tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-60945932358477122602012-01-02T09:02:17.031-05:00I am a New York based investment advisor. I may have a position in the companies I write about or my clients may have a position. I may be buying or selling the companies I write about for myself, or on behalf of clients. Nothing I write about is a recommendation to buy or sell anything. It is opinion and information and should not be used as the sole information source for buying or selling any securities I write about. But I hope you will still read here. ;-)Dutch Tenderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06815940453341219095noreply@blogger.comBlogger151100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6094593235847712260.post-44501399316015785972008-01-19T13:58:00.001-05:002008-01-29T08:24:28.128-05:00

Despite all of the value creation going on beneath the surface at John Malone's Liberty Media, it's two tracking stocks, Liberty Capital (lcapa) and Liberty Interactive (linta), on a market cap basis, now actually trade about 10% below the highly depressed, pre-spin levels of May 2006.  An experienced "tape watcher" might notice that linta especially, was being unrepentantly liquidated over the

Dutch Tenderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06815940453341219095noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6094593235847712260.post-11228938798154991262007-04-23T12:27:00.001-04:002007-04-23T12:46:28.697-04:00

Dell is offering an "option" for users to buy Windows XP and its old technology, on a few of their systems. It turns out a "Digg" like Ideastorm blog that Dell operates, has produced a highly suspect, possibly rigged, voting system of limited economic utility. It probably has been moblogged. And this announcement of "demand" for XP by consumers is a result. Predictably, the anti-Microsoft

Dutch Tenderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06815940453341219095noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6094593235847712260.post-55990419562278619322007-04-17T15:21:00.001-04:002007-04-23T12:43:11.227-04:00

What a couple of days for this buyout shop that was traveling under the radar. But then Google used some of its Google cash to buy DoubleClick, an advertising company that Hellman Friedman, a San Francisco based private equity firm, purchased a little over a year ago. According to reports in the WSJ, the firm made 10 times its money in a little over a year, cashing out a total of $3.5b on a $330m

Dutch Tenderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06815940453341219095noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6094593235847712260.post-87353866137487021492007-03-16T11:25:00.001-04:002007-05-31T06:16:15.684-04:00

Alan Meckler is worth paying attention too. But it's best to watch what he does, and not what he says. He has made a fortune as an Internet entrepreneur, and knows when to get off a fast moving train. He sold his Internet trade show businesses at the top of the bubble, and kept for himself, a large stake in a small stub of a company, then called Internet.com, which he later fashioned into Jupiter

Dutch Tenderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06815940453341219095noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6094593235847712260.post-31858924439526937662007-03-16T09:10:00.000-04:002007-03-16T09:14:15.027-04:00

Or so said Steve Ballmer of Microsoft recently at Stanford.The company has been trying to double its staff in a year, he added. "That's insane in my opinion," he said. "I don't think anyone has proven that a random collection of people doing their own thing has created value."

Dutch Tenderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06815940453341219095noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6094593235847712260.post-58015502119777863482006-12-12T12:25:00.001-05:002007-04-23T12:33:57.407-04:00

Techcrunch reports on details of the Yahoo! courting of social networking site, Facebook. Management at Yahoo! has been under the gun because it is perceived that the company is being outmaneuvered by it's rival Google. These observers suggest that Yahoo! needs to catch up and start making acquisitions. It appears it is trying. But management at Yahoo! would flunk Warren Buffett's test on

Dutch Tenderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06815940453341219095noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6094593235847712260.post-50473299973159323442006-12-09T10:54:00.001-05:002007-03-18T20:49:04.605-04:00

Whoops. Underperforming common benchmarks by 27% in a year, as a big Goldman Sachs sponsored hedge fund did, isn't good. The S & P 500 is going to be up around 15% with dividends in 2006. But this fund was up 40% in 2005, when the S & P only managed about 5%, as I recall. What happens, though, is after such strong outperformance, a lot of "new" money flowed into Alpha. That's typically what

Dutch Tenderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06815940453341219095noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6094593235847712260.post-30480385361419315292006-12-07T22:28:00.001-05:002007-03-16T09:17:04.971-04:00

Primedia is an orphan stock. It trades for about a buck and half on the NYSE under the symbol PRM. It's really quite a bundle to get your arms around. First, its old media. Magazines mostly. It also is the home of Channel One, the ambitious educational TV network that never quite lived up to its hype. This business has been going south. The big problem here though is debt. There is a ton of it,

Dutch Tenderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06815940453341219095noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6094593235847712260.post-33261749857030870832006-12-07T22:02:00.001-05:002007-03-16T09:17:31.610-04:00

Lancaster (lanc) seems ripe for a corporate restructuring. It has three diverse businesses, one of which is highly profitable, the other two, which are smaller, lose money. If all it did was shut down the two money losing operations, the stock would go up. But I think they can better. And it looks like the folks there are considering taking action, with some kind of announcement to come soon.This

Dutch Tenderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06815940453341219095noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6094593235847712260.post-24003985035820273902006-12-07T20:29:00.001-05:002007-03-18T20:40:03.625-04:00

Spin-off action straight ahead. Mueller has received notices from some prominent value investors who like the stock. Its hard to predict what will happen here. Will it be dumped? Walter has a Coal business. Investors who want to own commodities may prefer Walter to Mueller. Is Mueller the prize; or is Walter going to be the prize? We will know starting in about ten days. Walter Spin-off of

Dutch Tenderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06815940453341219095noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6094593235847712260.post-25758273795883680272006-12-06T11:08:00.001-05:002007-03-16T09:20:24.015-04:00

This one looks promising. Medtronic is in a lot of indexes and this spin off will be quite small relative to Medtronic. There should be some forced selling. The company, to be called Physio-Control Inc., will have an estimated $450 million in annual sales. Medtronic has had a great record of results over the years. This likely is a decent business that just doesn't fit current strategy. Don't

Dutch Tenderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06815940453341219095noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6094593235847712260.post-15475328236354731022006-11-26T00:31:00.001-05:002007-03-16T09:24:27.891-04:00

Unbeknownst to most shareholders, Scott Mcnealy and cohorts, back when he was running the show as CEO, did something important when he made two large acquisitions over the last 18 months, trading away a lot of his cash. He Pierced the Hope Balloon. Why do I say he did this? As long as Mcnealy had a lot of cash at Sun, investors could always hope that the feisty CEO would do something

Dutch Tenderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06815940453341219095noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6094593235847712260.post-42777245927526527932006-11-19T16:06:00.001-05:002007-03-16T09:22:26.163-04:00

Verizon (VZ) is spinning off its directory business. They are calling it Idearc (IAR). This situation has all the signs of a classic dump of the despised "spinco". Why? First, at least relative to Verizon, Idearc is a very small company. Large cap funds that hold Verizon will eventually have to sell the shares, so as not to violate the Morningstar style boxes, and potentially confuse fund

Dutch Tenderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06815940453341219095noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6094593235847712260.post-92103286454996130692006-11-14T09:19:00.001-05:002007-03-16T11:57:40.981-04:00

It seems that a few bears think shorting this real estate services company is the pathway to riches. For a few reasons, this may not be the best of ideas. First the housing market is not uniform and that can skew the bearish statistics. Yes, there is a bubble in a few select areas of the country but there is no bubble in other areas. Second, sellers can't sit on their hands forever. Most people

Dutch Tenderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06815940453341219095noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6094593235847712260.post-42245215783160727212006-08-23T12:33:00.000-04:002007-03-16T09:22:59.521-04:00

Sara Lee Corporation (SLE) is in the midst of a significant restructuring of the company. Part of this initiative is the spin-off of Hanesbrands (HBI), which rang up about $4.5b of revenue in 2006. Hanesbrands is a good business. But it will also be a highly leveraged one when it is hatched in early September.So that HBI can pay a large dividend back to its parent, Sara Lee has saddled the

Dutch Tenderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06815940453341219095noreply@blogger.com0