The price of AMD’s (AMD) shares ignored good news on PC sales from Hewlett-Packard (HPQ), the introduction of a quad-core chip, and a purchase of 8.1% of its shares by the investment arm of Abu Dhabi to fall to a multi-year low of $10.52.
The market still does not think the company can make it, at least not with it current balance sheet and cost base.
Douglas A. McIntyre
Bronchus Technologies, Inc. filed yesterday for an initial public offering of up to $86.25 million for filing purposes. It has the proposed ticker of "LUNG" on NASDAQ, and the lead underwriters are Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns, and co-managers are Jefferies and RBC Capital Markets.
Broncus Technologies is a medical technology company focused on developing and commercializing minimally-invasive medical devices for emphysema and other lung diseases.
"We believe our patented treatment method, Airway Bypass, will be the first minimally-invasive procedure for the treatment of homogeneous, or diffuse, emphysema, the form of the disease experienced by the majority of emphysema patients. We also believe that patients with heterogeneous, or localized, emphysema may also benefit from Airway Bypass. Additionally, we believe that several of our products being developed for Airway Bypass may be used in or adapted for the diagnosis and management of other lung diseases, including pulmonary hypertension and lung cancer."
If you wish to join our open email distribution list we often provide more detailed IPO and spin-off coverage. These are frequently lead-ins to our subscriber-based "Special Situation Investing Newsletter" where we cover buyouts, spin-offs, back-door plays into IPO’s, reorganizations, and more.
Jon C. Ogg
November 21, 2007
Aegerion Pharmaceuticals, Inc. filed Tuesday for an initial public offering of up to $86.25 million in securities for filing purposes. It has the proposed ticker of "AEGR" on NASDAQ, and the underwriting group consists of Piper Jaffray, Thomas Weisel partners, Lazard Capital Markets, and Collins Stewart, LLC.
Aegerion is an emerging biotech company focused on small-molecule therapeutics to treat cardiovascular and metabolic disease. Its lead product candidates, AEGR-733 and AEGR-427, are microsomal triglyceride transfer protein inhibitors, or MTP-Is, which limit secretion of cholesterol and triglycerides from both the intestine and liver.
24/7 Wall St. will have to do some research here because this IPO had originally been filed back in March 2007, but was withdrawn from registration in June.
If you wish to join our open email distribution list we often provide more detailed IPO and spin-off coverage. These are frequently lead-ins to our subscriber-based "Special Situation Investing Newsletter" where we cover buyouts, spin-offs, back-door plays into IPO’s, reorganizations, and more.
Jon C. Ogg
November 21, 2007
Whiting USA Trust I has filed yesterday to sell up to $195 million in units in an initial public offering. This is an Austin-based trust structured in October 2007, and is essentially being sold off by Whiting Petroleum Corporation (NYSE:WLL); and Raymond James is the lead underwriter.
The underlying properties include interests in approximately 3,000 producing wells located in 173 fields in 14 states. As of September 30, 2007, the total proved reserves attributable to the underlying properties, as estimated in the reserve report, were 13.18 MMBOE with a pre-tax PV10% value of $243.5 million. All of these reserves were classified as proved developed producing reserves. For the month of September 2007, the average daily net production from these properties was approximately 4,508 BOE/d or 4,057 BOE/d attributable to the net profits interest and were approximately 55% oil and natural gas liquids and 45% natural gas.
If you wish to join our open email distribution list we often provide more detailed IPO and spin-off coverage. This trust from Whiting and other pending MLP and Trust spin-offs in the oil and gas sector are under review for our subscriber-based "Special Situation Investing Newsletter" where we cover buyouts, spin-offs, back-door plays into IPO’s, reorganizations, and more.
Jon C. Ogg
November 21, 2007
For some reason, you’d think the amount of filings for new IPO’s categorized as blank check companies has been a floodgate.
Accelerated Global Technology Corp., a special purpose acquisition company or SPAC, filed yesterday to sell 30 million units at $10.00, with each unit being 1 share and one warrant.
The underwriters have the option to sell 4.5 million more units. This is coming from Citigroup and Jefferies.
"We are focused on identifying a prospective target business in the technology industry, however, we will not be limited to a specific industry. To date our efforts have been limited to organizational activities as well as activities related to this offering. We do not have any specific initial business combination under consideration."
If you wish to join our open email distribution list we often provide more detailed IPO and spin-off coverage. These are frequently lead-ins to our subscriber-based "Special Situation Investing Newsletter" where we cover buyouts, spin-offs, back-door plays into IPO’s, reorganizations, and more.
Jon C. Ogg
November 21, 2007
Tuesday was a busy IPO FILING date for blank check companies.
Third Wave Acquisition Corp. has filed for an initial public offering to sell 35,000,000 million units to raise $350 million, with each unit consisting of one share and one warrant. Deutsche Bank Securities is listed as the sole lead managing underwriter as of the filing. This is another special purpose acquisition company (or "SPAC") that intends to acquire or merge with an outside company. Its proposed ticker is "TWV" on the American Stock Exchange.
"Our efforts in identifying prospective target businesses will not be limited to a particular industry, but we will not complete a business combination with any target business that is engaged in the real estate, lodging and/or hospitality, energy, or infrastructure industries. We will focus primarily on industries and target businesses that may provide significant opportunity for growth." That is sure descriptive.
"Mr. Sternlicht, our Chairman & CEO, has extensive experience in identifying, negotiating and structuring acquisitions of, and investments in, businesses. Over the past 14 years, Mr. Sternlicht has structured more than 275 separate investment transactions with a cost basis of more than $30 billion. These investments have been made in assets and operating companies across a variety of industries and asset classes, including real estate and lodging, structured finance, power transmission and generation, consumer products, luxury goods, intellectual property, and technology. Mr. Sternlicht is the founder, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Starwood Capital Group, a private investment firm primarily focused in the real estate, lodging and energy infrastructure sectors. In addition to its traditional real estate investment activities, Starwood Capital Group has recently formed Starwood Energy Partners and is a leader in power transmission distribution. Starwood’s funds control the nation’s largest golf course operators, American Golf and Troon Golf. Mr. Sternlicht has pre-existing fiduciary and contractual obligations to Starwood Capital Group, and, pursuant to such obligations, we will not compete for target businesses with Starwood Capital Group or its related investment funds. Additionally, Starwood Capital Group and its related investment funds will not serve as a source of potential acquisition candidates or financing for us."
If you wish to join our open email distribution list we often provide more detailed IPO and spin-off coverage. These are frequently lead-ins to our subscriber-based "Special Situation Investing Newsletter" where we cover buyouts, spin-offs, back-door plays into IPO’s, reorganizations, and more.
Jon C. Ogg
November 21, 2007
Cardtronics Inc. (NASDAQ:CATM) has set the initial range and terms for its IPO. The company is indicated to sell 16.666 million shares of common stock at a price range of $14 to $16 per share, although half of the shares are from the company and half are from senior management and selling shareholders. The underwriting group is rather large: Deutsche Bank, William Blair, Banc of America, JPMorgan, Piper Jaffray, and RBC Capital Markets.
Cardtronics, Inc. claims the world’s largest network of ATMs, with over 31,500 ATMs in merchant locations throughout the U.S., the U.K., and Mexico. Approximately 19,600 of the ATMs are Company-owned and 11,900 are merchant-owned. Over 9,500 of its Company-owned ATMs are under contract with well-known banks to place their logos on those machines and provide surcharge-free access to their customers. Cardtronics also operates the Allpoint network, which sells surcharge-free access to financial institutions that lack a significant ATM network.
outside of the 7-Eleven loss revenues, the company generated pro forma revenues for the 12-months ended Dec. 31, 2006 of $439.3 million and for the 9-months ended Sept. 30, 2007 of $345.7 million. But there is a difference between net and pro forma. Excluding the pro forma effects of the 7-Eleven ATM Transaction, it generated revenues of $293.6 million for the year ended December 31, 2006 and $262.3 million for the 9-months ended September 30, 2007.
The first thing you would say is that this competes against Diebold, Inc. (NYSE:DBD), although the company uses their ATM’s and Diebold actually owns a tiny stake in the company. Diebold is a primary maintenance vendor and Diebold is one of its key ATM suppliers, NCR (NYSE:NCR) is also a primary maintenance vendor and is also an ATM supplier to the company.
We had reviewed this for a potential special situation investing newsletter pick in the past around the filing, but Diebold couldn’t really be looked at as a back-door plays as it didn’t have a significant enough of a stake; and NCR was going through its own special situation in its spin-off of Teradata (NYSE:TDC).
We frequently send out more data to our open and free email distribution list, and we also cover similar situations in the special situation investing newsletter.
Jon C. Ogg
November 21, 2007
comScore, Inc. (NASDAQ:SCOR) has only been public since June of this year, and it is and insiders are already tapping the public markets for cash. In a filing this morning comScore filed to sell 6,052,453 shares in a secondary offering. Of the shares being sold, only 1,344,809 shares of common stock are coming from the company itself and selling stockholders are selling 4,707,644 shares. That number is too skewed to be that well received by the market.
This should take this one off anyone’s radar that was hoping for a buyout in the near future, and this will take care of the status on our own 24/7 Wall St. Small Cap Internet Watch List as any sort of potential buyout target any time in the near future. The underwriting group is huge: Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, Jefferies, William Blair, Friedman Billings Ramsey, Needham, ThinkEquity, and Signal Hill.
We have screened this and reviewed it for our own Special Situation Investing Newsletter and for our "Old Media/New Media" letter, but this one won’t be under review for a while now.
comScore’s ratings and rankings have become quite popular on WallStreet and on Silicon Valley’s Main Street. But this is accessing thecapital markets too soon. comScore closed at $28.74 yesterday, and the52-week trading range is $19.70 to $42.00. Shares are down over 1.5%at the open in reaction.
Jon C. Ogg
November 21, 2007
This morning Crocs, Inc. (NASDAQ:CROX) announced it will open retail stores in Boston and New York City on Friday, November 23rd, its first East Coast locations.
As an extra incentive to come buy at the stores, Crocs will give away a CD featuring up-and-coming artists to the first 3,000 customers who try on a pair of newly launched YOU by Crocs™ shoes at each location. Crocs already has more than 25 company stores worldwide, but here are the new locations:
Pure play stores like this can be phenomenal successes, and they can be the perfect tell for when a trend is at the end. That may not be the case yet, but it’s days of massively beating and exceeding guidance have been deemed as behind it if you have watched the stock fall from $75.00 to under $40.00 after a meteoric rise. For some reason I am not that impressed here, and with another 3% drop pre-market to $37.36 it doesn’t look like Wall Street is that impressed either.
Jon C. Ogg
November 21, 2007
Deere (DE) announced worldwide net income of $422.1 million, or $1.88 per share, for the fourth quarter ended October 31, compared with $277.3 million, or $1.20 per share, for the same period last year.
Worldwide net sales and revenues increased 20 percent to $6.141 billion for the fourth quarter. Net sales of the worldwide equipment operations increased 21 percent for the quarter
Wall St. expected EPE of $1.55 on revenue of $5.8 billion.
Company equipment sales are projected to increase by about 12 percent for the full year and to be up approximately 25 percent for the first quarter of 2008. Deere’s net income is forecast to be about $2.1 billion for 2008 and about $325 million for the first quarter.
Shares were up about 2% in the pre-market
Douglas A. McIntyre
These aren’t the only analyst calls out there today, but these are the TOP 10 research notes that 24/7 Wall St. is looking at:
Jon C. Ogg
November 21, 2007
Everyone else has an Apple (AAPL) iPhone killer, so why not Research In Motion (RIMM)?
According to Unstrung.com, called the "9000 series". "The 9000 is supposed to be a touch-screen device, very similar in form factor to the iPhone," CarolLevy of AR Communications says. "Which means that it is not an enterprise-friendly device."
"The 9000 series will break from the traditional half-screen, half-keyboard look of the BlackBerry. The handsets will also incorporate an upgraded multimedia system, along with the standard push email capabilities. Better MP3 and video capabilities are crucial if RIM is to take on Apple, Google, and others."
Douglas A. McIntyre
According to ValleyWag, the Microsoft (MSFT) Zune has the top spot among digital media players on Amazon (AMZN). That would put it ahead of the Apple (AAPL) iPod for the first time.
Rumor is that Steve Jobs is buying tens of thousand of Zunes to test them for defects.
Douglas A. McIntyre
As 24/7 Wall St. pointed out yesterday, financial matter are getting dire at newspaper chain McClatchy (MNI). October sales were off almost 10%. The stock hit a 52-week low of $14.07 on the news. The 52-week high is $43.70.
This morning Bear Stearns (BSC) initiated coverage of the newspaper company at "underperform".
Douglas A. McIntyre
Read the 24/7 Wall St. "New Media" newsletter and follow our opinions on companies from Google to AT&T to the New York Times, Viacom, and News Corp.
Management at GM (GM) says that November sales are on track. With the stock at a 52-week low, that may be a relief for investors. And, it could cause the stock to move back up.
"We are looking at the numbers for November and we are making our numbers," Bob Lutz, GM’s chief of global product development told Reuters.
Douglas A. McIntyre
According to comScore, online sales are up 17% for the period from November 1 to November 18, hitting $7.04 billion. With same-store sales down at many retailers, buying action may be moving online, a sign that holiday season activity may not be as bad as Wall St .assumes.
In mid-November sales accelerated to 20% over the same period last year.
According to comScore data, TheStreet.com (TSCM) scored one of the largest increases in unique visitors of all US sites measure in October. Total unquie visitors to TheStreet websites grew 125% to almost 9 million.
Why? One theory might be that the "social network" section of TheStreet, Stocpickr, may be catching on very fast and adding pageviews and visitors. The product is promoted on every page at the parent website.
Another reason may be increased traffic to financial websites in general. comScore indicates that most discount brokerage websites also saw big increases in unique visitors. With Wall St. more volatile, financial websites may gain a big benefit
Douglas A. McIntyre
Buy-out firms like KKR and Blackstone (BX) are buying back the debt that their banks took on for LBOs over the last nine months. Big commercial banks like Citigroup and JP Morgna (JPM) put out these large loans so that the private equity firms could make out-sized deals. Then, when the credit markets got bad, the banks could not sell the loans to other institutions.
But, KKR will buy them back, and borrow money from the banks to do it. According to Bloomberg: "After sticking banks with more than $300 billion of leveraged buyout debt, New York-based Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co., Schwarzman’s Blackstone Group LP and Black’s Apollo Management LP are raising money for collateralized loan obligations that will buy the assets for as little as 95 cents on the dollar."
The news service adds" Kravis, Schwarzman and Black are taking advantage of the banks’ predicament, offering to buy the loans at a discount. The lenders, which reported more than $50 billion of losses and writedowns, are even providing financing to buy the loans."
There ought to be a law against this. Banks get to unload debt that makes their balance sheet look bad and gives out loans to make it happen.
Sounds like incest.
Douglas A. McIntyre
The Wall Street Journal makes the point that the markets are starting to turn against share buy-backs. And, in the case of companies like Fannie Mae (FNM) or Freddie Mac (FRE), that may make sense. But, most shares buy-backs are still a good deal for stock holders as companies that have large cash position and stocks that may be down. Or, companies that simply have more cash than they can ever use.
Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) has certainly made a good decision to bring in shares. It throws off huge amounts of cash and the move increases EPS. Target (TGT) is not dong well, but with a strong balance sheet, it can bring in shares which its board thinks are cheap now. When retail rebounds, they are likely to look smart.
Share buy-backs are actually likely to increase if the market drops more. Companies with the money will view their shares as the best deal in town. And, that is not a bad way to get rid of some cash that earns 5% in the bank.
Douglas A. McIntyre
Markets in Europe were off sharply.
The FTSE fell 1.5% to 6,131. Barclays (BCS) fell 3.6% to 497.75. Northern Rock fell 11.9% to 85.5. Vodafone (VOD) fell 3.1% to 186.6.
The DAXX was off 1.9% to 7,487. Commerzbank fell 3.7% to 24.18. Metro fell 3.7% to 61.95.
The CAC 40 fell 2.1% to 5,393. Alcatel-Lucent (ALU) fell 5.7% to 4.98. Societe Generale fell 4.3% to 96.25.
Data from Reuters
Douglas A. McIntyre
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