin markup.  Somebody like Dave H would be hammered on the bottom line, though there are food services using the system.  

 

They are pretty straight forward (In The S1)about the dilution effect of the aftermarket shares:

 

"If you invest in our Class A common stock, your investment will be diluted immediately to the extent of the difference between the public offering price per share of our Class A common stock and the pro forma net tangible book value per share of our Class A and Class B common stock after this offering. Our pro forma net tangible book value as of September 30, 2011 was a deficit of approximately $234.9 million, or $(0.39) per share of Class A and Class B common stock. Pro forma net tangible book value per share represents the amount of our total tangible assets, less our total liabilities, divided by the number of shares of Class A and Class B common stock outstanding as of September 30, 2011, after giving effect to a two-for-one forward stock split that occurred on October 31, 2011 and the recapitalization of all outstanding shares of our capital stock (other than outstanding shares of our Series B preferred stock) into 600,403,352 shares of Class A common stock and all outstanding shares of our Series B preferred stock into 2,399,976 shares of Class B common stock that occurred on October 31, 2011 immediately following the two-for-one forward stock split.

2,399,976 shares of Class A common stock issuable upon the conversion of our Class B common stock that will be outstanding after this offering; 

 

18,407,510 shares of Class A common stock issuable upon the exercise of stock options outstanding as of September 30, 2011 at a weighted average exercise price of $1.11 per share;

 

10,575,100 shares of Class A common stock issuable upon the vesting of restricted stock units;

 

2,694,358 shares of Class A common stock available for additional grants under our 2010 Plan; and

 

49,974,998 shares of Class A common stock available for additional grants under our 2011 Plan, which we adopted effective August 17, 2011."

  

(Me Again)Book value is about 40 cents a share.  There is NO safety margin on this stock. 

 

Under the category of woulda coulda shoulda, Lionel.  If you were interested, with your connections, you should have gotten in at the underwriting level.  I'll bet you could have picked up a big block (1,000-10,000) shares at 20.00 the eventual launch price.  I am a value guy so this is not my cup of tea, but it has legs.  You might call your broker and see if you can get some of the preferred class B?  It is probably very restricted, but a safe bet.

With that Boys and Girls, "Sound sleep by night; study and ease together mixed sweet recreation, and innocence, which most does please with meditation."*  Living in the now.

 

Salve Lucrum

 

*Alexander Pope (1688-1744)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Brian Ireland
BAGAKOAA;

I am not a professional investment advisor. Anybody reading my blog and investing accordingly must be out of their minds. I have made more money than I have lost. There are many more qualified people than I to actually tell you how to invest your money.

BAGAKOAA=Boys And Girls And Kids Of All Ages

Salve Lucrum=Latin for Hurrah for Profit.

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