Does The Cable Industry Require Another Hugely Expensive Network Upgrade?

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. […]

Is Sears Cutting Its Advertisng Expenditures Too Much?

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 Results Better Than Stock Price

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 […]

NTL Sees Renewed Interest From Private Equity Firms

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 […]

Sears Holdings Earnings Preview

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 […]

Icahn Ups His Stake In Time Warner

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 […]

Strong Quarter For Disney But 2007 Concerns Limit Upside – For Now

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 […]

More Cable and Satellite Companies Report

Yesterday saw earnings releases from Cablevision (CVC), Charter Communications (CHTR), and DirecTV (DTV) allowing investors to take a snapshot of the current competitive environment in multichannel TV. I think these results along with earlier reports from Comcast and Time Warner support eh bull case for cable over the short-term. CVC continued its strong double digit […]

Amazing! Lionsgate Reports A Routine Quarter

By recent standards, Lionsgate (LGF) reported a very routine quarter. There was little excitement in the numbers, full year guidance for March 07 was affirmed, and analyst questions on the conference call were not hostile. The lack of excitement was not just due to a generally inline quarter. LGF also made progress by releasing its […]

Cheap Is Not A Reason To Own Media Stocks

A new study by McKinsey & Co., highlighted at AdAge.com, does a good job of explaining why television advertising is facing such strong growth headwinds. The key pull quote from the AdAge article is that the study claims that “by 2010, traditional TV advertising will be one-third as effective as it was in 1990.” The […]