I am no expert in retailing despite Northlake’s long position in Sears Holding (SHLD) so when my colleague at StreetInsight.com, Jeff Bagley, wrote a scathing post noting that most of the earnings upside at SHLD over the past few quarters had come from large cuts in advertising expenditures, I was very interested in learning more. […]
Sears Holdings (SHLD) earnings reports was largely in line. However, the stock traded sharply lower, giving up most of its gains so far in August. The decline can be attributed primarily to two things. First, SHLD is owned by a lot of aggressive investors and they wanted another big positive surprise like the company delivered […]
News broke yesterday in London that NTL Incorporated (NTLI) was again subject to takeover interest from private equity firms. Later in the day, Bloomberg reported that the company was in talks with a consortium of four private equity firms and the talks were beginning to focus on price. I covered these developments in two posts […]
While fireworks are likely in the shares of Sears Holdings (SHLD) after the company reports earnings before the open today, there has been a virtual blackout as far as research is concerned ahead of the report. There are only five EPS estimates creating the First Call consensus of $1.69. The estimates range from $1.46 to […]
The Wall Street Journal is a few days late in reporting that Carl Icahn has upped his stake in Time Warner. When this news first broke on Monday, I wrote the following brief comment for StreetInsight.com: The facts that Time Warner (TWX) is giving back most of its post-earnings pop and the lack of positive […]
There were some interesting developments in the newspaper industry yesterday. First, Nelson Peltz has filed with the SEC indicating he has an ownership stake in Tribune (TRB) of 1% of the outstanding shares. The amount is small and there is no way of knowing his intentions but it is probably fair to deduce that the […]
I have been bearish on stocks with heavy exposure to the cable networks business due to concerns that growth was slowing dramatically while the industry was accorded a significant premium valuation. Last Thursday’s positive surprise from Viacom (VIA) and stronger-than-expected July revenue report from E.W. Scripps (SSP) is a strong challenge to my thesis, so […]
The weekend box office was up again, making it four straight weekends. Eight of the last nine weeks have also been up so the summer continues to shape well as it winds down. This past weekend was up 5% from a year ago as lots of films did well. Talladega Nights held the top for […]
This note was originally written and published on StreetInsight.com on August 2nd. With all the trauma from my the complete crash of my pirmary PC on July 30th, I forgot to post it here. I apologize for my oversight. There were no changes to the signals from Northlake’s market-cap and style models for August. Northlake […]
Disney (DIS) reported much better than expected 3Q06 EPS. EPS of 53 cents easily beat consensus of 44 cents (3Q EPS were aided by 1-2 cent accounting benefit). Revenues were only slightly better than expected so it was operating profit performance that provided the upside. In particular, the Studio, Theme Parks, and Consumer Products provided […]
