Sources vary from all over the web, and mainstream media articles often have different figures when they are close together in time.  Official sales data is not updated all the time.  Still, the $30 billion franchise value is heading up now because of the 3D launch of ”Star Wars: The Phantom Menace” as the (probable) first but not last of the Star Wars remakes coming in 3D.

The relaunch of the movie franchise in 3D is likely to boost the franchise’s value much more when you count ticket sales, and then tally up merchandise sales, new media sales, product sales and more.  Box Office Mojo noted that The Phantom Menace in 3D is going to appear in 2,655 theaters.  Throw in the intellectual property values and future sales, and the value will head far north of $30 billion. 

It was just in 2007 that Forbes noted, “Star Wars’ initial release was followed by another five blockbuster films and a mini-industry of tapes and DVDs, toys, video games and books. Taken together over its 30 years of cultural dominance, the Star Wars franchise has earned more than $22 billion.”   Another figure in late 2011 put the total Star Wars franchise value at a whopping $27 billion from Statistic Brain (using Forbes and Lucasfilm data).  We also have gathered more recent data than those prior calculations.

Star Wars creator George Lucas is now a multi-billionaire.  The Forbes wealthiest 400 list puts Lucas at a net worth of $3.2 billion in its September 2011 report and that is lower than the $3.6 billion in a prior report.

Read Also: The Most Valuable Film Franchises of All-Time

Another 2007 figure used by Forbes was a monstrous $9 billion in toys with another $1.6 billion at the time having been generated by Star Wars video games.  More toys have sold since then, and more video game sales have been seen.

Brand new data from Electronic Arts Inc. (NASDAQ: ERTS) shows over 2 million MMORPG have sold of ‘Star Wars: The Old Republic’ through the end of January with some 1.7 million online users.  Taking just half of the users with a two-month average life of subscriber dollars comes to $180 million in total revenues between sales and subscriptions in just the first quarter of 2012.  Then there will be the tail revenue stream from loyalists and those in the next upgrade coming soon, generating millions of dollars more each month. If the success remains, a business mind would easily predict another MMORPG sale in the future.

Lucas Licensing of Lucasfilms has noted over $20 billion in consumer sales worldwide.  This includes Hasbro, Inc. (NASDAQ: HAS) and Kenner toys, merchandise sold, over 100 million books sold (with over 80 New York Times best sellers), museum exhibitions, apparel, consumer electronics, housewares, and the endless lines of other products.  The $20 billion figure has been used for quite some time as well by Lucasfilm on its site.  Imagine the sales that will soon be counted if you just looked at the major retail store websites: Toys R Us had 603 items; WalMart had 539 items; and Target had 800 items.

The Total Value of Star Wars Today…

• $4.27 Billion in worldwide box office sales (See full chart below), not adjusted for ticket price hikes in today’s dollars
• $20 billion in Licensing sales (toys, books, apparel, consumer products, and on)
• $3 billion in video games (over 100 million units sold)
• $2.5 billion, and climbing, in DVD sales
• $800 million (or more) and climbing in movie rentals (going from DVD back to VHS and even Betamax)

THE GRAND TOTAL… $30.57 BILLION, and growing…

Forget about the $30.5 billion in total sales so far.  That assumes that all sales suddenly stop in the next few weeks. We will not count the $3.2 billion in net worth of George Lucas because that is a personal net worth even if there is overlap in some of the areas we would cover.

What is interesting is that Taleo was not even part of this cloud ETF, and many of the ETFs components are not exactly all cloud space players.  Is it fair to lump in all cloud players as targets when one is software and one is hardware?  Be advised, there are some stocks which have had buyout rumors in the past listed below but there are no current rumors we have heard.

Here is the weighting of the cloud ETF’s more cloud-centric companies, with the most recent weightings and some commentary on some of the names:

Equinix, Inc. (NASDAQ: EQIX) 3.80%…probably too expensive to acquire now on valuation metrics and with a $6.1 billion market cap.

Akamai Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ:: AKAM) 3.72%… surged after earnings, now unlikely to be bought on the cheap by would be acquirers.  

Rackspace Hosting, Inc. (NYSE: RAX) 3.39%… has been called a buyout candidate before but the company’s line is that it wants to remain independent.

Teradata Corporation (NYSE: TDC) 3.35%… still considered a special situation by some investors but no buyout rumors have proven true, and shares are up big after earnings.

NetApp, Inc. (NASDAQ: NTAP) 3.22%… “The one that got away.”  This used to be a buyout dream stock, but valuation got in the way.  Now at over $14 billion the time may have come and gone.

Salesforce.com, Inc. (NYSE: CRM) 3.08%… way too expensive to acquire on a valuation basis.  Cloud is everywhere here in effect as a great benefit, but this one is diversified into CRM and SaaS.

Where this gets interesting is that Taleo is a human resources software maker and perhaps not just cloud software as some of the media headlines would have suggested.  The 18% premium also suggests that paying up for the cloud players is only a limited value.

Just because one buyer buys a loose cloud play in software does not translate to buyouts in hardware. 

JON C. OGG

The casino and resort giant sold 1,811,313 shares of its common stock at $9.00 per share to raise gross proceeds of about $16 million before fees and discounts.  Keep in mind that this is the Harrah’s-Caesars deal which was a $15 billion buyout back at the peak of private equity.

$16 million… $15 billion… $28 billion.  Whatever it boils down to…  The figure we were counting on was up to $223.4 million in additional stock, the overwhelming majority of which would be coming from private equity owners. Apollo Global Management, LLC (NYSE: APO) is not even reacting positively to the news with a 0.8% drop down to $14.97 so far today, probably because it is not selling shares.  Paulson & Co. has the right to sell along with affiliated groups of Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (NYSE: GS).

Even a $500 million offering could have set the pace for up to a decade for all of the backers to exit their positions.

The reason that the company chose this model is likely to keep an initial higher value for a limited share float.  That establishes a fair market value that is probably higher than if the firms all sold shares in a huge offering for the market to absorb.  It allows private equity firms to liquidate in batches and it also gives those private equity firms an ability to peg a true market value to the shares rather than a theoretical value of the shares based solely upon other casino stock values.

Our take: The private equity firms should dismantled the assets into separate companies and sold them off or brought them public as smaller casino properties.

In some manner of speaking, this is far less transparent than exactly the ‘unlocking of Singapore and Macau’ values from Wynn Resorts, Limited (NASDAQ: WYNN) and Las Vegas Sands Corporation (NYSE: LVS).

Does us calling it a sham of an IPO mean that it will flop?  Not at all.  As we are publishing this, the value is up 50% from the $9.00 pricing at $13.70 on almost 3.9 million shares.  With such a low float, who knows how high it could go.  Still, if you are a ‘widows and orphans’ investor you probably better look elsewhere.

At least this IPO did not launch on the Ides of March.

JON C. OGG

Jon Marino of PEHub.com noted that P.E. firms are hiring and referenced a follow-up report for BDO USA’s third annual private equity “PErspective” report… 57% of private equity executives increased professional staffing and 62% plan to hire again this year.  This is a complete reversal from the layoff waves of prior years.  Here is more detail from that report.

Whether you like millionaires or billionaires or hate them, the one aspect that is so unfairly portrayed about companies bought by private equity firms is as follows: Most businesses bought by private equity firms need to be turned around or need to be run better.  Sure, they get leveraged up and they scrap inefficient operations.  The dirty secret that private equity firms are not defending enough is that many of these companies would have headed for bankruptcy in the long-term if they had not stepped in.  If that results in a liquidation rather than a pure bankruptcy, guess how many jobs get lost at those companies… all of them, rather than some.

The business sector is not just a one-way street.  Companies hire workers in good times and most fire in bad times.  We even ran our own 2011 Layoff Kings.

JON C. OGG

While Facebook has said that it is choosing the “FB” stock ticker, it did not specify whether or not the NYSE or NASDAQ would get the listing.  Keep in mind that Mark Zuckerberg is where the buck stops if you evaluate the share structure.

Be advised that there is a dual-class of stock with A shares and B shares.  Each share of Class A common stock is entitled to one vote per share. Each share of Class B common stock is entitled to ten votes per share and is convertible at any time into one share of Class A common stock.

The underwriting group is as follows: lead book-runners are Morgan Stanley, J.P. Morgan, and Goldman Sachs; co-managers are BofA/Merrill Lynch, Barclays Capital, and Allen & Company.

BASIC STATS:

• 845 million monthly active users,
• 2.7 billion likes and comments per day,
• 250 million photos uploaded per day,
• and 100 billion friendships.
• The company also has 483 million daily active users.
• It also had roughly 3200 employees as of December 31.

Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ: MSFT) is listed as a competitor and it is an owner, while Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) is not an owner and is listed as a key competitor.  Twitter is competitor.  As a reminder, GSV Capital Corporation (NASDAQ: GSVC) is an owner of stock as well.  Interpublic Group of Companies, Inc. (NYSE: IPG) still owns a small stake as well.

We are now finally getting to see at least some of the preliminary figures from Facebook to use for financial analysis:

• 2009 revenues $777M, $122M net income for shareholders;
• 2010 revenues $1.974B, $372M net income for shareholders;
• 2011 revenues $3.711B, $668M net income for shareholders.
• The company’s cash and marketable securities at the end of 2011 was $3.908 billion.

Zynga Inc. (NASDAQ: ZNGA) accounted for about 12% of 2011 total revenues for Facebook.

Mark Zuckerberg owns 28.4% of the total voting power, but he has a proxy over insider shares that gives him 56.9% of the total voting power.  Other big holders are James Breyer at 11.4% and Peter A. Thiel at 2.5%.  Large Class B share holders (1 million or more shares) are Sheryl Sandberg, David Ebersman, Mike Schroepfer. Theodore Ullyor, Marc Andreesson…

T. Rowe Price Associates, Inc. (NASDAQ: TROW) owns over 6 million class A shares and affiliates of Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (NYSE: GS) own over 65.9 million Class A shares.

As of December 31, 2011 there were outstanding:

• 117,097,143 shares of our Class A common stock held by approximately 110 stockholders;
• 1,758,902,390 shares of our Class B common stock held by approximately 1,070 stockholders;
• 258,539,434 shares issuable upon exercise of outstanding stock options;
• 378,772,184 shares subject to outstanding restricted stock units (RSUs).

RISK FACTORS AS FOLLOWS:

• “If we fail to retain existing users or add new users, or if our users decrease their level of engagement with Facebook, our revenue, financial results, and business may be significantly harmed;”
• “We generate a substantial majority of our revenue from advertising. The loss of advertisers, or reduction in spending by advertisers with Facebook, could seriously harm our business;”
• “Growth in use of Facebook through our mobile products, where we do not currently display ads, as a substitute for use on personal computers may negatively affect our revenue and financial results;”
• “Facebook user growth and engagement on mobile devices depend upon effective operation with mobile operating systems, networks, and standards that we do not control;”
• “We may not be successful in our efforts to grow and further monetize the Facebook Platform;”
• “Our business is highly competitive, and competition presents an ongoing threat to the success of our business;”
• “Improper access to or disclosure of our users’ information could harm our reputation and adversely affect our business;”
• “Our business is subject to complex and evolving U.S. and foreign laws and regulations regarding privacy, data protection, and other matters. Many of these laws and regulations are subject to change and uncertain interpretation, and could harm our business;”
• “Our CEO has control over key decision making as a result of his control of a majority of our voting stock;”
• “The loss of Mark Zuckerberg, Sheryl K. Sandberg, or other key personnel could harm our business;”
• “We anticipate that we will expend substantial funds in connection with tax withholding and remittance obligations related to the initial settlement of our restricted stock units (RSUs) approximately six months following our initial public offering;”
• “The market price of our Class A common stock may be volatile or may decline, and you may not be able to resell your shares at or above the initial public offering price;”
• “Substantial blocks of our total outstanding shares may be sold into the market as “lock-up” periods end, as further described in “Shares Eligible for Future Sale.” If there are substantial sales of shares of our common stock, the price of our Class A common stock could decline.”

Again, the Top 17 IPOs to Watch in 2012 is here.

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JON C. OGG

The full S-1 SEC FILING is here.  PS… The traffic to the SEC.gov website was severely limited for almost an hour due to excessive traffic flooding the site due to readers wanting to read the Facebook S-1.

January 2012 is the first time in memory that two different samples of the T206 Wagner card have been for sale in the same month.  If you have nearly unlimited means, a T206 Wagner can end up in your collection right now.  Another T206 Wagner just sold in early January.

Published reports indicate that there may be 50 to 100 samples of the T206 Honus Wagner that exist, but there may only be around 50 in existence after speaking with industry sources.  A sale of $2.8 million for the “Wayne Gretzky” T206 Honus Wagner in 2007 set a record, and that was after the exact same card had been bought for about $2.35 million earlier that same year. 

The reason this card is so rare is known as Honus Wagner decided to have the American Tobacco Company withdraw his card from the T206 series.  The “why” this card is so rare remains a debate even today.  Only a limited number of this card made it out into the public, or at least only a few which are known to have survived.  In the late 1800s and early 1900s, baseball cards were promotional inserts for cigarettes packs and tobacco packages, as well as made for other products.  They were far from being kids’ bubble gum cards that later generations would come to cherish.

The most common belief is that Wagner was anti-tobacco and did not want his image promoting cigarettes and tobacco products to children.  Maybe, but Maybe not.  This may have simply been a contract dispute over compensation or terms.  Here is the argument for the latter case… Honus Wagner’s image appeared on cigar boxes in some of the same years around the debated time of 1909 to 1911 when the T206 cards were distributed.  Robert Edwards Auctions has auctioned two such cigar boxes in recent years, and the Baseball Almanac shows these images as well.

While most baseball cards rise and fall in value and can be very cyclical, that just has not been the case for a T206 Honus Wagner.  As it turns out, there are millions of people who collect baseball cards and memorabilia or who have collected in their lives.  The Wall Street Journal reported in mid-2011 that there were 3.1 million millionaires in 2010.  And the same report showed over 40,000 in North America worth $30 million or more.  Some of these people are still collectors and there is no greater prize in sports collecting than being able to flaunt a T206 Wagner.

It was not very well covered in the media, but a T206 Honus Wagner from the famed Dreier collection just sold in early January 2012 through Legendary Auctions.  It was graded by PSA, one of the industry-recognized grading services and the grading brand of Collectors Universe, Inc. (NASDAQ: CLCT).  It was graded as a “4″ (on a scale of 1 to 10).  This famed T206 Wagner sold for an undisclosed sum.  After speaking with Doug Allen of Legendary, it was a privately negotiated transaction.  Mr. Allen would not disclose the buyer nor could we get an exact price, but he quoted, “The sale was for more than $1.5 million.”  An incredible sum indeed. 

Now there is another sample of the card for sale right now, for a hefty price.  Memory Lane has a “PSA 2″ graded T206 Wagner for sale today for a whopping $775,000.00.  It is even advertised on eBay Inc. (NASDAQ: EBAY) as item #290661465614.  After speaking with J. P. Cohen of Memory Lane, this is card is on consignment and had previously been for sale at a higher price and the new price is said to be close to where offers came in for this exact card last year.

These two samples are not the only T206 Honus Wagner cards which have been sold in recent times.  A unique sample was a proof strip from the T206 set which actually belonged to Honus Wagner himself.  This was purchased at the Major League Baseball All-Star Auction by SCP Auctions (for an anonymous client) for the sum of $316,250 in 2010.  It was also SCP Auctions Inc. which brokered the record $2.8 million sale mentioned earlier of the prized Gretzky T206 Wagner.

Pep Boys has been the weakest performer in the auto parts retail business for the past year. It’s share price has fallen by more than -13% in the past 12 months, while competitors Autozone Inc. (NYSE: AZO), Advance Auto Parts Inc. (NYSE: AAP), and O’Reilly Automotive Inc. (NASDAQ: ORLY) have risen by 38%, 17%, and 46%, respectively.

Under terms of the agreement, Pep Boys has a 45-day period in which it is free to seek other offers. The deal is expected to close in the second quarter.

Pep Boys has suspended its quarterly dividend and will file a quarterly report with the SEC, but has cancelled its conference call.

It makes you wonder how far behind a potential blockage of the Medco Health Solutions Inc. (NYSE: MHS) and Express Scripts Inc. (NASDAQ: ESRX) merger is.  Express Scripts is the would-be acquirer and the deal has been heavily criticized by many watch groups and we have noted how wide the merger-arbitrage spread is.  The blocked AT&T Inc. (NYSE: T) acquisition of T-Mobile started (or added to) much of the blocking concerns from investors.

The FTC issued a complaint to block the hostile acquisition of the rival long-term care pharmacy provider alleging that this combination of the two largest U.S. long-term care pharmacies would harm competition and also because the merger would allow Omnicare to raise the price of drugs for Medicare Part D consumers and others.  As noted (full release):

“If Omnicare is allowed to purchase its biggest and only national competitor, it will diminish competition and raise health care costs – leaving taxpayers and patients to foot the bill,” said Richard Feinstein, Director of the FTC’s Bureau of Competition. “The Bureau will continue to be vigilant in our efforts to prevent these sorts of anticompetitive deals.”

JON C. OGG

The Micromet deal is valued at $11.00 per share.  This was a 33% premium to the prior close and shares closed up 32% at $10.94.  The prior 52-week range was $4.13 to $8.90.  Unfortunately for M&A arbitrage players, this deal offers no real upside in an arb-spread and it seems unlikely that a higher bid is coming based upon its share price never having gone above $11.00 today.  That buyout is on the heels of a deal signed last year where Amgen agreed to an upfront payment for a discovery and development deal.  Amgen is indicated around $69 after turning in 3% sales growth after the close.

Avila Therapeutics is a developer of covalent drugs in cancer and this $925 million buyout from Celgene is a cash and stock deal with $350 million of the total coming in cash.  This company has AVL-292 as a inhibitor now in Phase I studies.  Celgene shares are around $72.65 and are also with striking distance of a 52-week high ($75.11).

It is interesting that with two deals already having been announced in the last 24-hours that the iShares Nasdaq Biotechnology (NASDAQ: IBB) ETF was down by almost 1% at $114.71 on a day when there were two deals on the heels of another large premium acquisition this week.

JON C. OGG

Yahoo!’s revenue fell 13% to $1.324 billion in the fourth quarter. Net income dropped 5% to $296 million. Even with its new CEO, almost no one who watches the company thinks there is a solution to the ongoing shrinkage of sales.

Yahoo! will somehow add cash, perhaps over $10 billion, to its balance sheet through the sale or spinoff of Yahoo! Japan and its stake in Alibaba. The means by which it will handle those transactions are still an open question because of tax issues and the difficulties of negotiations with the two Asian companies. Neither of them has to make a transaction with Yahoo! now.

MSN and Aol already have huge online audiences. They have to find ways to increase sales from these visitors, but there is no proof that combining with Yahoo! will do that.

Companies that lack the scale that they need to augment their traditional media sales with larger online ones would find Yahoo! an important acquisition. It would allow them to marry their old world TV or print sales with a larger online audience. CBS had 79 million unique visitors in December, according to research firm Comscore. Viacom’s digital properties had about the same number. Comcast (NASDAQ: CMCSA) had 50 million and Gannett (NYSE: GCI) had 44 million. None of these figures comes close to Yahoo!’s 176 million.

The troubles of traditional media are well understood. Public firms like CBS and Gannett face the erosion of television and print ad sales. Right now, their digital sales are insufficient to make up for that attrition. The chance to go to advertisers with packages that combine old media marketing with new may be their only chance to keep revenue advances — and happy shareholders.

Yahoo! has a market cap of $19 billion. Much of that is based on the value of Alibaba and Yahoo! Japan. Yahoo!’s core business may be worth less than $10 billion. That makes it an affordable purchase or merger candidate for most large traditional media companies, which have larger market values than Yahoo!.

The argument against a the ownership of Yahoo! by a traditional media company is that the older company would have no better chance to increase the portal’s revenue than MSN would. That is not true. Large advertisers continue to look for ways to reach huge audiences, some of which consume most media through traditional channels and some of which spend much of their time online. Yahoo!, in combination with a traditional media company, would offer the world’s largest marketers a chance to gain both through one firm.

Douglas A. McIntyre