After seven months signaling value, Northlake’s Style model shifted to growth for September. There were no changes in any of the underlying factors this month. Rather, the two month rolling average calculation shifted to growth when June’s value bias was dropped and August data confirmed the shift to growth first picked up in July. As […]
I subscribe to a blog written by Bob Lefsetz. Bob writes about the music business and has done so for more than 20 years. His posts often touch on the business of music and many spread to other media content industries. Last week, Bob wrote about Snakes On A Plane as it relates to the […]
Here are some further thoughts on the Cruise-Paramount split (Part 1). This post takes to look at Tom Cruise as a business by comparing the profitability of his two most recent films. Cruise’s last film prior to Mission: Impossible 3, (MI3) was War of the Worlds (WOTW) which grossed $594 million worldwide. MI3 grossed $393 […]
Apparently, Ronald Lauder has decided to pay for his $135 million acquisition of Gustav Klimt’s Adele Bloch-Bauer I by monetizing half of his 15.8% stake in Central European Media Enterprises (CETV). Last June, it was revealed that Lauder was buying the Klimt and paying the highest price ever for a painting, easily exceeding the $104 […]
Given all the publicty created by the split between Tom Cruise and Paramount, I thought I’d offer some impressons from the perpsective of the stock market. The following post is my first impressions, while a second post due to go up later this week provides greater detail on the economics of Tom Cruise as a […]
Last week saw a flurry of acquisition and divestiture activity in the radio industry including news that the buyer of Disney’s radio assets, Citadel Broadcasting, wants to renegotiate to lower the purchase price. News that Citadel wants to renegotiate the terms of its buyout of ABC’s radio assets is not surprising and likely led to […]
Looking back at my recent posts on Sears Holdings (SHLD), I may have left the impression that improving same store sales trends are necessary to drive the stock higher. Just to be clear, Northlake’s long position in (SHLD) has never been about sales. It has been about free cash flow generation over the 2006 and […]
According to data from TNS Media Intelligence, advertising spending in the U.S., excluding paid search, fell by 0.3% in May 2006. According to TNS, this is the first comparable monthly decline since the advertising recovery began in May 2002. Network TV and newspapers suffered the biggest declines during May. Areas showing growth included non-search Internet […]
I Am Famous. Sort Of. Back on August 1, 2006, Jim Cramer of CNBC and theStreet.com, did a segment on Comcast on his nightly Mad Money TV show. During the segment, Cramer tells viewers how for the past year everyone hated Comcast. Everyone that is except, yours truly. Cramer says “”Birenberg’s the only guy to […]
I am surprised that cable stocks have held up since last Thursday’s Wall Street Journal article which indicated a recent report from Cable Labs, the industry’s internal R&D arm, said that to keep up with exploding broadband demand and Verizon’s fiber rebuild, the cable industry would have to complete another costly upgrade of its plant. […]
