Could The Market Be Too Bullish Regarding The Impact of Private Equity?

There is no doubt that flood of money into private equity funds and the subsequent investment of these funds in buyouts of public corporations has contributed greatly to the 2006 bull market. Conventional wisdom is that private equity buyouts of public companies will continue at its recent pace, providing support to current public equity valuations […]

How Bad Are DVD Sales?

I don’t want to pick a fight with Jim Cramer and Doug Kass, my fellow contributors at theStreet.com’s family of websites, but they are exaggerating the issues in DVD sales. The Pali report is correct in noting that consumer interest in DVDs is waning as evidenced by flat sales despite a huge increase in DVD […]

Details in Endeavor’s SEC Filing Support Bull Case

Endeavor Acquisition Corporation (EDA) submitted an SEC filing yesterday with lots of details about its acquisition of American Apparel. Most importantly, the company provided historical and projected revenue and EBITDA figures. The data is better than I expected, particularly for 2007 and 2008, giving me greater faith in my buy recommendation and leading to more […]

Endeavor Aquisition Buys American Apparel and Northlake Buys Endeavour

Following the news that American Apparel is being purchased by Endeavor Acquisition Corp. (EDA), I decided to take a small position in EDA for client accounts. EDA is a blank-check company that went public about one year ago by raising $130 million. Blank check companies go public and then look to make acquisitions. For EDA, […]

Why Are Network TV Ads Selling Well When Ratings Are Poor?

Bernstein Research was out yesterday with a really interesting piece of research noting the dichotomy between the poor ratings performance of the major broadcast television networks this season and the better than expected scatter advertising market. Scatter is jargon for TV ads purchased on the spot market as opposed to pre-bought last spring in the […]

Rogers Communication: New Buy Targeting 25% Upside

I have spent this week completing my follow-up work on Rogers Communications (RG), my second favorite presentation from last week’s UBS Media and Communications conference (more on my favorite presentation, NII Holdings (NIHD) coming soon). I liked what I learned and pulled the trigger on an initial purchase of RG for Northlake client accounts, including […]

Recent Apple News

Lots of Apple Computer (AAPL) news today. UBS is out with a note claiming that Apple will enter the wireless via a mobile virtual network operator (MVNO). UBS Telecom analyst John Hodulik was discussing this in the hallways of their conference last week but went public with his thoughts today. Given a loyal Mac user […]

December 2006 Model Signals

My attendance at the UBS Media Conference led to the delay in getting the latest model signals up on the website. Fortunately, the models did not signal change for this month. Here is some detailed commentary: There were no changes to the signals from Northlake’s Market Cap and Style models for December. The Market Cap […]

UBS Media Conference 2006

Every year I attend the UBS Media Conference in NY to get a face-to-face update with many companies in the media industry. My goals are to find new ideas for client accounts, gain a better understanding of major industry trends, and connect with other money managers focused on the media sector. Below is a lengthy […]

Commercial Is Cable’s Next Big Opportunity….But Is The Industry Ready?

Bears Stearns Cable Analyst Spencer Wang recently held a conference call with a couple of experts on the opportunity that the cable industry has to offer commercial services. Today, cable is primarily a residential business with commercial customers representing less than 5% of revenue. According to Bear Stearns, the revenue opportunity for cable in commercial […]