Filed under: Time Warner (TWX), Walt Disney (DIS), Viacom (VIA), News Corp’B’ (NWS), Film

All movie studios want to find their own Lord of the Rings/Harry Potter franchise. Disney (NYSE: DIS), for example, seems to be headed on the right track with its Narnia brand. Viacom (NYSE: VIA) made a solid effort this past weekend by releasing The Spiderwick Chronicles to the mass multiplex marketplace — unfortunately, things didn’t turn out so well, at least as I’m seeing it.

According to Boxofficemojo, Spiderwick is in a battle with Disney’s Step Up 2 the Streets for second place. The latter is right now estimated to have grossed $19.7 million for the three-day weekend of February 15 through February 17; the former has just over $19 million to its credit. So, Spiderwick could exit its current third-place showing and move up in the rankings, but it won’t catch up to the big winner, News Corp.’s (NYSE: NWS) Jumper. I’ll tell you, I had no idea this one was going to “jump” — what a horrible, horrible pun, huh? — to the top of the box office charts this weekend with a $27 million take.

Final numbers will be coming later today, and we’ll get a better indication of how all the movies did once Monday’s holiday figures are added; also, the second weekend is always the ultimate tell. But, as of now, I don’t think Viacom’s Spiderwick fantasy — which is distributed by Paramount and is co-branded with Nickelodeon Movies — will approach the economic prestige of Time Warner’s (NYSE: TWX) Potter property. Better luck next time.

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Filed under: Chipotle Mexican Grill’A’ (CMG), 25 Stocks for Next 25 Years, Stocks to Buy

For those who are new to BloggingStocks, I wrote a series back in May-June of 2007 highlighting what I thought could be the top 25 stocks for the NEXT 25 years. The series was written and researched as an answer to a USA Today article that highlighted the best 25 stocks of the past 25 years.

I wrote about Chipotle Mexican Grill (NYSE: CMG) back on May 21. The stock was trading at $82 per share, although I had been recommending it in my advisory service back when the shares were trading at $40. I thought, and still do, that Chipotle has a chance to be the next major American fast food restaurant chain. In September 2007, the shares hit $114-115, and frankly, I thought the stock was ahead of itself and needed to take a breather. I wrote an update piece explaining that although I still believed Chipotle will be a major player for the NEXT 25 years, it seemed prudent to take the opportunity for short term profits. Commodity costs were rising and the chain was not about to raise its menu prices to offset.

The shares proceeded to go as high as $155 and I thought that maybe I misread this one. The numbers were strong and I thought the momentum in the name might actually keep it afloat. Phew, finally, this one has come back to earth. Chipolte has fessed up that higher commodity costs and a slower spending consumer have taken their toll. The shares are back down to $105, representing a 30 P/E multiple on 2009 earnings per share expectations of $3.40. Still expensive, but this is a very high growth rate company.

I would wait for the shares to trade back below $90 before putting a toe in the water. The concept is viable and very popular. The chain has room to quadruple its store base in the United States and will emerge as the best new concept in this decade and the next. I’d keep an eye on the share value and start accumulating on major dips.

Georges Yared write about great growth stocks today in Game On Investing

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Filed under: International markets, Earnings reports, China

Priceline (NASDAQ: PCLN)’s unbelievable quarter, which saw the company best earnings estimates by $0.12, may mean that investors pay attention to CTRIP.com (NASDAQ: CTRP) numbers due out next week. While numbers were up across the board international bookings surged.

Priceline’s gross bookings growth momentum continued in the fourth quarter with international growth accelerating to 113.0% year-over-year and the domestic growth rate increasing sequentially to 24.2% led by increasing retail airline ticket bookings,” said Jeffery H. Boyd, Priceline’s President and Chief Executive Officer. “Internationally, we believe that our wide geographic reach, new market initiatives and extensive inventory are providing sustained impetus for growth. We believe that in the United States, our value positioning and brand promotion through offline and online channels is driving above-category growth rates in an uncertain economic environment.

CTRIP.com is the Chinese equivalent of Priceline. The company has also seen earnings grow nicely, and with a growing Chinese middle class, leisure activities are becoming more and more in demand. Throw in the Olympics this summer, and CTRIP may very well benefit from all this as it is the leader in bookings fields in China. With the stock beaten down, investors may want to take a closer look at this interesting Chinese travel play.

Aaron Katsman is the lead Portfolio Manager and Managing Director of America Israel Investment Associates, LLC. and Senior Editor of IsraelNewsletter.com. DISCLOSURE: Writer has no position in any stock mentioned as of 2/18/08.

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Filed under: Marketing and advertising, Bank of America (BAC), Housing

With a large portion of the blame for the housing slump being placed squarely on the shoulders of aggressive mortgage salesmen, you might think the industry would crawl under a rock and wait for the bad headlines to pass.

But their continued aggressive marketing indicates otherwise, with the mortgage industry as a whole making no reduction in its advertising budget since the heady days of the bubble. Bank of America (NYSE: BAC) is still pitching ads urging homeowners to refinance to “get the cash you need, when you need it,” according to the New York Times.

That banks are still looking to provide cash for buying homes and refinancing is a bullish indicator. The zeal with which they’re marketing these products may mean that consumers are being unduly timid about entering the housing market in the face of considerable headline shock.

Alternatively, it could just mean that the lenders still haven’t learned their lessons.

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Filed under: Deals, Good news, Google (GOOG), Yahoo! (YHOO), Nokia Corp. (NOK)

Nokia Corp. (NYSE: NOK) and Google, Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) are partnering more than before as the world’s largest cellphone maker announced last Tuesday it will now be installing Google as the primary tool in the “Nokia Search” application that will eventually ship with almost every Nokia phone sold worldwide. This is a huge win for Google, already the world’s most-used search company.

To begin with, Nokia will set Google up as the search engine used when customers of such handsets like the Nokia N96, Nokia N78, Nokia 6210 Navigator and Nokia 6220 classic perform searches from their handsets. Eventually, Nokia customers in over 100 countries — and in 40 languages — will have access to Google search on all those handsets.

And therein lies the power Google has over information on this planet. IIkka Raiskinen with Nokia said, “This integration allows our consumers the ability to use the innovative search technologies, which have made Google almost synonymous with Internet search.” There you have it — Google’s market leadership translated into a huge opportunity in the global wireless arena. It’s true that competitor Yahoo, Inc. (NASDAQ: YHOO) is also heavily marching into wireless, but with that company’s identity crisis right now, Google stands to rule the wireless market as well as the PC desktop.

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Filed under: Deals, Good news, Google (GOOG), Yahoo! (YHOO), Nokia Corp. (NOK)

Nokia Corp. (NYSE: NOK) and Google, Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) are partnering more than before as the world’s largest cellphone maker announced last Tuesday it will now be installing Google as the primary tool in the “Nokia Search” application that will eventually ship with almost every Nokia phone sold worldwide. This is a huge win for Google, already the world’s most-used search company.

To begin with, Nokia will set Google up as the search engine used when customers of such handsets like the Nokia N96, Nokia N78, Nokia 6210 Navigator and Nokia 6220 classic perform searches from their handsets. Eventually, Nokia customers in over 100 countries — and in 40 languages — will have access to Google search on all those handsets.

And therein lies the power Google has over information on this planet. IIkka Raiskinen with Nokia said, “This integration allows our consumers the ability to use the innovative search technologies, which have made Google almost synonymous with Internet search.” There you have it — Google’s market leadership translated into a huge opportunity in the global wireless arena. It’s true that competitor Yahoo, Inc. (NASDAQ: YHOO) is also heavily marching into wireless, but with that company’s identity crisis right now, Google stands to rule the wireless market as well as the PC desktop.

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Filed under: Apple Inc (AAPL), China, iPhone

Gray market sales have been a serious problem for Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) with its hit iPhone and now it’s getting weirder: iPhones made in China are being exported to the United States and Europe and then smuggled back to the People’s Republic.

Apple’s been puzzling over a paradox with the iPhone. The company says it has sold 3.7 million units, but only 2.3 million have been registered on the networks of its U.S. and European wireless partners. It seems that the phones are being smuggled out of their target markets by small-time entrepreneurs and then shipped overseas where they are unlocked and set up with wireless providers that are not part of Apple’s distribution deals. iPhones sell for at least $100 more in China than they do here.

The New York Times reports that “For Apple, the booming overseas market for iPhones is both a sign of its marketing prowess and a blow to a business model that could be coming undone, costing the company as much as $1 billion over the next three years, according to some analysts.”

Apple’s struggle to hash out a wireless network deal in China has stalled the phone’s official release there and, for now, the company is giving up a huge amount of revenue while consumers get the iPhone the only way they can. To make it worse, Apple doesn’t appear to have any legal recourse.

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Filed under: Industry, Wal-Mart (WMT), Sony Corp ADR (SNE), Best Buy (BBY)

Now that the nation’s largest retailer has dumped the HD DVD format, its creator, Toshiba, seems to finally have taken the hint and wants out of the HD DVD business. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. (NYSE: WMT), which can make a merchandising decision and have an effect on an entire industry, has done just that within the next-generation optical disc format that will replace the standard DVD someday.

Time Warner announced earlier this year that it would back out of the HD DVD format soon, Best Buy, Inc. (NYSE: BBY) indicated that it would slowly stop selling HD DVD as well, and now the final death knell — Wal-Mart. So, by the end of 2008 (if not before), consumers will finally have one high-definition optical format to choose from and the industry can rally behind it and finally put a worthless format war to rest. Unlike the VHS-Betamax war of the 1980s, Sony Corp. (NYSE: SNE) wins this one since it is the primary technical backer of the Blu-ray format..

So, there you have it — one format finally emerges the victor. Will the triumph of Blu-ray finally mean increasing fortunes of consumer electronics manufacturers now that a single format can be marketed to consumers? How about Sony, which can now trumpet the Blu-ray capability of its money-losing PlLayStation 3 game console and try to make up for lost opportunities in the gaming market? The good news is that the consumer electronics camp can now price and market Blu-ray as the successor to DVD, lower disc prices and player prices, and urge a whole new generation of purchasers to ‘upgrade’ to another format yet again. Expect another format sometime in 2018, perhaps called Red-beam or something like that — and the process will repeat all over again. That is, unless downloads haven’t toasted much of the physical media market by then.

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Filed under: Analyst reports, Citigroup Inc. (C), Merrill Lynch (MER)

While nearly all of the top investment banks took a big hit from problems in the housing and lending industries, a handful of prescient analysts have seen their careers bolstered [subscription required] by the carnage. Goldman Sachs analyst William Tanona and Oppenheimer’s Meredith Whitney have gained some notoriety for their bearish calls on Merrill Lynch (NYSE: MER) and Citigroup (NYSE: C), respectively.

Most interesting to me is the case with Citigroup’s Prashant Bhatia who predicted E*Trade’s (NASDAQ: ETFC) subprime woes could cause banking customers to withdraw deposits. E*Trade’s acting CEO Jarrett Lilien fired back, calling Bhatia’s comments reckless.

Bhatia told the Wall Street Journal that “You can go back over time and look at what we have written and what has taken place and be the judge of it … I don’t listen to what management says.”

It’s a rare analyst who doesn’t listen to what management says, but I think there’s a lot to it. Executives are nearly always optimistic, at least publicly, about their companies’ futures, and investors looking for red flags will find little in the way of help from them. When was the last time you tuned into a conference call to hear the CEO say “We’re messing up badly, and we expect to continue to mess up badly in the future. If I can get a decent severance package, I’ll be on the next plane back to the Hamptons?”

Letting the numbers do the talking — specifically those contained in SEC filings — and first hand research (talking to customers) and reading trade journals/websites that aren’t viewed by most investors is a more likely path to success than listening to the wisdom of ever-bullish executives.

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Filed under: Deals, Industry, Middle East, Politics

Qatar has begun to take a stake in Credit Suisse (NYSE: CS) and indicated that it is part of a program to put $15 billion into banks in the US and UK. “We have a relation with Credit Suisse and we bought some of the stock from the market, actually, but I cannot say what percentage because still we are in the process,” the Arab country’s prime minister told Bloomberg.

Qatar may get a chance to invest every last dime of its fund. While banks have written off some of their subprime exposure, they still have billions of dollars of structured investments on their balance sheets. They also face potential write-downs on credit card holdings and corporate LBO loans which could drop in value if the credit markets remain largely frozen.

With more losses almost certain, many large banks will have to face what they will do if sovereign funds from Asia and the Middle East want to provide them with billions of dollars to rescue them in exchange for large percentages of ownership. Congress has objected to some of these investments as partial takeovers of the most important banks in the US.

Unless the federal government wants to come up with the money, though, its objections are hollow.

Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 247wallst.com.

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