News Corporation shares traded down 4.6% on Monday in response to a downgrade from Bernstein Research analyst Michael Nathanson. Nathanson lowered his rating from outperform to market perform, cut his price target from $24 to $21, and lowered his earnings estimate by 7% for FY08 and 4% for FY09. Prior to this downgrade, Nathanson shared […]
The Wall Street Journal wrote a damning and extremely damaging article about one of Northlake’s long positions. The story on American Apparel (APP) appeared on the front page of the Saturday edition. As someone who had done his homework and read the filings, most of negative news in the article was nothing new to me. […]
I remain long Disney across Northlake client accounts including my own accounts. Down just 3%, the shares have acted fairly well this year compared to many other media investments, particularly those with significant advertising exposure. Performance of the shares in the near future is a battle between the possibility that the economy drags down earnings […]
Time Warner (TWX) shares are down 10.8% so far this year, lagging most other large cap media stocks. News Corp (NWS) is down 6.1%, Disney (DIS) is down just 3.7%, and Viacom (VIA) is down 5.2%. The largest single component of TWX’s valuation is Time Warner Cable (TWC), whose shares are down less than 1%. […]
Controversy about monetization of revenue and profits at MySpace has held back shares of News Corp so far this year despite outstanding December quarter earnings, increased guidance for the fiscal year ending this June, and commentary from Rupert Murdoch and other senior executives stating that so far the company is feeling any impact from the […]
Apple has staged a strong recovery, rising 33% from its 2008 intraday low in late February. The beta effect during the recent rally certainly has helped but continuing good news on Mac sales and speculation over the 3G iPhone have been equally responsible. A long-time friend and institutional salesperson, JK, recently IM”d me noting that […]
I was quite pleased with the 4Q07 results, 2008 guidance, and conference call from American Apparel (APP), which reported after the close last night. The consensus I was using consisted of just one analyst so it wasn’t really meaningful. Just three analysts asked questions on the call but they were enthusiastic, asked a lot of […]
Central European Media Enterprises (CETV) shares have steadied since the sharp fall last week following announcement and pricing of their convertible deal. The timing on the convert was terrible coming in the midst of the market’s meltdown. I think the fact that it included a complicated capped call transaction made folks shutter as complicated is […]
The UK newspaper The Observer is reporting that it has seen a new memo outlining possible private equity approaches to Virgin Media. VMED has been a rumored private target for some time and it is generally accepted that private equity made an offer in upper $20s or low $30s over a year ago. VMED is […]
CETV announced a $425 million convertible offering after the close yesterday with a $50 million green shoe. Proceeds will be used to acquire another 30% of its operations in Ukraine, bringing control and 90% ownership. Given its strong balance sheet, CETV didn’t need to raise this money to fund the $210 million Ukraine purchase so […]
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