Recent Weakness at Central European Media Enterprises

Central European Media Enterprises (CETV) shares have pulled back over 10% in the last month after jumping about 20% early in 2006. The decline seems related to news articles in the Czech Republic indicating that advertisers have firmly resisted the company’s ad sales strategy that attempted to implement a 30% price increase. CETV management has […]

News Wrap Up on NTL

Given Northlake’s new long position, in NTL Incorporated (NTLI), I pay close attention to the press reports out of the UK. I follow them via Google News doing a simple daily search on NTL. Sunday’s articles were particularly interesting. First, there is an interesting profile of Richard Branson’s history with Virgin Mobile and some of […]

April Model Signals

I am a little delayed getting up the monthly update on the Northlake’s Market Cap and Style models because I wanted to check with Ned Davis Research (NDR), the firm that processes the models, about this month’s readings. For just the second time ever, in monthly readings going back to 1981, the “score” of both […]

Recap Of Midwest Media Day Conference

I spent Wednesday at Midwest Media Day sponsored by Prudential Securities. It was a unique conference. Pru took over one floor of the hotel and the beds were removed and replaced with tables so that each room could function as a small conference room. The company management representatives stayed in place while investors rotated through […]

A Debate Over Apple Computer

Over and StreetInsight.com, where I write daily commentary, there has been a series of posts debating the value of Apple Computer (AAPL) shares. A StreetInsight colleague got the ball rolling with a cautious post. Another colleague and I took up his challenge and responded. What follows is the exchange as it is currently archived on […]

How the Internet is Impacting Traditional Media

Several interesting tidbits regarding traditional media and the internet were included in the collection of stories in the latest MediaWorks email I received from AdAge.com: • I’ve recounted how the shift of auto advertising to the internet has really hurt newspapers. AdAge.com reminds us that magazines are taking a serious hit as well. In 2005, […]

NTL: The Numbers Supporting the New Buy

Last week, I re-entered NTL Incorporated (NTLI) from the long side after a several month absence. I outlined the rationale behind my decision to buy in this post but failed to provide a lot of numbers. So here goes… NTLI has 283 million shares outstanding following a 2.5 to 1 split that occurred simultaneous to […]

Apple and France

There continues to be a lot of chatter about Apple Computer (AAPL) and the potential French law that would force the company to open up its iTunes digital rights protection. One thing that I think is misunderstood is that the law will only really impact AAPL by forcing it to withdraw iTunes from the French […]

NTL Incorporated: New Purchase For All Clients

Last Friday, I purchased a new position in NTL Incorporated (NTLID – the D will be dropped shortly) across all Northlake client accounts. I think the stock has potential upside to at least $40 per share based on a successful merger with Telewest. The merger closed at the beginning of March. I define success as […]

The Internet Won’t Be Replacing Your Cable TV Anytime Soon

One of the blogs I read regularly belongs to Mark Cuban. In a post last week, Mark discusses his view that lack of capacity in the final mile to the home will limit the ability of consumers to bypass the traditional distributors of TV, cable and satellite companies, any time in the near future. Mark’s […]