Tivo (TIVO) got its start as the original digital video recording device company. Consumer electronics hobbyists bought Tivos by the hundreds of thousands to put on top of their TVs to record shows to be watched later.
Tivo’s business suffered when the DVR function was adopted by cable and satellite-TV set-top boxes, and the originator of the technology languished, as is so often the case. Read More
JetBlue Airways Corporation (NASDAQ: JBLU) has announced that it intends to offer some 20 million shares of common stock. It also plans to offer an aggregate of $150 million in convertible debentures in two series.
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Green Mountain Coffee Roasters, Inc. (NASDAQ: GMCR) has nearly defied logic, even for a market where the news has become irrelevant and bad news and good news alike lead to the conclusion of “…. and therefore you should buy.” The coffee stock craze has helped Green Mountain have a phenomenal year, but the moves in other coffee-related stocks has been unmatched. Diedrich Coffee Inc. (NASDAQ: DDRX) is one of the market’s top performers now, and the share performance has been unbelievable in Caribou Coffee Company, Inc. (NASDAQ: CBOU), Peet’s Coffee & Tea, Inc. (NASDAQ: PEET), and Coffee Holding Co.Inc. (NYSE Alternext: JVA). The interest in the sector has been strong enough that even Starbucks Corp. (NASDAQ: SBUX) hit a high not seen since last September.
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GM (GM) is supposed to the poorly managed bankrupt car company that has trouble producing vehicles that the domestic market will buy. Toyota (TM) is the nibble competitor with the fuel-efficient and defect-free vehicles that attract buyers in droves.
Somehow the math for car sales in May did not bear out the images that the two companies have. Toyota’s sales fell 41% to 152,583. GM’s sales were only down 29% to 190,881.
Honda (HMC), which also enjoys a reputation for quality and fuel-efficiency, had a 42% drop in domestic sales to 98,344.
Maybe “Buy American” is back in vogue.
Douglas A. McIntyre
It’s a shame Twitter has not figured out a way to bring in revenue. According to audience research firm Nielsen, the number of minutes spent on Twitter by its users moved up 3,712% to 300 million in April compared with the same month in 2008.
Twitter is still small in comparison to Facebook. Users of the social networking site spent 13.9 billion minutes there in April up 699%. Industry insiders say Facebook’s revenue will only be $500 million this year which says a lot about the possibility that social networks may end up being very large, commercially impaired businesses.
Douglas A. McIntrye
There is rather a large amount of buzz out there, and perhaps some confusion, today about Acer’s use of the Android operating system from Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) for netbooks. Acer will begin selling netbooks in the third quarter of this year that use Android. Most netbooks today come with Windows XP on them, which is of course from Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ: MSFT). Dell Inc. (NASDAQ: DELL) already has a netbook running without Windows.
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Loral Space & Communications Inc. (NASDAQ: LORL) has just filed to sell close to $300 million worth of voting and non-voting shares of common stock in an SEC filing. The break-down is voting common stock of 954,613 shares and non-voting common stock 9,505,673 shares. The registration is on behalf of selling shareholders, so none of the proceeds will end up in Loral’s coffers. The selling stockholders will pay any underwriting fees, discounts or commissions and applicable transfer taxes incurred for the sale of these shares. In this case, the selling holder(s) are related entities of Loral’s non-executive chairman.
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There has been an ongoing war between those who think short selling should be allowed under any circumstances and those who want the practice curbed. That argument is likely to heat up again based upon a press release this morning from none other than Jim Cramer, along with investors Eric Oberg, William Furber, and Scott Rothbort. These investors have presented the Securities and Exchange Commission with a petition signed by 5,691 individuals calling for reinstatement of the Uptick Rule.
The petition was hosted by TheStreet.com, which Cramer co-founded, and you have undoubtedly heard Cramer make the same case on CNBC or perhaps on other websites such as BloggingStocks.com from AOL.
The waves of capital raising continues. American Express Company (NYSE: AXP), JPMorgan Chase & Co. (NYSE: JPM), Morgan Stanley (NYSE: MS), and Bank of America Corporation (NYSE: BAC) are just the leading financial institutions which have announced new capital raising efforts. The price tag is massive when you add these up: almost $15 billion.
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Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) has received much publicity from its e-book reader, the Kindle. It has also taken criticism. Sony Corp. (NYSE: SNE) has let its e-book reader get lapped up in the wake as yet another great entrance into a market that looks like it is getting away. The notion that Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) was getting into the game of e-book readers was yet another tell that there might actually be a business here beyond a tiny niche market. But if you are still having doubts, then ask yourself why the back-end companies behind the e-book movement are starting to merge.
Taiwan’s Prime View International announced late yesterday that it is making a small acquisition of a company called E Ink Corp. This buyout is for $215 million, and the reason is simple: E Ink hold some of the key patents needed by e-book readers, mainly in their displays and the look of ink on paper.
Duoyuan Global Water Inc. has filed as a foreign issuer to come public in the U.S. via an initial public offering. The proposed offering is for up to $86,250,000 via the sale of 5,000,000 American Depositary Shares which represent 10,000,000 Ordinary shares. The stock has the proposed ticker of “DGW” on NYSE, and an initial price range was set at $13.00 to $15.00.
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These are the top pre-market analyst upgrades and positive research calls we have seen from Wall Street this Tuesday morning:
Allergan (AGN) Raised to Overweight at Thomas Weisel.
China Unicom (CHU) Raised to Buy at UBS.
Endo Pharmaceuticals (ENDP) Started as Overweight at Thomas Weisel.
Fluor (FLR) Started as Outperform at Baird.
General Dynamics (GD) Started as Outperform at Morgan Keegan.
Lockheed Martin (LMT) Started as Outperform at Morgan Keegan.
MDS Inc. (MDZ) Raised to Buy at Jefferies.
NetLogic (NETL) Raised to Buy at Piper Jaffray.
Nuvasive (NUVA) Raised to Buy at Needham.
Shaw Group (SGR) Started as Outperform at Baird.
JON C. OGG
These are the top pre-market analyst downgrades and cautious research calls we have seen from Wall Street early this Tuesday morning:
Ascent Solar (ASTI) Cut to Neutral at Merriman Curhan Ford.
Bankrate (RATE) Cut to Hold at Citigroup.
China Mobile (CHL) Removed from Conviction Buy List at Goldman Sachs.
Juniper Networks (JNPR) Cut to Neutral at UBS.
Mechel (MTL) Cut to Equal Weight at Morgan Stanley.
Sinopec (SNP) Removed from Conviction Buy List at Goldman Sachs.
Total (TOT) Cut to Hold at Citigroup.
JON C. OGG
Abu Dhabi investors plan to sell their stake in Barclays (BCS) for about $6.8 billion. They have only had the shares a year but their return is likely to be more than 50%. The news pushed shares in the British financial firm down by nearly 20%.
The action raises the question of how quickly shareholders with positions in other large banks will take the exit door to lock in gains. Read More
There are enough smart financiers and former Wall St. veterans in the Treasury Department so that the staff there should know how to hedge a bet. The Administration has taken the extremely risky position of holding stakes in and loaning money to bankrupt American car companies GM (GM) and Chrysler. The taxpayers will never see a dime of that money back if the two companies cannot keep their costs down and produce cars that can compete with successful vehicles made by firms based outside the US.
GM and Chrysler also have to pray that oil prices will not continue to rise throughout the year, undercutting the ability of consumers and businesses to drive more than they absolutely have to. Read More
The Wall Street Journal reports that five executives who left Citigroup (C) will not get the balance of their severance payments which total several million dollars. The reason behind the action is that the bank does not want to look bad to the government and the public.
The tremendous compensation packages handed out by Wall St. firms continue to be a source of tension for banks and Citi hopes to get the issue behind it. Read More
The debut of the new Microsoft (MSFT) search technology Bing was greeted by mostly positive reviews. The only legitimate complaint about the launch is that the world’s largest software company announced the product before it was ready to be shown to the public, wasting the opportunity to get a great deal of free traffic to the new Bing site. Microsoft will spend between $80 million and $100 million on the campaign to introduce the product. Redmond will have to spend several billion more if it wants to make significant progress against Google’s (GOOG) US share of 66% and Yahoo!’s (YHOO) 21% of the market. Read More
There may be some exceptions to the rule that crude and the stock market both trade substantially higher for a long period of time. The price of oil is bound to be seen as a harbinger of inflation and the enemy of consumer and business discretionary spending. Households paying $3 for gas are not likely to return to malls and showrooms. Airlines, truckers, and firms that rely on oil and petrochemicals will have narrowing margins or, in some cases, growing losses, if oil continues to rise at what has been a remarkable pace. Read More
Reuters: Global consumer confidence is improving.
Reuters: GM (GM) filed for Chapter 11 and expects a quick exit.
Reuters: Most US retailers probably had sales drop in May.
Reuters: China gave Geithner backing for the US programs to stimulate the economy. Read More
Markets in Asia were mixed.
The Nikkei was up .3% to 9,704.
The Hang Seng dropped 2.8% to 18,381.
The Shanghai Composite rose .1% to 2,724.
At the open in Europe, the FTSE was down 1.2% to 4,451. The Dax fell .6% to 5,111. The CAC 40 dropped .8% to 3,351.
Data from Reuters and MarketWatch.
Douglas A. McIntyre
| Today’s top tickerspy Indexes | |
| Coffee Stocks | +16.3% |
| Hotel Stocks | +9.0% |
| 2009 IPOs | +8.2% |
| Education Stocks | +4.7% |
| Coal Stocks | +4.4% |
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