Filed under: Analyst reports

Rating agency Standard & Poor’s didn’t see the subprime mess coming, but don’t worry, now they’re telling us the worst of it is over. In a statement, Standard & Poor’s credit analyst Scott Bugie said that “The positive news is that, in our opinion, the global financial sector appears to have already disclosed the majority of valuation write-downs of subprime” asset-backed securities.

S&P analyst Tanya Azarchs said “Based on available information, we believe that the largest players can be seen as having undertaken a rigorous valuation methodology to come up with conservative valuations.”

This is the kind of stuff I love about Wall Street. No matter how wrong an analyst is, not matter how much of a role they play in market carnage, you can always count on them to bounce right back with more predictions. Remember, this subrprime prognosis that sent the market on a rally comes from the same firm that Marketwatch called “one of the three main credit-rating agencies that served as enablers of the subprime-mortgage boom.”

Of course, making overconfident predictions is their job. But given what’s happened over the past few years, I think you’d have to be pretty dumb to listen to anything they say.

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Filed under: Time Warner (TWX), Amazon.com (AMZN)

It’s always interesting to see what online audience and traffic measurements have to say about overal web use; traffic, number of users, website loyalty, etc. Now that Time Warner Inc. (NYSE: TWX) AOL is acquiring the UK-based social networking site Bebo.com for some $850 million, the site measurement companies are showing their own data. Notice that every one generates a different result.

When you look below, you’ll see that all web measurement tools and methods generate different results.

Continue reading How Bebo stacks up…according to everyone else

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Filed under: Commodities, Oil, Stocks to Buy

Readers of this space know that the oil/natural gas and oil/natural gas services sectors have been two preferred sectors. And with good reason: solid-growth emerging markets have increased the value of oil, natural gas and a host of other commodities, which bodes well for energy suppliers and those who service them. Quicksilver Resources is one such oil/natural gas play.

Quicksilver Resources (NYSE: KWK) explores for, acquires, produces, and sells natural gas, natural gas liquids and crude oil primarily in the United States and Canada. The company also markets and transmits natural gas.

Analysts like KWK’s increased average daily production for liquid natural gas, reserves of 1.55 trillion cubic feet of natural gas equivalent, and sector position.

Continue reading Quicksilver Resources is quick to spot the most-promising assets

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Filed under: Products and services, Amazon.com (AMZN), Marketing and advertising, Technology

The marketing and release of digital-only albums before a physical copy is available received another significant boost this week when the instrumental Nine Inch Nails album Ghosts I-IV brought in $1.6 million in revenue in its first week. Billboard reported the news, and indicated that the revenue comes from around 800,000 transactions, which includes free and paid downloads and pre-orders for the physical album to be released next month.

Unfortunately, sales figure to compare to “traditional” releases will not be made available to the band; similar in style to the road Radiohead took last fall when the band pioneered this style of release with seventh album In Rainbows.

Nine Inch Nails had eschewed the record label method of releasing albums after numerous problems arose with the band’s previous album Year Zero last year. Much of the strife between band leader Trent Reznor and label Interscope Records, a part of the Universal Music Group, revolved around exorbitant prices for the album in international markets. Reznor deplored the pricing in places like Australia and China where fans were expected to pay the equivalent of $30 for the CD, which sold in the United States for around a third of that price.

The new album was released via the Nine Inch Nails website and utilized the same methods Radiohead had used back in October, albeit with higher bit-rate files. Now that two prominent bands have chosen this route to distribute their new music, perhaps this trend will catch on. Additionally, since it has been released, the album has also been added to Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN)’s MP3 Store.

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Filed under: Other issues, Politics, Housing, Recession

U.S. Rep. Barney Frank, D-Massachusetts and Chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, Thursday introduced legislation to enable the Federal Housing Administration to insure and guarantee mortgages that have been written down banks and other mortgage holders, Rep. Frank announced in a statement.

Rep. Frank’s proposal would permit the FHA to provide up to $300 billion in loan guarantees which could potentially result in the refinance of 1-2 million at-risk mortgages, preventing foreclosures, “protecting neighborhoods and help stabilize the housing market.”

Continue reading U.S. Rep. Frank introduces FHA mortgage assistance plan

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Filed under: After the bell, Yahoo! (YHOO), Amgen Inc (AMGN), Commodities, Oil, S and P 500

If you wanted two situations to describe today’s rally, first you can thank S&P and second you can thank Barney Frank. S&P and Moody’s have had the markets by the you-know-whats, but today they issued a report calling “the end in sight” on write downs.

Congressman Barney Frank was out calling for the FHA to get involved as a mortgage backstop to help one or two million mortgage holders. It is pretty impressive that the market rallied when we simultaneously saw gold hit $1,000/ounce and oil hit $110/barrel. Below are the unofficial closing levels for the markets.

• DJIA 12,145.74 (+35.50; +0.29%)
• S&P500 1,315.48 (+6.71; +0.51%)
• NASDAQ 2,263.61 (+19.74; +0.88%)
• 10 Yr T-Bond 3.534% (+0.051%)
• 52-week stand-out stocks

Continue reading Closing Bell: Frankly S&P……

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Filed under: Products and services, Consumer experience, Time Warner (TWX), Marketing and advertising, Film

The Wall Street Journal reported [subscription required] this morning that Time Warner (NYSE: TWX)’s Warner Bros. Pictures plans to film the adaptation of the seventh “Harry Potter” book in two parts. The first part of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows will be released during the holiday season of 2010 and the second part will follow six months later. A similar proposal was made for the filming of the fourth book, before enough material was cut from the book to facilitate a single film. Warner Bros. Pictures said that filming the book in two parts was “necessary to stay true to the tome.”

The five “Harry Potter” films released thus far have grossed $4.5 billion according to the Journal, and expectations are high that the sixth film, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, will repeat that success when it is released later this year. Current director David Yates will stay on board for the final two installments, after directing the fifth film and the upcoming sixth film. In addition to “staying true to the tome,” WB President Jeff Robinov admitted that “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows is ‘packed with vital plot points’ and that ‘the best way to do the book, and its many fans, justice is to expand the screen adaptation.’”

Clearly, part of the scheme of adding an eighth film to the series is to continue the success the films have seen, as well as the record-breaking sales that the book’s have enjoyed as well. Fans will likely welcome the decision, although not the time lag between the films, and question why similar methods were not taken for the longer fourth and fifth books. At the same time, they may also question the economics of it but the films will likely still do quite well and bring in further revenue that Warner Bros. looks toward.

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Filed under: Books

Why does it cost more money to transfer funds electronically than to send a check? Why don’t school buses have seat belts? Why would a company give employees “free cars” instead of a cash bonus?

If you’ve ever wondered about questions like these — or haven’t but are now finding yourself curious about the answers — Robert H. Frank’s The Economic Naturalist is the book for you. It’s a lot like Freakonomics — and indeed was probably inspired by that book’s success — but has one key advantage: the explanations are shorter, which makes the book a quicker read, and allows space for answers to dozens of enigmas.

Here’s my favorite: Why do women’s clothes always button from the left while mens clothes always button from the right? According to Frank, it’s because when buttons first appeared in the 1600s, only wealthy people could afford them. Back then, wealthy women were dressed by servants so it was easy for right-handed maid to button the lady’s jacket from the left. Men dressed themselves and thus, for the average right-handed man, it was easier for garments to button from the right.

What does this have to do with economics? At its core, Frank argues, economics isn’t about charts, graphs, monetary policy, or even business necessarily. It’s about looking at the world in the context of cost-benefit analysis to try to understand why people do what they do.

If you hated high school or college economics — and you have good reason, as these classes are generally incomprehensible and/or boring — this book may just be the thing to turn you back on to a fascinating topic.

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Filed under: Google (GOOG), Yahoo! (YHOO), Apple Inc (AAPL), Motorola (MOT), Interviews, Sprint Nextel Corp (S), Verizon Communications (VZ), Technology

Wireless companies like Sprint (NYSE: S) and Virgin Mobile (NYSE: VM) are ailing. Yet, at the same time, there are several new entrants into the space, such as Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) and Google (NASDAQ: GOOG).

So, what’s going on? Well, I had a chance to interview Frank Dickson, who is a wireless expert and the Chief Research Officer at MultiMedia Intelligence.

What’s your take on Sprint? Is the industry undergoing some disruptive changes?

We are seeing some disruptive changes on a macro scale. They are not the cause of Sprint’s problems though. The problem with Sprint is self-inflicted, much of which finds its roots in the Nextel merger.

What we have seen of late is a huge movement towards cellular operators becoming bandwidth providers. Voice is quickly becoming a commodity application running over their networks. All the major carriers have announced all the voice minutes that you can eat for $99. Sprint one upped with a super buffet of voice, data, and messaging for $99. The constituencies that most hate the term “dumb pipe” are ironically the entities that are driving the bandwidth provision competition as differentiation based on service offering gives way to price competition.

Continue reading BloggingStocks Interview: Looking at the wild, wild wireless world

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Filed under: General Electric (GE), Time Warner (TWX), Walt Disney (DIS), CBS Corp ‘B’ (CBS), News Corp’B’ (NWS)

Do you remember the old Fox show Beverly Hills, 90210, the one that featured Shannen Doherty and Luke Perry? The CW, a joint venture between CBS (NYSE: CBS) and Time Warner (NYSE: TWX), certainly hopes you do. According to The Hollywood Reporter, an updated spinoff version is in the works by CBS Paramount Network TV.

The late, great TV producer Aaron Spelling gave us the original show back at the beginning of the 90s, and it was one of the programs that really defined and made News Corp. (NYSE: NWS)’s Fox network famous. I do remember the hype and excitement that surrounded the series and its stars; I also remember the controversies with Doherty, and the nepotism with the hiring of Spelling’s daughter, Tori. All in all, it was an interesting project. If The CW can capture the magic of this old idea, then it will prove that mining library product is an efficient way of bringing in the ratings.

It’ll be cool to see how a new set of 90210 brats utilize modern digital devices like YouTube, eBay, text messaging, etc. And it will be interesting to see how this new version fares; I’m sure there are plenty of blogs deriding this notion. But, like I said, this is all about making proper use of intellectual assets. CBS is the owner of Spelling Television’s assets, and it would do well to mine whatever it can to compete against Disney (NYSE: DIS)’s ABC, General Electric (NYSE: GE)’s NBC, and Fox.

Disclosure: Steven Mallas owns Disney and GE; positions can change at any time.

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