Of the top brands, the following came in after Apple:

2. International Business Machines Corporation (NYSE: IBM)

3. Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG)

4. McDonald’s Corporation (NYSE: MCD)

5. Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ: MSFT)

6. Coca-Cola Corporation (NYSE: KO)

7. Marlboro of Altria Group Inc. (NYSE: MO)

8. AT&T, Inc. (NYSE: T)

9. Verizon Communications, Inc. (NYSE: VZ)

10. China Mobile Limited (NYSE: CHL)

11. General Electric Co. (NYSE: GE)

The ‘Top Riser” from 2011 to 2012 was Facebook, Inc. (NASDAQ: FB) with a 74% rise

The full Millward Brown study on these brands gets broken down into segments such as industry, brand growth, geographic, and sectors.

JON C. OGG

Original estimates in the media were put at roughly $80 million for the last of four versions of ‘The Scream’ that was still in private hands.  This auction fetched almost 50% higher than the expectation, although there was speculation that the $80 million price was an understatement.

In recent weeks we had noticed that Sotheby’s stock price had recovered from $36.50 to above $39.00 but that is still shy of the $40+ high in March and still well under the 52-week high of $48.90.  The luxury art market does have price-sensitivity when it comes to the economy and sellers and buyers were reluctant to trade at the end of 2011 when it looked as though Europe might take the global growth story away from the U.S. economy.  That makes it interesting that Sotheby’s is down 2.6% at $38.08 on a day where the market is down only about 0.2%.

The business of ultra high-end collectibles and art is a tricky one and it is a business which many outfits want a piece of.  We have noted earlier this year how the baseball collectible world had two of the famous T206 Honus Wagner tobacco card for sale and how the 100-year old card is now worth millions of dollars in the higher grades.  Another sale has recently taken place with a reported sale of more than $1 million.

eBay Inc. (NASDAQ: EBAY) sells art, baseball cards, and other high-end items.  It has had large sales before, but generally the ultra-high priced items are reserved for specialty auction houses or consignment houses.  Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) even has collectors envy because it recently launched a store site for selling sports collectibles.  Again, neither is ever likely to become the venue for the highest priced collectibles but it is obvious that both have noticed the importance of these markets.

This is the world of extreme alternative investing.  The price of participating has just gone up.

Sotheby’s is hard to invest in for any one event and for any single quarter.  The take here is that if a record has been set at a premium of 50% higher than the estimate of two months ago, this may drive other art collectors to consider releasing some of their prized collection pieces if they think the premium is this high.  That is going to be good for Sotheby’s if that turns out to be the case.

JON C. OGG

Thoratec issued a statement commenting about the recall on a recent voluntary medical device correction notification related to the bend relief component for the sealed outflow graft of the HeartMate II® Left Ventricular Assist System.  Here is what matters today: “The company initiated the voluntary Notification to clinicians on February 23, 2012.”

The company noted, “Following the company’s voluntary Notification to clinicians on February 23, 2012, the FDA posted information regarding the action on its website during the week of March 19th.  Today, this same information appeared in the news section of the FDA website.  However, today’s posting was only a reference to the previous communication, and there was no new information provided.“

Thoratec has also contacted all hospitals where the HeartMate II sealed outflow grafts had been distributed.  It noted, “The company’s voluntary Notification was intended to provide information to clinicians, including a clarification of the instructions for use, and did not involve the return of any product.  Subsequently, the company received acknowledgment forms from surgeons at all such U.S. hospitals, verifying that clinicians have reviewed the Notification and understand the information provided.”

This was a situation where the news seemed more like re-news.  It has happened before and it will happen again in the future.  After having been down as much as 10% earlier, Thoratec shares are down just under 4.5% at $32.81.  It is probably safe to assume that analysts who rate Thoratec as “Buy” and “Outperform” will be defending this one Thursday morning.

JON C. OGG

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.

The James Bond franchise has more than 20 movies already and is getting a new film in 2012.  Then there is the extremely successful Twilight series, which grossed about $1.8 billion in sales in its first three films alone. The two-part Breaking Dawn installments, to be released in November 2011 and in November 2012, will push the franchise’s value even higher and it could easily move into the top ten. Similarly, the three Ice Age films have grossed about $1.92 billion. The fourth installment, coming in July 2012, could make it another worthy contender for the top-grossing franchises.

Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol, the fourth in the MI franchise, will hit theaters in December 2011. So far, the three previous movies have grossed about $1.4 billion. Men in Black and Ghostbusters were large film franchises and each has a third film coming in 2012, although neither seems likely to be a serious challenger to the top ten of all-time.

Star Trek’s franchise is so far eleven films, with $1.3 billion in box office sales, is currently far from contention as a top ten movie franchise. The success of the “reboot,” along with a new sequel in the summer of 2012, could propel the franchise up in the ranking if they keep making new films. Similarly, the Iron Man series, which grossed so far $1.2 billion with the first two films, could be propelled much higher with the upcoming Avengers and Iron Man films. James Cameron’s Titanic from 1997 has grossed $1.843 billion in global ticket sales, but the film is about to get new life with a 3-D release in 2012 even if most viewers know the fate of the ship and the characters.

Some blockbuster movie franchises like The Matrix, Jurassic Park, Toy Story, Indiana Jones, X-Men, and a dozen or so others are currently just honorable mentions.  The current threshold to be a top-ten movie franchise is effectively about $2.5 billion in global box office ticket sales. That does not even count DVD sales, rental fees, comics, books, toys, memorabilia, and other movie merchandise. The coming waves of new sequels and prequels will raise that threshold much higher. Almost all sales data came from Box Office Mojo and some international sales data on older films came from IMDB.

Here are 24/7 Wall St.’s top ten movie franchises of all-time:

24/7 Wall St. was recently given a chance to interview Joe Toms, the new Chief Investment Officer of Prosper.com to hear about this growing sector. If you do not understand the peer-to-peer lending model, think about crowdsourcing loans for what would have traditionally been a personal bank loan. There is even a degree of microfinance involved, although in a larger and peer-based manner. Prosper is effectively the go-to name in peer-to-peer (P2P) lending, and the service eliminates the middleman to connect people who need money with those who have money to invest. In short, this allows Joe Public to be the banker to individuals. The aim is a win-win for investors and borrowers, hence “Prosper.”

There are many questions that borrowers and investors will want to know before they go in and participate in the peer-to-peer (P2P) lending market. Investors have started looking at peer-to-peer lending for its high yield and current income appeal, and P2P lending has grown more than 100% in the past year alone.

Prosper.com focuses on individual loans in the $2,000 to $25,000 range. Borrowers choose a loan amount, and they list what the purpose of the loan is. Investors then review loan listings and invest in listings that meet their criteria. The borrower then makes fixed monthly payments (collected by Prosper for the lenders) and investors receive a portion of those payments directly into their Prosper account. Individual lenders are able to invest as little as $25 in each loan listing they select and they get to consider credit scores, ratings and histories, as well as borrowers’ personal loan descriptions, endorsements (and participation) from friends and family, and community affiliations. Debt consolidation, home improvement and small business-related loans remain the leading loan categories on Prosper.com.

CIO Joe Toms noted that the consumer lending market is about $2.4 trillion in America per Federal Reserve data, but the average loan size is about $7,300 and about 90% of the market is controlled by six of the largest banks. Mr. Toms noted, “P2P can attack a market that is grossly inefficient. The Federal Reserve data shows that the average credit rate on the outstanding consumer credit has been more than 15.5% from 1985 to 2010 and the historic default rate has been closer to 4.7%.” Effectively, this has left a net interest spread of well over 10% and the market is now available for investors to participate in.

Amazon.com is releasing new touch versions of the Kindle to go after the tablet market, but it is also announcing serious price cuts on the traditional Kindle e-readers.

The website before this announcement showed that the regular Kindle was $114 after special offers, and that the Kindle 3G was $139 with special offers, and $189 as the list price for the 3G.  It may seem amazingly priced, but the new Kindle and Kindle Touch are only $79 and $99, respectively. The $79 version clocks in at just under 6 ounces and comes with a 6 inch display.  Kindle Touch 3G is the top of the line e-reader with free 3G at only $149.

The new tablet competition comes from the Kindle Touch and Kindle Fire and the products will be on a modified version of Android and willl come with a dual core processor.  Kindle Fire comes with a vibrant color touch display in high resolution and weighs only 14.6 ounces for $199.  The Kindle Fire will be released on November 15, 2011 but orders are alread being taken.

Here are the new features from Amazon:

• 18 million movies, TV shows, songs, magazines, and books
• Amazon Appstore – thousands of popular apps and games
• Ultra-fast web browsing – Amazon Silk
• Free cloud storage for all your Amazon content
• Vibrant color touchscreen with extra-wide viewing angle
• Fast, powerful dual-core processor
• Amazon Prime members enjoy unlimited, instant streaming of over 10,000 popular movies and TV shows

Apple stock is actually up 0.3% at $400.60 today so the move is not a total wipe-out for Apple.  Barnes & Noble, Inc. (NYSE: BKS) is really the threatened position with its Noook and its shares are down over 8% at $12.13.  Amazon.com shares are up more than 3% above $231.00 today.

JON C. OGG

The Census Bureau is out with the 2010 figures on income, poverty, and health insurance.  About all you can hope for is that 2011 is magically better than 2010 because many of the figures are literally eye-popping.  We have higher poverty rates, lower median income, higher uninsured rates, greater racial inequality, and even more young adults depending upon mom and dad than most of us have ever seen.

24/7 Wall St. has gone through the figures released by the Census Bureau today and removed much of the noise to focus on the larger issues that affect most of America.  That also means that much of the data affecting smaller groups or measuring other metrics was eliminated. When you consider the direction of the current economic data compared to earlier this year and the risks of another recession growing more and more, it is alarming.

Median household money income for the nation fell 2.3% to $49,400 in 2010 in real terms, the lowest reading back to $49,112 in 1996 and down from a peak of $53,252 in 1999 and down from a more recent peak of $52,823 in 2007.  The 2010 official poverty rate for the nation was 15.1% in 2010 versus 14.3% in 2009: 46.2 million people in poverty, up 2.6 million since 2009.  The drop in real income the year after a recession was the worst in percentage terms going back to at least the 1960s.

Apparently there is an age-bias on the drop of income as well.  If you fell into the age bracket of 15 to 24, the average income was down a whopping 9.3%.  There was a 1.9% drop in household income for those 25 to 34 years old and there was no significant change in the age group of 35 to 44 years old.  Then came the second largest drop of 4.3% in those aged 45 to 54, yet there was no significant drop in the 55 to 64 and the 65 and older brackets.

Women now earn about 77% as much as men and that appears to have been one of the best ratios going back 50 years.  The rate of households with children is also atrocious.  Married-couple families are at 8.8%, but single-mother households ticked back up again to a decade-plus high of 40.7%.

By race, the poverty rate appears to have ticked up for all but Asians.  Black was 27.4% in poverty, Hispanic was 26.6% in poverty, Asian was 12.1%, and white was 9.9%.  Age is the worst feature of all… 22% of those under 18 years old now live in poverty.

The doubling-up, those households with children above 18 years old rose substantially as well.  This measure was from 2007 to 2011.  There was a 25.5% gain in those of age 25 to 34 living with their parents, and the total number was up 10.7%.  The doubled-up households grew to 21.8 million in 2011 from 19.7 million in 2007.  The number of young adults aged 25 to 34 who live with their parents grew from 4.7 million in 2007 to 5.9 million in 2011.

Real median household income was down to $49,400 to the lowest reading in more than a decade and the poverty rate was back at a cycle peak of 15.1%.  The number of those in poverty was a real high (with population growth) of 46.2 million in 2010.

People without health insurance coverage in 2010 was basically the same as 2009 at 16.3%, but the number of uninsured rose to 49.9 million in 2010 versus 2009′s reading of 49.0 million.  Of all people in America without health insurance, the reading rose to 16.3%, but the rate of children without health insurance was 9.8%.  Government coverage rates continued to rise and those with employment-based coverage fell to 55.3% and those with any form of private coverage was 64.0%.  Those two compared to 62.1% and 75.5%, respectively, in the late 1980′s.

If you go back to 1999, the 2010 uninsured rates by race were the highest at 30.7% for Hispanic but that is under the 31.9% in 1999 and under the peak of close to 33% in 2006.  Uninsured rates were the highest in 2010 since 1999 for Whites (at 11.7%), Asians (at 18.1%), and Black (at 20.8%).

The uninsured rates were as you would expect, the higher the income the lower the uninsured rates are:

• Over $75K : 8%
• $50K to $75K: 15.4%
• $25K to $50K: 21.8%
• Under $25K: 26.9%

The full PDF is here.

In all seriousness, is the American Dream alive and well?

JON C. OGG

We do want to quantify that a single firm or a private equity group can buy almost anything if it can get financing for it.  The valuations don’t always make sense on the surface.  The problem is that Whole Foods trades at such a premium today that most private equity firms with more than horse-sense would instantly determine that acquiring this trophy company would come at too high of a price.

For a private equity buyer to own a company, the goal is to ultimately resell the company at a much higher price down the road.  And at the time the deal is closed, a common move is to leverage the company up with debt and then to pay out a bulk of the cash on the books as a dividend to the buyers to instantly recoup 10% to 30% of the investment.  Even if it takes a decade to completely exit the transaction, at least the returns up front and the return of capital along the way can justify the exercise.

It isn’t like private equity investors are exactly eager to make 2.1% in 10-year Treasury notes and it isn’t exactly as if they have made stellar returns in the stock market over the last decade under Warren Buffett’s buy and hold forever strategy.

It was the Daily Mail out of the U.K. that first floated the rumor. To say that we are skeptical of a British media outlet scooping this one, particularly the Daily Mail, would be an understatement.  It noted that the premium and organic grocer could be under the watchful eyes of Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. (NYSE: KKR) and Bain for somewhere around $90.00 per share.  Shares are currently around $59.00 and the 52-week trading range is $34.04 to $68.00.  The market cap today is about $10.4 billion

Thomson Reuters has estimates for Whole Foods’ fiscal September 2011 of $1.92 EPS and $10.12 billion in sales and estimates for fiscal September 2012 of $2.25 and $11.52 billion in sales.  Whole Foods trades at just over 30-times expected earnings and trades at close to 1-times expected revenues.  If you count Whole Foods as a grocery store, it is just too expensive to buy for a private equity firm even at today’s prices.  If you throw up a magical 50% premium to that $90.00 level, then KKR and Bain’s rumored price would be at about 45 year’s worth of earnings and about 1.5-times revenues.

The new company is going to eventually look perhaps more like a Kroger Co. (NYSE: KR) or a Safeway Inc. (NYSE: SWY), but perhaps the real targets are Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (NYSE: WMT) and even Target Corporation (NYSE: TGT).  Yes, Walgreen is going after more and more of the lower-end grocery and consumer products market.

Walgreens is now planning to open some 400 Nice! stores that sell its private label products in grocery and household product categories.  The company is claiming that it will offer its grocery and household products at prices which are up to 30% below other national brands.  The company plans to have most of the Nice! product on its shelves by early 2012.

Walgreen has always been a place to get a flu shot or to get your medical prescriptions or consumer health and body products.  While it carries some basics in food and consumer products, this really sounds like it is going a step farther.  The company said its Nice! label will be on soups, sauces and bakery items, and it will add more and more Nice! brand products over the next few years.

The current store brands include Café W, Deerfield Farms, W and others, but these will be phased out and transitioned to Nice! brand products.  The company has already had its private label brands under dry grocery items like tea, dried fruit, rice and even macaroni and cheese.

The drugstore chain is also going to launch a national marketing campaign in 2012 to drive awareness and generate trial and it is going to have employees promote Nice! products.  This sounds a bit ambitious on the surface, except that it does have some solid data behind its news.  The company noted, “Nielsen consumer research shows that 75 percent of Walgreens shoppers purchase store brands in Walgreens.”  It also noted that the total private label sales market segment has grown from about $64.9 billion in 2005 to $88.5 billion in 2010 and the fastest growing private label segment is actually households with incomes of more than $100,000.00.  The company also backed it up by consumer testing and new design packaging with strong reviews.

Frankly, this seems a bit of a stretch on the surface.  Perhaps there is room for yet one more brand in shopping for grocery and consumer product goods.  The question is whether or not this will cannibalize sales and just create another small format grocery and consumer products store.

If you ever saw the cult film “Repo Man” in the 1980s you may remember a shoot-up scene in the convenience store.  The movie was such a low-budget and undesired production that all of the white-box products on the shelves had no labels and just had a physical name like “Soap” and “Cereal” and on and on.  Walgreen is highly unlikely to fall into that category, but it would be easy to argue that there is a big risk here even if the launch is only 400 stores.

Maybe the real target is just 7-Eleven.  This may turn out to be a profitable move for the company, but it is far from being a riskless move.

JON C. OGG