Daily Archives: January 6, 2007

Qualcomm Dusts Itself Off, As Verizon Get TV To Go

Stocks:  (QCOM)(NOK)(TXN)(CBS)(VIA)(GE)(NWS)(VZ)

Qualcomm has been under almost constant fire from an array of problems that include it battle of license fees with its largest customer, Nokia, to unfair pricing claims from rival Texas Instruments, to Sprint’s choice of WiMax for its next-generation network.

The big wireless chip company got a win. Verizon will launch a service with several channels that will allow its wireless users to see entire TV shows from networks like CBS, Viacom’s MTC, News Corp’s Fox, and GE’s NBC unit. The system to deliver the high-resolution video will be Qualcomm’s MediaFLO platform. Samsung and LG already make phones that work on the system.

Qualcomm has spent $800 million building out MediaFLO across the US, so it could use a customer. If the Verizon product is a hit with consumers, it would help validate the Qualcomm vision of having a system that delivers high-quality video to handsets.

A recent IDC research survey found that mobile entertainment was not popular amoung US consumers and that price was one of the barriers.

The Verizon deal is nice for Qualcomm, if consumers want it.

Posted on: January 6, 2007 – 1:03 pm in Wireless

If Mercedes Can Sell SUVs, What’s Wrong With The Big Three?

Stocks:  (GM)(DCX)(F)

Mercedes-Benz, the luxury division of DaimlerChrysler, had a unit sales increase of 6.5% to 1.15 million. The reason for the increase was a 86% increase in sale of its big off-road and luxury-van M, R, G, and GL brands. Sales of many of its sedans fell during the year.

That’s insane. In Detroit, sales of SUVs are one of the primary causes for falling US share of the Big Three. It’s tough to reconcile the Mercedes numbers with that.

There are a couple of potential reasons. First, the Mercedes vehicles are more expensive that US counterparts. Perhaps the wealthy do not care about gas prices. But, many rich people are cheap. The parking lots of Costcos are filled with luxury cars.

Another reason might be that the Mercedes SUVs are viewed as better built, but JD Powers results do not put Mercedes quality well ahead of its US counterparts.

Perhaps Ford, GM, and the Chryler unit of DaimlerChrysler can learn something from Mercedes. SUV sales are not down across the board, and there has to be a reason.

Douglas A. McIntyre can be reached at douglasamcintyre@247wallst.com. He does not own securities in companies that he writes about.

Posted on: January 6, 2007 – 12:30 pm in Autos

Saturday Recap for Cramer’s Top 3 Growth Picks for 2007

On Thursday night, Jim Cramer on MAD MONEY made his TOP 3 GROWTH PICKS for 2007:

1)  New York Stock Exchange (NYSE).  NYX ran huge on Friday Jan 5 after this call.
2)  Apple (AAPL)
3)  Cisco Systems (CSCO)

Jon C. Ogg
January 6, 2007

Posted on: January 6, 2007 – 8:20 am in Cramer

Saturday Recap for Cramer’s Top 3 Value Picks for 2007

On this last Wednesday, Cramer gave his TOP 3 VALUE STOCKPICKS for 2007 as the following (with links through to the fulldescriptions):

1) Altria (MO)

2) Goldman Sachs (GS)

3) Halliburton (HAL)

Also, don’t forget that he also predicted 14,582 for the DJIA by the end of the year, up well over 10% from current levels.

Jon C. Ogg
December 6, 2007

Posted on: January 6, 2007 – 8:00 am in Cramer

Saturday Recap for Cramer’s Top 3 Speculative Stock Picks for 2007

On Friday evening on CNBC’s MAD MONEY, Cramer listed his TOP SPECULATIVE STOCKS FOR 2007.  In order these stocks are:

1) Level 3 Communications (LVLT)…He’s been positive on this one for a while, and it rose 6% on Friday and another 4+% in after-hours trading on Friday evening.

2) Rite Aid (RAD)…on the turnaround.

3) Savient Pharma (SVNT)…on the Gout drug in Phase III that may help the stock double.

Jon C. Ogg
January 6, 2007

Posted on: January 6, 2007 – 7:15 am in Cramer

Lightly Coming to Constellation’s Rescue

by Jon C. Ogg

Too bad for Constellation Brands (STZ) this week.  The company lost more than 10% on Thursday after poor earnings from operational issues in the U.K.  It also seems that the influx of Australian wines could be playing part, at least that seems to be affecting many overall wine trends from what restauranteurs and liquor stores have been saying.  Due to a weak stock and due to traders selling losers, the company Stock slid almost 3% again Friday.  So here we sit down 14% from Wednesday at $24.41, very close to the bottom of the $23.32 to $29.17 52-week trading range.  To me the the EPS guidance cut for 2007 to $1.65 to $1.70  (before integration charges, otherwise $1.32-1.38) from $1.72 to $1.76 just doesn’t seen all that bad in the grand scheme of things.  If they only hit the bottom, this generates a forward P/E of roughly 15, which won’t kill any value investors. 

This sell-off seems overdone and longer-term investors can probably start looking back into the stock after Monday or Tuesday of next week, assuming you don’t think that alcoholic beverages are going completely out of vogue.  They won’t have any of my personal consumption business this month, but they’ll have me backk as a customer in February.

It looks like S&P agrees with me here, on the stock that is.  Today they have raised their stock rating to a Buy, although their $31.00 target has been trimmed down to $28.00.

You can see the chart at the end.

January 6, 2007

Stz_chart

Posted on: January 6, 2007 – 6:00 am in Earnings