When Genius Prevailed

We've Moved!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

2010-08-03T22:47:00.000-04:00

That's right, Money McBags is taking his talents to:

www.whengeniusprevailed.com

So change your bookmark and remember to tip the writer.

New columns start Wednesday 8/4/10.

8/2/10 Midevening Report: Market hits ten week high as meth lab in the basement finally pays off

2010-08-02T17:39:00.003-04:00

The market ran faster today than Roman Polanski going to get his keys to pick the baby sitter up because the manufacturing sector grew at its slowest pace since December, private construction spend dipped for the second month in a row, and Ben Bernanke said shit still sucks out there. So rally fucking on like Donkey Kong having his way with the princess, only if the princess had tainted his banana wth AIDS.

With the market rallying on macro news that was about as positive as a RuPaul pregnancy test, Money McBags is left to wonder what he is missing, how much the market would rally if there were actually something positive going on in the economy (like maybe either the second derivative of released data positively increasing or the unemployment rate decreasing and not from just from a declining labor force participation rate), and how he overlooked this delightful NSFW Alice Eve scene which has caused his Oscar to stand and applaud. Money McBags is not quite sure how to interpret the market moving in opposition to macro data, as the language of giberrish wasn't on the rosetta stone the last time he checked, but he hopes those of you buying in to this capitualting market are careful.

As for macro news, Benny B warned us that "we have a considerable way to go to achieve full recovery in our economy, and many Americans are still grappling with unemployment, foreclosure, and lost savings, in addition to the angst and nausea they feel every time they look at the deficit and realize their kids may be more fucked than Stephen Hawking in a duel." Ok, perhaps that last bit was made up but, whatever. Bennie B did get slightly positive by saying he fully expects consumer spend to pick up in the next few quarters as wages rise, business demand picks up, and the US finally figures out what to do with all of the underwear they stole.

Money McBags is a bit skeptical of Bennie B's claims since unemployment remains more stagnant than the Terri Moulton Horman for "Stepmother of the Year" campaign or jokes here on the great When Genius Prevailed so it's not clear where these rising wages are going to come from unless it's from laying more people off and then giving those still employed a bit of the saved salary, which of course would do nothing for overall consumer demand. But hey, when Bennie B gets his Fed on, the market listens (to the parts it wants to hear).

In other macro news, the ISM came out with their numbers for July and the manufacturing sector grew at its slowest pace this year, but luckily, the 55.5 number was better than the 54.2 analyst had guessed so rally on my friends. It was the third straight month (and the month was so straight it even got it up for a Kathy Najimy-Rachel Ray threesome) of slower growth but remember, readings above 50 still signal expansion, so apparently there is nothing to see here (except for new orders dropping to their lowest level in over a year, production slowing down, and Kagney Linn Karter).

In the final bit of macro news, construction spending rose .1% as increased investment in public projects (perhaps maybe a bridge to somewhere) offset the 15th straight monthly decline in private nonresidential construction and the .8% decline in private homebuilding (which included growth from the Greenspanville's being erected across the country, and yes, Money McBags said erected). Yowsa. As usual, last month's new construction was revised downward from a .2% drop to a 1% drop as part of the government's "hold the shock and hope for no awe" strategy, so this month's .1% decline should be labeled as "wishful thinking."

Internationally, China's manufacturing sector cooled further as the government tries to reign in reckless speculation on real estate and ben wa balls. The official purchasing managers' index fell to a 17 month low of 51.2 from 52.1, a separate PMI released today by HSBC and Markit Economics showed a drop to 49.4 from 50.4, and a third reading of PMI from the desk of Sum Dum Gai simply took the average of the two. China's ec0nomy slowing down is actually favorable as it has been growing at a rate less sustainable than a conversation involving only eye contact with Christina Hendricks so having it moderate a bit and perhaps not inflate to a bubble like every other emerged economy would be beneficial for all involved.

Driving the market today was the European banking sector thanks to HSBC putting down its fag, rolling up its sleves, and earning the fuck out of some profits. The bank doubled its profits to $7B despite revenue growth declining by 7%, operating expenses increasing by 9%, and no one having any fucking money. Profits rose as losses on bad loans tumbled to $7.5B, just over half of last year's losses, and were the result of bad loans rolling off the books and the bank not lending anyone any money. BNP Paribas also put up a good Q, with the French bank's profits rising due to credit getting better and having Laetita Casta on call to help coax out customer deposits. Just like in the US, bank profitablity seems to be rising across the globe despite declining revenues as credit is improving. That said, credit can only drive earnings for so long until the banks are going to have to start lending to people again to drive revenue and thus the vicious cycle will begin anew.

In other market news, Blackberry is not just losing market share to the iPhone but now the UAE said they will cut RIMM's data service like the dirty infidel that it is. The UAE cited security concerns over RIMM's reliance on encrypted emails which make it easier for criminals to operate and harder for the government to watch that stupid fucking video of the double rainbow that everyone seems to be emailing around. Not since Peter Chung anointed himself King has there been an international email controversy like this and it does not augur well for RIMM's jobs overseas going forward as other countries like Saudi Arabia are also thinking about taking steps to ban Blackberry's mobile services.

Finally, KO got an upgrade today from JP Morgan on the strength of the company's emerging markets and having read Money McBags' columns about the solid brand equity overseas the company enjoys. An article in Baron's also pimped KO today, saying it could rise by at least 10% in the next year because of North American markets and because it still tastes better than water. And last but not least, Corning was up nearly 6% on news that it's 50 year old Gorilla glass could be the next bazillion dollar product for flat screens and touch screens as it is 2 to 3 times stronger than regular glass, half the thickness, and sells for only a few bananas. The lighter, sturdier glass should cut down on shipping costs and scratched screens while also being easier to clean after one gets done with a chat roulette session.

In small cap news, everything was up. Money McBags is short on time today but he wants to highlight KIRK which remains too fucking cheap even though it was up strong today. Money McBags broke KIRK down a little over month ago saying its low end market focus (midwestern/southeastern housewives who love tchotchkes more than Joanie loves Chachi), growth through the downturn (and now they are going to be opening stores instead of closing them), and valuation (it is now trading ~9x to 10x eps estimates not including the $3.50 per share of cash on the balance sheet) make it almost as attractive as Diora Baird, and nothing has changed since then except for John Kyl's stand on the 14th Amendment. The other interesting small cap name is NTRI who traded down big on Friday after what Money McBags thought was an OKish quarter. He has to go through it in more detail and while he wouldn't be a buyer of the stock until their management team actually performs (they are 0 for the last bazillion quarters, rounding up to the nearest bazillion), they pay a nice yield, have a terrific cost structure, and are in a growing (pun intended) market. It's worth keeping on a watch list for when/if they can figure out how to start accelerating their growth rates (Money McBags votes for getting Nicole Eggert as a spokeswoman, but that's just him).

7/30/10 Midevening Report: GDP goes down again, claims it likes the taste

2010-07-30T17:33:00.003-04:00

The big macro news today was that GDP slowed to 2.4% growth in Q2, that is until it's revised down next Q to keep up with the administration's "hold the shock and hope for no awe" strategy. This strategy was further evident in today's release as GDP from the past 3 fucking years was revised downward because apparently the Commerce Department is still figuring out how to properly use the "solver" function in Excel. The peak to trough decline is now seen to have been a 4.1% decline instead of a 3.7% drop, which officially makes this recession the worst since the 1940s which was so long ago that Abe Vigoda had only been dead for a decade and muff guessing still referred to fashion designers trying to figure out the latest in hand warming trends.

Surprisingly though, and in direct opposition to the downward revision strategy, last quarter's GDP was revised up to 3.7% from 2.7% which makes today's number even worse. It also goes against every fucking rule of manipulating data since, you know, the whole point of manipulating data is to use it to your advantage but apparently the new guy at the Commerce Department must have missed the memo while he was busy figuring out how to put a cover sheet on his fucking TPS report.

So GDP was below guesses of 2.6% growth and was mostly hurt by a trade deficit growing wider than the Octomom's cervix with imports spiking up 28% which is the largest jump in 25 years since the run on french cookies in the mid 1980s, consumer spend slowing to only 1.6% growth after growing 1.9% last Q, and a renaissance of common sense. The one bright spot Money McBags could find was Jasmine Waltz, and the one bright spot he could find in the GDP report was that the equipment and software category grew at an annual rate of 21.9% as businesses need to buy a bunch of shit to do what people used to do. The slower GDP growth comes a day after Fed Bank of St. Louis President James Bullard published an academic paper warning of the potential for the US economy to hit a period of deflation and turn in to Japan from 20 years ago which would be bad for everyone but the bukakke industry.

GDP is now slowing down, the economy has lost 8.4MM jobs, and Christina Hendricks still has not agreed to make a late night Skinamax movie, so any hopes of a speedy, stimulus driven recovery are becoming slimmer than Amy Fisher's parents hopes and dreams. Money McBags is sure the Fed will announce something soon to try to kickstart the economy, but based on the fact that they have been in existence for 100ish years and still haven't figured shit out (largely because economics is a more full of shit field of study than proctology), he's not holding his breath (though he would gladly hold anything of Hayley Atwell's).

In other US macro news, the University of Michigan's consumer sentiment index fell to 67.8 which is the lowest level since November and 10% below the 76 number it registered last month (though to be fair, it registered such a high number last month because it had put the thermometer next to the heater in hopes of being able to stay home from school). As always, Money McBags has no idea what the difference between a 67.8 and a 76 is other than 8.2 so while market seems mildly happy that the 67.8 came in at .8 better than analysts' guesses, Money McBags is pretty sure an 8 point drop is worse than a .8 outperformance, even if it were measured on some weird logarithmic scale.

Finally in macro news, the Chicago PMI defied all common sense, data, and laws of supply and demand and rose by more than guessed for the month of July. The PMI jumped from 59.1 to 62.3 while economists had guessed it would fall because, well, because we're in a fucking recession. Interestingly enough, readings above 50 signal expansion so despite GDP slowing down and consistently high rates of foreclosures and unmeployment causing the midwest to be bleaker and more run down than Warsaw in 1945 or Barbara Walter's vagina, Chicago area manufacturing continues to grow. It is as perplexing as the 9 dimensions needed for string theory to hold or the Lifetime channel.

Internationally, Moody's cut Iceland's rating outlook to negative, said they they could cut it to junk, and warned Iceland that they better "check themselves, before they Reykjavík themselves, because fucking with foreign currency loans is bad for yo' health." Iceland defended themselves by properly pointing out that Moody's is a bunch of asshats and by saying they are a long way off from defaulting on any debt payments. When asked what a "long way" was, Economy Minister Gyfli Magnusson simply replied that he'd like to buy a vowel before quickly mushing off on his dogsled.

In the market, MRK's profits fell 52% due to merger and restructuring charges associated with buying Schering-Plough and redoing the company cafeteria. Without those one time charges the company beat analyst eps guesses by $.03 and earned $.86 on the Q but the stock dropped as the company trimmed their full year guidance due to price cuts on drugs from European governments and slowing sales of vaccines and Singulair. A company spokesman said they would do their best to continue to promote bad and unhealthy behavior in order to boost sales of their products.

In other earnings news MET insured the fuck out of some shit and beat analyst guesses while Amgen also beat guesses despite lower revenue and profits as both investors and osteoporosis sufferers bend over backwards with excitement over their drug Proli. Also in the market Disney sold Miramax for $660MM to better focus on making shitty vapid films for kids to buy shittier vapider toys off of and C paid a $75MM fine for a little something called misleading investors about the amonut of subprime loans they held on their books. C claimed they only had $13B of exposure when they had $50B but Money McBags is sure the $75MM fine will make up for the billions investors lost by believing any of the publicly audited financial statements C released.

In small cap news, TSYS sold off by 17% after their net income fell by 50% in another quarter more confusing than the ending of a Kafka novel. Remember a couple of weeks ago Money McBags told you TSYS would make an interesting short term trade and on this past Tuesday he said:

"TSYS was up 4% plus and remember on 7/9 Money McBags said it was too cheap and would make a nice short term trade and it's up just under 20% since then so good for you if you picked up some shares but don't get too greedy as news on the company remains thinner than OJ's alibi and it has traded down for a year for a reason."

So hopefully you didn't get too greedy and took your profits and went home because we were given more reasons for its shitacular performance this year.

That said, on the surface, the quarter wasn't horrible, as revenue was an alltime high $92MM, though pretty much flat with the first two quarters of the year and gross profit of $33MM was also up a bit sequentially. EBITDA of $15MM was down a bit sequentially and barely up from last year when revenue was $25MM less so they are clearly having margin/expense issues with gross margin dropping from ~45% to ~36% from last year's Q. Not really what you'd like to see out of a supposedly growing business. Money McBags is a firm believer in not owning businesses with negative operating leverage unless they are in the start-up stage, so that is a huge red flag, especially for a company that has relied on acquisitions for much of their growth.

That said, the biggest problem seems to be that they saw their text message licensing business slow down and lead to fewer sales of pepetual licenses which was what Money McBags thought was a big growth area for this company. People like the fuck out of texting so it was always a bit confusing why this company's revenue didn't scale faster with that and why that is now slowing down for them.

Money McBags hasn't had time to listen to their call yet as he has been busy trying to solve the Riemann hyopthesis (he thinks the answer is zero) and looking for more pictures of Sofia Vergara, but he's sure the call would have been as confusing and unilluminating as ever as this management team has overpromised and underdelivered more than an M. Night Shyamalan film. That said, he's not sure if they are still guiding to $80MM-$85MM in EBITDA as they are only at ~$30MM half way through the year with one of their growth segments slowing and margins getting squeezed like Ines Sainz' ass in an airplane seat.

The company currently has an EV ~$280MM so it's pretty cheap if you think that they can double their EBITDA in the second half of the year but as Money McBags needs a fucking forensic accountant, a strategy consultant, the Amazing Kreskin, and a fuckload of luck to understand their press release and the different parts of their business, he's going to stay the fuck away.

Hopefully you all made a nice short term profit and perhaps their call explained a lot, as this company seems way too fucking cheap for what they claim to do. That said, the market isn't usually this wrong when selling something off over this long of a period of time, so Money McBags will remain happily uninvested. That said, if anyone can clearly and concisely explain their business in two sentences or fewer, Money McBags would be interested to understand.

Enjoy your weekend and don't forget, When Genius Prevailed is on Facebook and Twitter.

7/29/10 Midevening Report: Fed warns deflation may be coming, investors run to buy protection as they don't know who deflation slept with last

2010-07-29T21:52:00.001-04:00

Oh shit. While most people have been spending their time worrying about the Fed printing up some inflation, Fed Bank of St. Louis President James "Jimmie B" Bullard got his academic on today and dropped some deflation all up in this bitch.

And Jimmie B aint be one of those lame ass non-voting members of the FOMC like Fed Bank of Minnesota President Narayana Kocherlakota whose last name sounds like a hella nasty venereal disease one would catch from a night with Paris Hilton (and for the record, being a Fed Bank President and yet not getting to vote as part of the FOMC is like being the fat cheerleader on the bottom of a pyramid or a bachelor party designated driver). The point is Jimmie B knows the secret handshake, he drinks the juice, and his opinion matters so when he axes everyone if they know anything about some deflation and shit, people better start listening.

The deflationary concerns stem from a "provocative" paper Jimmie B wrote (provocative in the sense that it took a full three pages to put readers to sleep instead of the usual two, though to be fair, page one was a full picture of Katie Cleary dressed as a regression model, so whatever) in which he argued that the Fed needs to stop all of this extended period low interest rate bullshit and get their quantitative ease on by buying some debt instruments longer dated than Velveeta cheese or Betty White's vulva. Not only that, but Jimmie B warned that if we continue this low rate poilicy, we're going to end up like Japan and be stuck in a long term no growth economy while living in constant fear of attacks from large fire breathing monsters like godzilla or Roseanne Barr. So goodbye inflation (for now), hello deflation. Money McBags is sure you'll both lead to hyperinflation eventually but until then, enjoy the soup.

In other US macro news, new claims for unemployment fell by 11k to 457k, or by 7k if you use the non upwardly adjusted initial number released last week of 464k (Money McBags guessed that it would be upwardly revised to 470k, but it was only revised up 468k so good for the (No) Labor Department to only mildly be fudging the numbers). Analyst guesses were for initital claims to come in at 459k, so in theory the data was slightly better than guesses until a week from today when initial claims are revised upward to 460k+. The point is, the data isn't just hard to believe, but there is absolutley no way economists/analysts/The Great Gazoo can make any kind of relevant guess as to what the numbers will be since their regression models are all calibrated with data from the past 70 years or whatever, when the world wasn't as connected, volatile, and fat tailed. All one can say is that people keep losing jobs which is more challenging for a recovery than geography is for Caitlin Upton or a high five is from Verne Troyer.

Internationally, the IMF got its panties all up in a bunch about China's trade surplus which may balloon as big as LeBron James' ego or Sheyla Hershey's shirt if China doesn't try to support domestic comsumption by letting its currency float The report would not have been published had the IMF not removed a footnote saying how they calculated the undervaluation of China's currency and of course if the report had not been published, no one would have cared, not even the IMF's mom.

In the market, earnings were more mixed than the reviews for Kelly Brook's new movie Piranha 3-D (with reviews ranging from awful to boobalicious). Sony had a strong quarter and swung back to a profit thanks to operational efficiencies, strength in emerging markets, and sales of flat screen TVs, Playstation 3, and a bunch of other shit which people can surprisingly still afford. The stock was up 7% on the day as analysts had guessed Sony would report an operating loss which shows that even Japanese analysts suck at their jobs. Other companies putting up good Qs included Radio Shack, thanks to sales of the iPhone and the four people who remembered the company was still in business, and Visa, though Visa sold off on the day as analysts were quick to cut forecasts when V's CEO warned of new government regulation likely causing the debit market to "undergo changes" not unlike a pre-vagina'd Jamie Lee-Curtis.

That said, there were many companies that shit the proverbial bed today (and not any kind of shit, but an indian food, Jack Daniels, and Slim Jim shit). Both Nvidia and Symantec fell ~10% after they cut guidance for Q2 citing weak consumer demand which turned their semis flaccid. Kellogs was not great as they missed analyst guesses and cut their full year projections as apparently too many people were leggo-ing their eggos with waffle sales hurting the company's margins. Kelloggs was also hurt by a $.10 per share charge as they had to recall a fuckton of cereal boxes last month after customer complained of the boxes smelling too much like wax and end of the night stripper, but even exlcuding that charge, eps of $.89 still missed analyst guesses of $.94 eps. Finally Colgate dropped nearly 7% despite beating guesses and maintaining guidance as they warned currency devaluation in Venezuela will have a bigger impact than they initially estimated. Venezuelan currency continues to struggle after home grown Stefania Fernandez won the Miss Universe pageant and decided to leave the country to travel the world.

In small cap news, a Money McBags favorite QCOR put up a good Q and shot up 23 fucking percent on the day. Holy fuck did that thing rise and Money McBags was expecting a lackluster quarter at best, so fuck him. Money McBags has broken QCOR down numerous times on WGP so if you want to understand it better, put it in the search box (and if you want to understand divnity better, put it in Alice Eve's box).

As for the Q, net revenue was up12% from last year to $28.3MM and eps came in at $.14. Money McBags' revenue estimate was pretty much right on but he had assumed $1MM higher operating costs and thus he was expecting $.13 in eps. That said, the key driver of revenue was once again MS sales of Achtar which grew 145% y/y and 32% sequentially. This drug is such a fucking hit with a demand curve more inelastic than the demand for Lucy Pinder's curves, that QCOR should raise the price of achtar again (and that is funny because they already raised to around 1 bazillion percent to ~$23k a vial). The company now has ~$100MM cash which they are going to continue to deploy for buybacks and most importantly they announced they are going to double the size of their sales force to better attack the nephrology market where they have just started making headway.

So here is the deal, the nephrology market could be bigger than both the IS and the MS market for QCOR becuase patients need 9 to 10 vials of achtar over the course of six months to treat NS. Anyway, these are some interesting tidbits from the call:

1. With only the equivalent of 1 rep selling to the nephrology market last Q, QCOR manged to get 4 new prescriptions. With 9 to 10 vials needed for NS patients, that is equivalent to ~$200k in net revenue for each nephrology prescription so those 4 new cases sold by effectively one full time person, should net $800k in revenue for the company. As they say in France, "not fucking bad at all."

2. They are now going to go from 38 reps to 77 reps to be able to call on more nephrology doctors and to be able to increase the chances of someone getting drunk at the company holiday party and taking their shirt off.

3. Within the next couple of quarters, several papers on the effectiveness of Achtar will be coming out in medical journals with titles like "An Achtar a day will keep the pissing of blood away," "Achtar: Fucking focal segmental glomerulosclerosis in the ass," and simply, "Nephrotic Syndrome This!"

4. Out of the 8k nephrologists, fewer than 400 have written prescriptions for Achtar as QCOR hasn't had the sales force or the published medical data to reach the rest of the doctors. Both of those are coming soon.

5. MS is now 50% of their revenue with IS at ~40%, NS ~5%, and everything else 5%.

6. Olivia Munn is still hot.

7. They are no longer going to waste their time trying to use their $100MM in cash on acquiring another drug and will just focus all of their time on Achtar. Money McBags brought this up before as a curious strategy by the management team as he didn't understand why they would be fucking around trying to buy some do shit other drug if their growth opportunity was as good as they said it was. Now he is pleasantly pleased that they have decided to forego an acquisition and instead use their cash for buybacks, building a sales force, and one hell of a night out at their local Rick's Cabaret.

8. The PDUFA date for IS being put on label for achtar is 9/11 which if approved, will finally allow QCOR to market to IS doctors.

Anyway, the news of a doubling of the sales force caused the stock to rocket today but Money McBags guesses a bunch of that was short covering because small stocks don't move that quickly without some shorts puking out shares faster than an Olsen twin pukes out last night's dinner. That said, how do we value this company going forward? They said costs will be up by ~$2MM in Q3 and $3MM in Q4 as they double the sales force and Money McBags doesn't think that sales force will really be affective until Q1 of next year. So if Money McBags leaves IS flat for the rest of the year, grows MS by 20% in each of the next 2Qs sequentially, leaves NS as nothing, and adds the extra costs, he gets another $.32 in eps for the second half of the year or $.56 eps total in 2010.

But of course, who gives a shit about 2010 because it is 2011 where this company could start seeing even stronger growth. So if Money McBags takes 2010, grows IS by 10% (if Money McBags interpreted the CEO correctly, that business could grow 20% to 30% if the FDA allows them to put IS on label in September, so 10% growth seems like a decent enough way to discount that happening) and then grows the non-IS business by 30% (MS has been growing by 100% + y/y, but the law of large numbers and the ramp from nothing is going to have to catch up with them soon enough and NS is still so small that we'll ignore it for now even with the ramped sales force), then he gets ~$.78 eps for next year.

Of course that completely discounts NS doing anything even with an expanded sales force which seems way too harsh as in ~6 to 8 quarters MS has gone from nothing to 1/2 of the business, but Money McBags is trying not to get too excited as they only sold 11 vials for NS 2 Qs ago and 4 this last Q. So we'll take ~$.80 as a reasonable low end base line for 2011 and the stock is trading for ~13x that plus the ~$1.50 in cash.

That said, if NS takes off, this company easily earns more than $1 in 2012 and you can buy that kind of growth right now for 10x plus the cash which is almost as cheap as a an autographed Dick Pole. So look to buy on a pull back, and yes, this is the 1000x time Money McBags has said that and this stock has yet to pull back so time the trade as you please. Just remember, Money McBags first started writing about this stock in December when it was ~$5, so hopefully you all did your work and bought in and are now enjoying the fruits of your labor.

And don't forget, When Genius Prevailed is on Facebook and Twitter and only a few hundred thousand readers short (give or take 1MM) of Money McBags' goal of 1MM readers by the end of 2010.

7/29/10 Update: The best things come to those who wait, or some shit like that

2010-07-29T15:39:00.000-04:00

Money McBags is running a bit late with his column today. Hopefully it will be up by 6pm east coast time, but it may not be out until much later. He apologizes for any delay that may cause in your pooping schedule.

Topics today will incude deflation, QCOR, and likely Sofia Vergara.

So until then, enjoy the breeze.

7/28/10 Midevening Report: Rally comes to an end and unfortunately it's not Jessica Biel's

2010-07-28T18:37:00.002-04:00

The market sold off today as it couldn't keep ignoring the data and finally had to come to grips with where the bad macro news had touched it. The biggest negative was the Fed's Beige Book report which failed to titillate the market like either Money McBags' book report on the Kama Sutra (which he described as both thought provoking and delicious) or Fonzie's little black book.

In Bernanke's beige book we found out that economic activity has slowed in some areas and that Federal Reserve Bank President of Cleveland Sandra Painalto doesn't let you get to second base on the first date (Newsflash Sandy: If you ever want to get out of Cleveland, you're going to need to loosen up a bit, lower your reserve standards, and give Bennie B. some of that gold you've been hoarding). Eight of the twelve regions tracked by the Fed saw growth including New York, Richmond, and Andy Roddick's pants (he is married to her, you know that right?), while Atlanta and Chicago saw a slowdown, and Cleveland and Kansas City held steady. The Fed cited high unemployment, an ailing housing market, and consumers being more fucked than Lisa Ann in I'm a MILFaholic as reasons for the slower than hoped for recovery.

In other macro news, durable goods orders fell by 1% in June while analysts had guessed they would rise by 1% which makes guesses just an absolute value sign away from being correct which is a fuckload better than usual. Orders for long lasting goods like machinery, metals, and herpes were down the most they have been in almost a year and a half. Even worse, non-defense aircraft orders tumbled 25.6% after falling 30.2% last month as airlines brace for the continuing growth of staycations and poverty.

Finally, mortgage applications fell 4.4% last week but were led by a 5.9% drop in refinancings as rates ticked up 10bps and anyone who still owns a non-foreclosed upon home has pretty much already refinanced it. Surprisingly new home purchase mortgage applications were up 2% but since the majority of those will likely be rejected, that 2% number is more fictitious than the easter bunny, santa claus, or male affectionate lesbians.

In stock news, RIMM jobbed it's way up today despite the bad taste it has left in investors' mouths as of late. Rumors are that the company will be launching a new operating system and potentially a new keypad before officially giving up to AAPL and thus becoming the second biggest thing to ever be defeated at Waterloo (fyi, RIMM's headquarters are in Waterloo, Ontario).

Also, BA nosedived a bit after reporting a strong bottom line but a weak topline which was down 10% from last year. The company did reaffirm guidance which was slightly below analyst guesses but BA promised their new 787 would be more spacious and thus allow more opportunities for flyers to join the mile high club. And finally, Moody's lowered their ratings on banks BAC, C, and WFC from stable to negative citing lessened government support for banks under new regulations and something about shitty track records which means those banks are going to eventually need that lessened government support. And if any company knows what a poorly run company who sucks at their jobs looks like, it is certainly Moody's who never saw a huge market collapse it couldn't misinterpret.

In small cap news, beta sold off as these stocks had run strongly over the past week or so as if they were trying to catch a glimpse of the delightful Melissa Archer and thus it's not surprising that investors would want to take profits. CTGX reported last night and results were pretty much inline with Money McBags' expectations. The company grew revenue 21% thanks to both strong staffing and health care services businesses. Health care services is now 27% of revenues and should start driving this business like Nipsey Russell drove all of the housevies crazy on the Hollywood game show circuit in the 1970s. In addition to a solid topline, SG&A was down 120bps, operating margins were up from 3.6% to 4.3%, and EPS went from $.09 to $.12.

The stock sold off on the day though due to the general market taking it in the yingus and lowered full year EPS guidance by CTGX due to a reduction in demand for solutions work from one of their large customers in their energy practice. Excuse me while Money McBags yawns on this one. Full year revenue guidance was increased to $320MM to $328MM from $314MM to $322MM (which is 18% growth) while eps guidance was reduced to $0.45 to $0.51 from $0.47 to $0.55 and although it is down, it is still a 26% increase from 2009. But the point is, Money McBags gives less of a shit about 2010 guidance than he does about Alan Greenspan's thoughts on the housing, Nassim Taleb's thoughts on lyrical prose, or Audrina Patridge's thoughts on anything other than which hole to enter.

As said frequently in this space, the coming electronic medical records implementations (and they are coming because the government has mandated them, not just because they ran in to Sonya Kraus in the hallway) are going to be huge for CTGX. As the CEO said in the press release: "We believe we are still in the early stages of the significant increases in demand expected for EMR assessments, systems implementation, and development work."

This Q, EMR was 1/2 of their health care business which was ~$10MM in revenue and means they were working on 13-20 installations at ~$2MM-$3MM a project annually. But the thing is, only ~10% of hosptials have EMR and they are MANDATED by the fucking government to have them at least underway by 2014 so this business should scale faster than a business selling bronzer, or Valtrex, on the Jersey Shore.

Money McBags has gone through his valuation on CTGX here on When Genius Prevailed many times, so feel free to throw it in the search box, but this company is set for strong growth over the next few years so use this sell off as a potential buying opportunity. Obviously the lack of trading volume and the fact that CTGX's boring staffing business is still ~70% of their revenues is a concern, but as long as EMR is on the way and this company isn't full of shit about their ability to service that sector as aplombly as Bunny De La Cruz services the ding dong sector, the company should see solid growth.

And remember, When Genius Prevailed is on Facebook and Twitter.

7/27/10 Midafternoon Report: Consumers still confident the economy sucks

2010-07-27T16:03:00.009-04:00

The market bounced around today as it tried to find a direction like scientists are trying to find the elusive "God particle" (though apparently scientists have figured out where it isn't which includes Jane Austen's writing, Bernie Madoff's bank account, and Jamaica. But newsflash Einsteins, you might want to check Brooklyn Decker's vagina because if the "god particle" isn't there, Nietzsche may have been right.).

Anyway, the big macro news was that consumer confidence fell to a five month low with consumers still worried about jobs, the potential death of fiat currency and subsequent return to the barter system, and Eliza Dushku's consistent refusal to do nude scenes. The index fell to 50.4 from an upwardly revised 54.3 and economists had guessed it would come in at 51, so good on them for almost correctly predicting one number out of the thousand they guess on yearly. That said, a drop in consumer confidence could lead to further declines in spending which is as good for the economic recovery as fat tails are for trying to forecast using gaussian assumptions, tickets to the Ford theatre were for Abraham Lincoln, or The World's Biggest Gang Bang was to Annabel Chong's pelvis.

In headline manipulatedly (and yes that is more of a rehetorical tautology than "free gift," "short summary," or "Kathy Griffin manly") positive macro news, the Case-Shiller home price index was up 1.3% on a non-seasonally adjusted basis, .5% on a seasonally adjusted basis, 4.7% year over year, and 30% in the land of make believe where every party is as delightful as a rainbow. Of course the numbers are more worthless than a hand job from a quadriplegic with carpal tunnel disease as the Case Shiller index uses a fucking three month average so inflated home sales from April due to the now expired the government tax credit are still in the numbers. What we do know is that home prices are at least 29% below their inflated peak from four years ago, foreclosured properties are at record highs, and Sofia Vergara is hot.

The market remains at a headscratchingly confusing time (though if it were Money McBags' head and Diora Baird doing the scratching, that would be a lot less confusing) with macro data continuing to be marginally bad at best and yet earnings coming in moderately good at worst. So which is the leading indicator and which is the lagging? It is a question that is proving to be a bigger conundrum than anything the Sphinx, Hamlet, or Andy Rooney ever asked (go to ~1:13 in the video).

In Europe, all but one of the 27 members of the EU agreed in principle to new BASEL regulations, with only Germany holding out as they wait for a bigger signing bonus, guaranteed playing time, and use of the EU locker room to entertain groupies during breaks in the negotiations. The new proposal is less onerous than earlier proposals and give banks more leeway to define what counts as Tier 1 capital potentially including stakes in other banks, future tax benefits, and monopoly money. Regulators are still debating the amount that banks will ultimately need to hold as reserves but Money McBags is pretty sure that whatever the number winds up being, it won't be enough for the next bubble.

Also internationally, Germany’s consumer confidence from the GfK institute rose to 3.9 but as Money McBags doesn't use the metric system, he has no idea what that means. That said, with Germany being Europe's largest and least funny economy, rising confidence can't be a bad thing.

In the market, DuPont (ticker DD) announced a good Q which was the second time today the market got excited about a set of double Ds with JWOWW having rung the opening bell. DD earned $1.17 per share, beating analyst guesses of $.94 eps as a result of 26% revenue growth driven by a 33% increase in emerging market sales. They also raised 2010 earnings guidance to $2.90 to $3.05 per share from $2.50 to $2.70 and told analysts to suck it.

Deutsche bank made analysts look like deutsche bags by putting up a big Q as well. DB posted a 9% rise in earnings despite weak performance from their investment banking business which had to take a quarter off from manipulating the market while new regulations were being discussed. That said, it was a good Q for the German bank who is still likely drunk and throwing out the saran wrap from their traditional German scat party as a way to celebrate having passed the europe bank stress tests last week (though the tests were about as vigorous as a Kirstie Alley workout video).

Finally, BP was down after posting a $17B second quarter loss thanks to creating the worse unnatural disaster since the Lohans failed to get an abortion 24 year ago. And Apple will now be forced to allow third party software on the iPhones which means porn lovers everywhere just lost another 30 minutes of their day. The real purpose of the ruling by the copyright office is to allow iPhone users the ability to unlock their phones without any repercussions and thus have the ablilty to change their wireless service provider from AT&T to something that works a little bit better, like smoke signals, shouting, or semaphore.

In small cap news, CTGX reports tonight and Money McBags expects an inline quarter at best with EMR still a few Qs away. TSYS was up 4% plus and remember on 7/9 Money McBags said it was too cheap and would make a nice short term trade and it's up just under 20% since then so good for you if you picked up some shares but don't get too greedy as news on the company remains thinner than OJ's alibi and it has traded down for a year for a reason.

Last week EPAX, a small, overlooked, and horribly performing name which Money McBags thinks is an interesting company put up a Q as crappy as expected. Money McBags broke down this company in quite a bit of detail a few months ago but they basically arrange for international student travel so little Jimmy can lose his virginity to an Amsterdamian hooker all under the guise of educational experiences. The point is, the business sucks right now as if it were Jesse Jane on the set of Island Fever 4. The company sells expensive, completely discretionary trips to Europe in the biggest recession in 70 years when in the internet age all one has to do to spend a night in Paris is steal their neighbor's wifi signal. This last Q, gross margin was down ~15% and with operating costs flat at $12MM, eps was down ~20% to $.79 per share in what is traditionally the strongest Q for the company as it is right before the summer travel season.

Money McBags' estimate remains at $.49 eps for this year and the company released guidance for $.48 eps to $.52 eps (and yes, Money McBags' $.49 eps estimate was from way back in April when the street was still at ~$.60, look it up, so his 15 minute earnings model proved to be more precise than sell side analyst models which is less surprising than finding out that Gary Colemn didn't live to age 50). The point is, the company is still struggling with enrollments down 17% and their recently launched Discover Adventure travel progam having underwhelmed like a bachelor party in which Mayim Bialik jumps out of the cake (or more precisely, eats her way out).

So why the fuck would Money McBags be interested in a company whose EPS is going to decline by 50% and is trading at >20x current year guidance? Simple, volume. Well, actually volume has little to do with it but cash does. The company has $53MM in deployable cash and a market value of $210MM so ~25% of their value is in cash or roughly $2.50 per share. Not only that but this company can scale quickly as they are already running a lean operation and until this year were able to maintain $1 in earnings power.

So the upside is that people become a little less freaked out about the economy in a year, EPAX buys back shares with some of their cash, and Hanna Hilton comes out of retirement and offers her fans free ice cream sundaes for continuing to have supported her in her down time (and yes that has very little to do with EPAX, but whatever).

This company is an interesting way to play a recovering economy and while Money McBags doesn't think that is going to happen anytime soon, it is a cheap way to hedge one's negative bets. Money McBags doubts the stock does anything for at least another 3Qs and he doesn't own it nor is he going to buy it, but it pays ~2% yield and is one way to play a market recovery with some downside protection.

And remember, When Genius Prevailed is on Facebook and Twitter.

7/26/10 Midevening Report: Market rally excites quants as S&P rubs up against upper bollinger band

2010-07-26T17:39:00.004-04:00

The market ran again today as Fed Ex boosted guidance due to international companies wanting shit faster and macro data headlines were manipulatedly good (like Cameron Diaz' face on a magazine cover). The big macro news was that new home sales jumped 24% which is the biggest jump since May of 1980 and totally sounds better than saying new home sales were the second lowest since 1963 (and you remember 1963, the year the Beatles released their first album, JFK was assassinated, Raquel Welch was breaking in to Hollywood, and full muff was the norm). Of course 1963 is also when this data started being recorded, so for all we know it could also be the second lowest month since 1863, but whatever. So before we start handing out lobster tails and buy one get one free blumpkin passes to Amber Lancaster's powder room (and Money McBags will take two of those please), perhaps we shoud look at the shittiness (which may be too technical of a term for most) of the absolute number and ignore the relative spin.

To start with, last month's new home sales were revised down from 300k to 267k which is only a minor 11 fucking percent downward revision (and minor in the way that reading a Thomas Pynchon book gives someone a minor headache or bumping in to Audrina Patridge would give someone a minor stiffy). Anyway, last month's number of 300k, which is now 267k, means that new home sales fell by 37%, 40%, or 47% last month depending on which of the manipulated numbers from two months ago you want to use as the base line (the 504k initially reported, the 446k downwardly revised number from last month, or the even more downwardly reviesed 422k reported this month, and yes, two fucking months after the data, the numbers are still being downwardly revised because apparently they have yet to hit zero).

The point is, the awfulness of last month's number keeps getting worse but investors are overlooking that because the headline growth for this month is 24% and 24% growth is a big fucking number (even though in absolute terms it is still the second worst number ever and will more than likely be revised down next month to 305k). So while economists and the Commerce Department can point to growth rates as a sign of accomplishment, it's as disingenuous as landing on an aircraft carrier and claiming Mission Accomplished in Iraq or telling Rosie O'Donnell she doesn't look fat in those jeans. In short, last month's historically bad number gets revised down more and thus this month's second worst historically bad number gets to look slightly better because of the BS growth rate off of the downward revision. Just imagine how great this month's number would have looked if it went from one new home sold to two.

Anyway, the 330k number being reported is in fact ~24% higher then the 267k number (but only 10% higher than the 300k number that was actually reported last month) and it beat analyst guesses by 10k and since analysts have proven to be so right over the last 5 years to 3,000 years, a beat is such good fucking news that the commerce department can spend the day admiring the new portrait of Carlos Gutierez instead of trying to fix shit. But lets not let details get in the way of a good rally because that would be like letting a little hepatitis get in the way of boning Pam Anderson.

There wasn't much international news today except that Europe is starting an anti-trust case against IBM, though if Money McBags were IBM, he wouldn't trust the europeans in their black jeans and with their love of european fudge pops. The EU is claiming that IBM may have abused their dominant position in the mainframe computer market like the dominant Ariel X abuses her defeated foes in the NSFW Ultimate Surrender Summer Vengeance tournament. This anti-trust case stems out of complaints from a company called T3 communications which is a firm invested in by MSFT and other than Tiger Woods' ex-wife, MSFT is the foremost authority on anti-trust.

The big stock news of the day is that Fed Ex raised their guidance for fiscal 2011 from $4.40 to $5.00 per share to $4.60 to $5.20 per share and this comes after UPS showed everyone what Brown can do for them by squeezing out a solid quarter last week. UPS' revised guidance was driven by increased demand for international priority packages where according to a Wellls Fargo analyst: "Growth in Asia has been red hot, fueled by the tech sector and iPhones and handheld devices and discounts on Hello Kitty's line of dildos." Fed Ex is feeling good enough about their operational efficiences and global volume growth that they have reinstituted their 401k matching program so now employees can lose the company's money in addition to their own.

In other stock news, BP is getting a new CEO and hopefully this one won't won't be a dud even with a name like Robert Dudley (and that was such a bad pun that Jay Leno should feel free to steal it). Dudley will be the first Amercian born CEO of BP as the company's board hopes to improve on the langauge barrier between themselves and the US government (as apparently "your shit is not safe" didn't translate correctly from US regulators to BPs former CEO). Otherwise, it was a light earnings day on the market but Roper industries put up a nice Q despite a rumored take over from Furley Industriies which turned out just to be a wrongly overheard conversation in the company kitchen.

In small cap stocks, IMAX had a strong day on Inception's continued box office outperformance and the stock has bounced back nicely since Money McBags talked about it as something to avoid the other week. Money McBags favorites CRUS and KITD also had solid days, as did just about everything else in the small cap space, except for IBKR which deserves to go down for how they made Money McBags feel after their earnings announcement last week which he was more highly anticipating than the inevitable Christina Hendricks playboy spread (and yes, it will happen). Money McBags is short on time today so he won't be getting to any detailed small stock analysis but it should be a busy week with QCOR, IMAX, CTGX, and NTRI reporting so he promises he will have more compny breakdowns for you as necessary. If you are craving for more dick jokes though, Money McBags was busy in the comments section from Friday's column, so enjoy.

7/23/10 Midafternoon Report: European banks pass stress test, results of colonoscopy still pending

2010-07-23T15:55:00.002-04:00

The market was quiet in the morning despite a slew of solid earnings announcements as it waited for the release of the Europe bank stress tests which were more highly anticipated than Lindsay Lohan's jail stint, Avatar's opening weekend, or Mel Gibson's next career limiting phone call. Well the results came out midday and were exactly as worthless as one could have hoped. Only 7 out of 91 banks failed the stress test including Munich based Hypo Real Estate, Greek based ATE Bank (which apparently "ate" a fuckload of bad loans), some Spanish banks, and Italy's Bank of Madoffia. Of course these stress tests were weaker than the efficient market hypothesis in the era of high frequency traders or Haiti's infrastructure, so it's hard to get too excited about the results.

The stress tests failed to analyze whether banks could withstand a debt default by any European country and neglected to look at the entirety of banks' balance sheets (which is a bit like asking a female out on date but forgetting to check for an Adam's Apple) including completely leaving out any government bonds being held to maturity which is only the fucking majority of the sovereign debt held, so that makes as much sense as trying to diagnose rectal cancer with a broken thermometer and a loving touch.

From day one it was obvious that the stress tests were more bogus than Iraq having weapons of mass destruction, MBA programs teaching anything useful, or Ricky Martin being interested in any female who bangs. There was no way the EU was going to have the test results come out and show that a fucklaod of banks had failed and yet they also wanted to try to have some credibility and not have every bank pass because that would have been less believable than the US bank stress tests or GS' non-admission of guilt in the Abacus CDO manipulations. So the Committee of European Banking Supervisors managed to find some BS Goldilocks scenario where 7 banks would fail in a number deemed to be just right in not causing more fear but also just right in showing that there are some problems. So jolly good show, hope no one in the CEBS tore their black jeans in their rigorous assessment of the data.

The point is, the banks may be healthy or they may not be healthy, but don't piss on Money McBags and tell him that it's raining (unless you are Kelly Brook and just downed a case 1787 Chateau Lafite, and in that case, piss away) by claiming the tests that were run give any kind of conclusive evidence about the health of the EU's banking system. So excuse Money McBags while he yawns this one out while the market rallies on the news.

In other european news, Britain had a 1.1% increase in GDP which was double what economists had guessed but is still nowhere near pre-recession levels. The country hopes their newly introduced dental sector can help spur GDP higher. In Germany, business confidence rose the most since reunification and to its highest level in three years as the whole country celebrates schadenfreude at the downfall of their fellow EU members. Finally, Hungary's credit rating may be falling to junk after their talks with the IMF went worse than Sarah Palin's talks with Bristol about abstinence. A lower credit rating could leave investors in Hungary starving and will cause it to be more difficult for the country to raise money which it won't likely to be able to pay back anyway. That said, the threat of credit ratings downgrades are coming from S&P and Moody's who, as always, suck at their jobs worse than a closterphobic magician's assistant, so take it for what it is worth.

And in China, worries are getting out that banks may not be able to collect on nearly a quarter of the loans they made to local governments for the building of airports, highways, and lunch delivery of the nation's favorite soup, cream of Sum Yung Gai. Banking regulators haven't addressed this potential shortfall but Money McBags is sure they will successfully manipulate their way out of it.

In market news, earnings are powering US companies like spinach powers Popeye or herpes powers Britney Spears (she does run on herpes, right? It's the only logical conclusion with which Money McBags can come up for regarding the affair du Federline). Ford reported a profit again and said they expect next year to be even better thanks to their new vibrating seats functionality. The company was strongly cash flow positive with $2.6B of cash brought in and they say they will be in a net cash position by the end of next year (and net cash is Money McBags' third favorite position, right behind lowering taxes and reverse cowboy). Ford's sales were up 28% in the first half which is twice the industry average as consumers move down market and no longer care about status.

In other earnings news, MCD beat estimates yet traded down as it missed whatever the whisper number analysts made up but were to chickenshit to actually put on paper was. Money McBags will never understand the concept of a whisper number (unless it is Olivia Munn whispering Money McBags her number) because it is a bigger cop out than "it got lost in the mail," "I was young at the time," or running to Miami to play with Dwyane Wade. In theory, sell side analysts get paid to provide their unbiased opinions while in practice they get paid to pump up the stocks for whom their firms are trying to raise money, to write meaningless daily updates, and to anally rape sheep (ok, one of those may be made up) and the lameness of not having the nuts to put a whisper number in any of their daily drivel says all one needs to know about paid research. Anyway, MCD had a nice quarter with revenue up 5%, same store growth of 4.8%, $1.13 eps, and only 1k blocked coronary arteries in the Q. Strong international growth helped fuel the results as MCD's cheap menu and and aspirational brand equity resonantes in countries with large poor populations such as India, China, and the United States.

Also, MSFT put up a big Q after running up yesterday in anticipation of good things happening like the resurgence of the corporate upgrade cycle, stronger sales of Windows, and Excel hardcoating goalseek to always find the lovely Sofia Vergara. EPS was up 48% to $.51 and revenue grew from $13B to $15B, both numbers handily beating analyst guesses though the numbers could contain a trojan horse virus so no one wants to get close enough to them to really dig in.

Finally, Verizon slapped their cocks on the table and yelled "can you hear me now?" as they beat guesses by $.02 per share by earning $.58 per share despite flatish revenue growth and no exposure to the iPhone thanks to better operation. And AXP beat estimates and tripled their profts as customer spend was up 16% and like all financial companies, they lowereed their provisioning, likely just in time to have to raise it again for the second dip in the upcoming recession.

Not all was lobster tails and blow jobs though as AMZN missed their earnings estimates despite growing the top and bottom lines by 40%+. Analysts had guessed the company would earn $.54 per share but instead they earned $.45 per share due to an increase in operating expenses as the company has to spend more on advertising to convince people that the Kindle wasn't outdated two months ago with the release of the iPad or ~600 years ago with the release of the printing press. Amazon has always seemed like a nebulous investment to Money McBags given the competition, relatively low barriers to entry for specialty sites, and consistently high valuation so he is as happy to not be involved in this stock as Dan Quayle is happy not to be involved in a spelling bee (and yes, Money McBags just whipped out a 20 year old punch line because frankly, 1k-1.5k words of dick jokes a day is a blistering pace, even for a talent like Money McBags).

In small cap news, IBKR reported and managed to shit all over themselves, and Money McBags' thesis, as if they didn't just have Montezuma's Revenge but had his ire, hatred, and angst as well. Their results made Money McBags sadder than he was this morning when read that the inventor of the black box had died until he realized it was this guy and not Roxy Reynolds or Vanessa Del Rio's mom.

Anyway, before we get to IBKR's numbers, Money McBags wants to apologize for saying buying some options in this piece of shit company ahead of earnings would be a good strategy. He believes his logic was sound, but unfortunately he made the mistake of believing he had correctly called the bottom of one of the biggest value traps the market has seen since AIG in 2006 or Elizabeth Berkley's acting career pre-Showgirls, so he is sorry for that. Never again will he give a fuck about this shitty company whose market making business which is based on voaltility couldn't profit when the market was, umm, how to put this lightly, fucking volatile.

IBKR earned $.09 per share in the Q which was down from $.31 per share in last year's Q and continued the unpredictable nature of this company whose quarters are more up and down than Oprah's weight (see, Money McBags could write for Leno, no problem) or Faye Reagan on a sybian (he could also write for the AVN awards, he is bi-comedial). Their internet brokerage business fared well and continued to grow increasing accounts by 20% and customer equity by 43% but all of that was irrelevant because their market making business made a mockery of themselves and only had a 5% pre-tax profit margins leading to a profit of $3.9MM which was down 97% from last year.

The stock is such a peice of shit that their CEO who is an ~80% owner has given up trying to make it seem like anything someone would want to invest in and is instead now marketing the stock as some type of hedge for anyone who wants to keep their portfolio from growing too much.

The CEO said: "increasing fluctuations in foreign exchange markets have a corresponding impact on our reported results in U.S. dollars. This makes it ever more apparent that our shares would be more appropriately considered as an investment in a global enterprise based in a diversified basket of currencies rather than in U.S. dollars."

So any of you out there who own a global enterpirse, buy away.

On the call, CEO Peterffy claimed that the appreciation of the dollar cost them $72MM in revenue or $.16 per share because it's always one excuse or another. Anyway, Money McBags clearly fucked up and was speculating on market volatility causing earnings to appreciate, which apparently they would have had the dollar not strengthened, but whatever. As Money McBags was speculating, he said to buy options and not the stock so your losses would be minimized, but either way, fuck this company and if any of you ever read Money McBags trying to give an opinion on IBKR other than he has no idea and they hate turning out a profit, you have permission to punch Money McBags in the nuts while forcing him to listen to the melodic stylings of Celine Dion.

So have a good weekend and remember When Genius Prevailed is on Facebook and Twitter.

7/22/10 Midevening Report: Market shoots up on earnings, hopefully it wasn't sharing a needle with Greece

2010-07-22T17:05:00.005-04:00

The market raced up today as if it were Icarus escaping from Crete and rapidly approaching the tantalizing Sun, though with luck it used better wings and thus will avoid the same fate. Despite more negative macro news, a growing and unsustainable debt, and more longterm unemployed people than a fast food addict has bacne, the market is responding positively to a number of earnings reports because apparently four or five data points are much more relevant than the last 3 months of data, statistics, and common sense.

In macro news, new claims for unemployment were out and as usual, were much worse than analyst guesses. Claims rose by 37k to 464k (though next week that number will likely be revised to 470k, because that's how the (NO) Labor department rolls). Analysts were only slightly off in their predictions of claims rising by 17k and by slightly, Money McBags means whatever the opposite of slightly is, like considerably, greatly, or a fuckload. But hey, only 45% of the 14.6MM unemployed people have been out of work for more than 6 months and if that doesn't scream market rally, then nothing does (and of course that number doesn't include people who simply stopped looking for work as they became more discouraged than the Edsel's marketing team or Stevie Wonder's shoe polisher after Mr. Wonder downs a Big Gulp and hits a urinal).

In other macro news, existing home sales fell by 5.1% but since analysts had guessed they would fall by 8.1%, the market reacted positively, choosing to ignore the absolute for the relative, which is a bit like getting excited about your daughter sleeping with Magic Johnson and only coming away with herpes. There are 4MM homes on the market which at the current sales pace equates to a 9 month supply of homes which is bad news for sellers but good news for that one guy looking relocate. And finally, the index of US leading indicators fell .2% but that was .1% better than guesses so another pyrrhic victory for the market to celebrate while it ignores the bigger picture like King Pyrrhus ignored the replenishing forces of roman soldiers.

Of course the big news today is earnings where several companies beat guesses, put out better guidance, and did it all with a straight face. UPS beat analyst guesses and gave above street guidance thus figuratively dropping a deuce on estimates and showing what brown can really do. New guidance was for $3.35 to $3.47 per share which was well above analyst guesses of $3.27 per share and driven by their international business and more people buying shit online since they can't afford gas for their cars. Obviously an increased pace of shipping bodes well for a recovery somewhere so hopefully the uptick is a result of real business needs and not companies shipping left behind picture frames to the people they laid off.

Caterpillar is another company that put up a huge quarter which made more than just lepidopterists happy. The company crawled its way to 31% revenue growth and 93% profit growth while raising their guidance and destroying analyst guesses as if those guesses were freshly laid ant larvae. EPS was $1.09 and guesses were for $.85 eps and in this market, a beat that large is rarer than a Palos Verde Blue or a pair of underwear worn by Paris Hilton. Also, AT&T called up analysts and told them they suck as the company forecast strong growth for the rest of the year. Earnings of $.61 per share beat analyst guesses of $.57 per share and the beat was surprisingly due to their wireline business as more people celebrate the recession with staycations. And finally regional banks everywhere led by PNC, STI, and BBT put up solid earnings on improving credit trends and a lowering of provisions which seems more shortsighted than Mr. Magoo with two eyepatches on but good for them (for now).

In other stock news GM is buying subprime lender AmeriCredit because they have such a great record running lending businesses. This acquisition is like allowing Roman Polanski to pick up the baby sitter or Ben Stein to give you macroeconomic advice. On the heels of this merger, the Federal Government is said to be already building a fund to be able to bail GM out again when they horribly mismanage this subprime book.

In small cap news, a Money McBags favorite, KITD preannounced their quarter this morning. Now look, Money McBags has written about this company more often than Rudy Giuliani talks about 911 or Taylor Rain goes 5-hole because it is ridonkulously cheap and growing faster than Teddy Roosevelt's reputation after he singlehandedly corralled 3 outlaws for trial in the Dakota Badlands in 1885. Anyway, KITD's preannouncement today was for at least $22.7MM in revenue for Q2 which is ~110% y/y growth ~30% sequential growth and EBITDA of at least $4MM which is up from $3MM last Q.

But here is the interesting part. Money McBags has been worried about them due to the effect of the Euro dropping faster than the commercial prospects for any yet to be released Mel Gibson movie. He first mentioned his concerns here which had to do with the Euro declining ~25% against the dollar in the Q and KITD being highly levered to the exchange rate. Well the CEO addressed this today saying:

"Our record second quarter results superseded the devaluation of European currencies, which we estimate had about a 4% negative impact on our top-line during the period, as reported in U.S. dollars. We estimate that this currency devaluation actually had a small (less than 1%) positive impact on overall cash-flow, since we have slightly higher proportion of costs than revenues in European currencies."

Wow. While Money McBags doesn't quite get how the impact was only a negative 4% topline hit, but he'll take that number all fucking day like a Spanish worker takes a siesta after five minutes of semi-intense labor. So KITD must somehow be weighted more Asia and less Europe than Money McBags thought or something else is going on because he thought costs and revenues were in local currencies, but whatever. That is a terrific number and Money McBags feels much much better about his low end estimates now being so low as to be more preposterous than a professional wrestler becoming a governor.

The other highly positive news on KITD was that their DSOs fell from a way too elevated 128 days to 90 days which had caused a hella lot of fear from investors because when a weird, dinky little company levered to Europe and growing way too rapidly starts having balance sheet issues, things usually turn out worse than one of Andy Reid's kids or a school for the deaf trying to sing in a round for their yearly concert.

Oh yeah, Money McBags also loved this tidbit:

"The proliferation of Internet-connected devices, coupled with the accelerating worldwide adoption of broadband connections and video-capable mobile networks (3G and 4G), appears to be fueling a strong, overall long-term growth trend in IP-based video asset management systems. "KIT digital is in the 'sweet spot' to benefit from this rising VAMs tide," said Isaza Tuzman. "With the extinguishment of most of our warrants and the incurrence of previous M&A restructuring charges now largely behind us, we are looking forward to providing greater visibility into our strong financial performance and industry positioning, starting with the reporting of our complete Q2 financial results, to be released in mid-August.""

So what we learned again is that this is a great space to be in and KITD is not just the biggest global player, but continues to leverage their software and relationships to stay in the sweet spot. Plus, by getting rid of all of their income statement shenanigans that causes this company to report operating EBITDA which is not an easy metric for HFT's, quant funds, and portfolio managers to easily pick up in any universe screen, KITD will make themselves easier for investors to find and evaluate. As Money McBags fully expects their EPS to be more positive than January Jones' prom date, being able to get rid of all the extraneous shit will only help the market properly value this company.

On the strength of their Q and the fact that revenue did not get mobelcrated by the declining Euro (mobelcrated of course being the thing that is just a bit worse than excoriated), Money McBags is going to maintain his initial estimates for this year of ~$95MM revenue and ~$19MM EBITDA. The company has a current EV of ~$175MM so it's trading at ~8.5x this year's EBITDA and the company is getting 100% revenue growth. Next year, $150MM revenue and $30MM EBITDA is not unachievable and thus at the high end this company is trading at ~6x EV/EBITDA which is way too low for the kind of growth market this company is in even if it is somewhat of a roll up, headquartered in Prague, and loves to dilute the shit out of shareholders.

But wait, let's throw out all of the nonsense on the income statement and lets say KITD hits $95MM revenue this year and grows 30% next year (again, a low estimate). With 50% gross margins (which is a low estimate compared to the last few Qs) and say ~$40MM in operating costs, and enough NOLs to make even Wesley Snipes smile, you get ~$.95 eps and after today's run up, the company is trading at only 10x that. Companies growing topline like KITD in this kind of market should not be trading at 10x forward eps, 2.5x current year revenue estimates, or 6x forward EV/EBITDA.

So if you can deal with the warts and likely volatility, this name should easily trade for 20x eps estimates or 10x EV/EBITDA which gives us at least 50% upside from here. Yesterday Money McBags made the case for CRUS once again, today he is telling you he likes KITD better and reminding you that when the stock dipped below $9 on July 7th, Money McBags told you to load up (of course he told you that all the way down as well, but whatever). In the longrun this company should see very nice appreciation so sit back and enjoy the ride as it might be rocky but it's should be very profitable.

And as always, When Genius Prevailed is on Facebook and Twitter.

7/21/10 Midevening Report: Market "unusually certain" that it should go down

2010-07-21T17:40:00.003-04:00

The market was chugging right along today like a Kennedy at a sorority mixer after Apple titillated the market with sales stronger than the breath of either of the world's foremost cunning linguists, the great Vladmir Nabokov and the greater Janine Lindemulder, until Ben Bernanke got up and threw his figurative Baby Ruth into the market's pool causing investors to run for safety. Bennie B. got his best gangsta lean on and told the Senate Banking Committee, who never met a bubble they couldn't regulate after it had already deflated itself, that the recovery remains "unusually uncertain and shit" before repeatedly rhetorically axing "you know what I mean?" His befuddling remarks caused the market to fall faster than Andrew Johnson's reputation in the Republican party after suceeding (or more appropriately, failing) Lincoln and thus negated a rare day where earnings were mostly positive.

While it's not entirely clear what "unusually uncertain" means, especially since Money McBags finds all uncertainties a bit unusual, he believes the term is Fed-bonics for "We have less of a fucking clue about what is happening than we usually do." Bernanke did say the Fed is ready to step in as needed and while he didn't say what those steps may be, one can assume they include keeping rates low (for an extended period like a metrorrhagia sufferer), manipulating the Fed's balance sheet, and the Charleston.

Prior to Bennie B. unleashing his pimp hand and treating the market like his bottom bitch, President Obama signed the financial legislation bill which after two years of debate has been watered down more than a virgin bloody mary without the tomato juice or tobasco (though he signed it "Alan Smithee", so it's not clear if the bill will hold). The most worrisome part of the bill is that many of the details are more open ended than Alexis Texas right before filming Buttwoman which leaves regulators plenty of wiggle room to fuck more shit up. As far as Money McBags is concerned the bill didn't go far enough in regulating the use of derivatives, in limiting the size of banks, or in raising reserve requirements and making banks responsible for their greed which led to credit scoring models to be less frequently used than MySpace (does anyone remember that piece of crap?).

In macro news, mortgage applications jumped last week for the first time in five weeks in what surely is a fictitious number, or a typo. What is more believable is that refi applications were at 14 month highs as record low mortgage rates of 4.59% have led homeowners to lower their interest payments faster than the Stoughton, MA police department lowered the boom on one of their officers who was just doing a little (and Money McBags stresses "little") due diligence.

The real story of the day (other than Bennie B.'s uncertain uncertainty) was Apple's Q in which they sold what is known in the retail space as "a fuckload of shit" and put up a huge earnings number. Apple's net income rose by 78% by selling 3.3MM iPads, 8.4MM iPhones despite people waiting until the end of the Q for the iPhone 4 launch in order to be able to make use of the front facing camera while masturbating for strangers on chatroulette from work bathroom stalls everywhere, and a whopping and quarterly high 3.5MM Macintosh computers making everyone loudly say "Apple sells computers?" Revenue was up 60% to $15.7B, beating analyst guesses by $1B, and putting the company only $4B away from world domination. Steve Jobs also defended the iPhone antenna problem by simply saying "deal with it. And if you don't like it, go by one of those Blackberries and make sure it matches your 8-track player and Jams." That said, Lenovo is set to launch a challenger to the iPad using GOOG's Android system and they are referring to it as "LePad" because apparently "LeThingThatIsn'tGoingToSell" was already taken.

In other strong earnings news, MS put up a ginormous Q, harkening back to the pre-2006 days when investment banks ruled the markets like Jessica Simpson ruled the short bus in her elementary school days. Revenue grew 53% to $7.95B and beat analyst guesses of $7.93B driven by MS' trading business which earned $4.1B in operating profits after trading their souls for three more months of manipulating the markets and a good night kiss from Rose Huntington Whiteley. Also, KO put up a good quarter on the heels of PEP's outperformance yesteray once again reinforcing the demand inelasticity of sugar and water. KO earned $1.06 per share, beating analyst guesses of $1.03 per share, and saw 5% growth worldwide led by international growth ex. Europe of 6%. Money McBags is a longterm owner of KO because it is a cheap aspirational brand that appeals to emerging markets that will continue to grow as the US slogs its way towards mediocrity (though mediocrity would be a good thing). Finally, YHOO dropped 8% on a disappointing earnings report as revenue growth remains more challenging than Sudoku for a dyslexia sufferer.

In small cap news, Money McBags mentioned CRUS yesterday but he was in such a time rush that he missed their quarterly earnings release from earlier in the day which turned out to be more positive than Robin Williams' herpes test. The company earned $.29 per share in the quarter on 118% y/y revenue growth and margins going to 57% from 52% last year and 56% last Q. Most surprisingly, their energy business jumped up to $28MM from $22MM as a result of the both the power meter business and their energy exploration business. On the call, they talked about this business but gave fewer useful details as to what is driving it than a republican strategist gives details about their plan to fix the economy.

That said, it's really CRUS' consumer audio business that has investors drooling over this company as if it were Hayley Atwell as they provide an audio chip for the iPhone and that segment absolutely killed it. Revenue was up 32% sequentially in that segment with Apple moving to 35% of their overall revenues. Company guidance was also stellar with next Q predicted to have at the midpoints $102MM in revenues, 57% gross margins, and $27MM non-Gaap op ex. and while Money McBags is no maffematecian (he only counts to two when told to turn his head and cough), those number should get them to ~$.44 eps as they still have more NOLs than Money McBags has broken dreams.

The hard part is forecasting this company since they are obviously a play on the iPhone and AAPL could find a new suplier or put more pricing pressure on them at any time. Now look, Money McBags doesn't think that will happen anytime soon as their chip is supposed to provide the best audio quality and they are continually investing in R&D, but it is something of which investors should be aware. Money McBags' previous estimate for fiscal year EPS was $1.20 but with CRUS earning $.29 per share in Q1 and guiding for $.44 per share in Q2, $1.20 seems like it is lower than Andy Rooney's balls. So Money McBags is going to get a bit conservative here and estimate that the energy business falls to ~$24MM quarterly run rate, the non-AAPL consumer business stays flat, and the AAPL business only grows 10% sequentially.

Doing that (and using 55% margins which may be on the low end and $110MM op ex), Money McBags gets an estimate of $1.47 which is about double what they should earn in the first half of the fiscal year. Of course, those are very low end estimates as the AAPL business has been growing 30%+ sequentially and gross margins have been above 55%, so at the hgh end we could be looking at closer to $1.70 EPS for the fiscal year.

Either way, the stock is now trading at ~$19 which is ~13x Money McBags' low end estimate and the company has ~$2.50 in cash on the balance sheet and 13x for a company growing this fast is just way too fucking cheap. If you want, throw a 20x on $1.47 and get to ~$30 for a target price. As long as Apple doesn't pull the rug out from under these guys, there is plenty of room to move up even though it has already had a better run than a roidal Ben Johnson.

7/20/10 Midevening Report: Republicans fail to stop unemployment benefits from being extended, next up, trying to outlaw wheelchairs for quadriplegics

2010-07-20T17:07:00.003-04:00

The market was moderately down today like a dysthymic after downing a plate of sugar coated prozac and a 2 liter of Jolt Cola before it ran up in the late afternoon due to the Senate extending unemployment benefits. Earnings were the biggest disappointment early on with IBM, TXN, and GS all putting up subpar topline numbers (see Money McBags' prescient headline from yesterday) as if they were a Jerry Bruckheimer film or Greece. That said, macro news also disappointed which is about as surprising as learning that BP may have more problems or Hilary Swank is really a man.

The main US macro news out today was that home construction declined because, well, because people don't even have enough money to build confidence, much less houses. Construction of new homes fell 5% in June led by a 20% drop in the construction of condominiums and apartments but helped out by the increase in the construction of shanty towns and modern day Hoovervilles (and hopefully soon, Hootervilles, which will be made out of plenty of wood and pure awesomeness). On the positive side, there was a 2.1% increase in the demand for new building permits though the Commerce Department listed it as "wishful thinking," and on the slightly more positive side Russian spy Anna Chapman may pose for Playboy.

The big news of the day was that the senate is set to extend jobless aid after some guy named Carte Goodwin was appointed to Robert Byrd's old Senate seat, making it in fact a "good win" for struggling people everywhere (and yes, that was an awful pun, nowhere near as good as someone named Mr. Goodjoint looking like this). Yeah, Money McBags knows spending more money is not the best longterm strategy and that if the government keeps perpetuating this global ponzi scheme, we are all going to be more fucked than Lisa Ann on the set of Who's Nailin' Paylin, but having 4MM people surviving on month old pop tarts and feces is certainly not the answer. There are easily other areas where one could cut spending to make up for supporting people who need extended unemployment benefits (like maybe buying 2 or 3 fewer stealth bombers, using credit cards instead of cash in Iraq, and taking memberships to Tranny porn sites out of the SEC's benefits package).

That said, never before has there been a need to cut costs to allow for extended unemployment and never before has the government tried to do that in the middle of a recession, but apparently Republicans hate winning elections. Look, all of this money gets put right back in to the economy and is a mini stimulus which might buy the US another month or six to give it a chance to hit a patch of dumb luck and thus avoid being knocked in to bolivion. Either way, Republicans blocking this package is among the stupidest political strategy blunders in American history, right up there with Nixon sweating through the Nixon-Kennedy debate, anyone allowing Sarah Palin to be interviewed, and Warren Harding banging a hooker with a teapot (or something like that). Obviously the deficit needs to be better managed lest we fall further in to Keynes' folly, but cutting extended unemployment benefits is not the way to go unless one wants to speed up the oncoming anarchy and see what happens when crime starts moving to the suburbs.

In stock news, earnings disappointments led the day with Goldman missing estimates of ~$2.98 EPS by earning only ~$2.75 per share ex one-timers and if this keeps up, ~~theWhite House~~ GS' management team, may be in trouble. Those one-timers included the $550MM settlement with the SEC, $600MM for a British bank payroll tax, and Raven Alexis the night of the company picnic after wowing her with how deep their structured products run. It is a rare miss for the company, as they have perfected the ability to control both the markets and the government without winning a popular election or being likeable, but every once in a while even the great Ron Jeremy must come up flaccid. The biggest issue with GS' Q was on the topline driven by revenue from trading of fixed income products, currencies and commodities, falling to $4.4B from $7.4B in Q1 and $6.8 billion in last year's Q2 which is a more precipitous decline than Lloyd Blankfein's hairline (or reputation) and caused him to vociferously utter "inconceivable" to anyone who would listen. Of course with revenue falling, GS had to cut compensation in order to keep some profits (though profitability did fall 82% even with the cuts) and the ratio of compensation to net revenue fell to 43% in the first half from 49% in the first half of last year which means employees will now have to buy the in the lot Lamborghinis rather than have them custom made.

While last week Goldman settled with the SEC and admitted no wrongdoing (which is a bit like Roman Polanski claiming it was consensual or Eddie Murphy claiming he only acted in The Adventures of Pluto Nash and didn't write or direct it), the VP in charge of the (allegedly) fraudulent Abacus CDO, Fabulous Fab Tourre still faces a law suit from the SEC which could undermine Goldman's lack of admission of guilt, especially if Fab continues to blame it on the rain (and that reference will never stop being funny). Tourre made a filing today with the courts saying that he isn't responsible “for any alleged failings” by GS and he didn't mean to sucker people out of their money, it just seemed like the thing to do.

In other earnings news, IBM's revenue came in short of analyst guesses at $23.72B vs. guesses of $24.17B due to a drop in service contracts which the company says were merely pushed back in to next quarter and sluggish growth in Europe due to it being siesta season overseas. Also disappointing was TXN, whose earnings and revenue were at the midrange of guidance but failed to outperform whisper numbers (and Money McBags only hopes it was Alice Eve whispering the numbers). Despite a 900bp increase in gross margins, 42% revenue growth, and above street guidance, the stock tumbled today as if it had downed a fifth of Jack Daniels and had vestibular neuritis. On the positive side, Pepsi beat estimates and earnings were driven by strength in emerging markets with sales in Asia/Middle East/Africa up 16% proving that the demand for sugary water is more inelastic than the demand for running water, shelter and malaria medicine. After beating earnings estimates of $1.08 per share by $.01, PEP maintained their 11% to 13% earnings growth estimate for the year despite currency hurting their growth rate by 1% and Coke hurting their feelings by calling them copycats.

In small cap news, just about everything ran up end of day and Money McBags is pressed for time today so he'll just leave you with one thought: CRUS. Apple reports tonight and CRUS provides an audio chip that goes in to their iPhone. Money McBags has talked about this stock in depth here and all it has done is go up like the age of consent in Georgia over the past 200 years. You can read Money McBags' analysis of CRUS by using the search function on WGP but he was alerting you to this stock when it was below $10 and his estimates have continued to go up with the surprisingly quick rebound of their energy business. Money McBags thinks they can earn $1.20 per share and with the type of growth they have been witnessing, there is no reason the company shouldn't trade at 20x that which means you can still earn >25% here. So pay attention to AAPL's release because strong iPhone sales should bode well for CRUS' upcoming Q.

7/19/10 Midevening Report: Stocks higher as earnings more highly anticipated than the last thing that wound up disappointing everyone

2010-07-19T18:00:00.002-04:00

The market sagged today like a droopy catenary with a very low value of "a" or Uma Thurman on vacation, before gaining some steam in the afternoon. With earnings season started, macro data was lighter than Ben Stein's reputation as an economist or sales of Liberace's last book: "How not to get AIDS and die." Homebuilder confidence dropped to it's lowest level in over a year as The National Association of Home Builder's index slipped to 14, with readings lower than 50 meaning more respondents said conditions were poor, and readings lower than 20 meaning we're completely fucked. At blame for the drop was the governement tax credit running out, foreclosures continuing to increase, and pessimism proving to be higher than if Arthur Schopenhauer were trying to sell a mansion in Detroit at full price.

Alternatively, some made up organization called the National Association for Business Economics (and Money McBags would love to see the charts and graphs they pull out of their asses) said hiring picked up in the economy with 31% of businesses increasing payrolls while only 14% decreased payrolls. What they negelcted to say is that of the 82 businesses which they survey, 31% are in the reposession business and 55% are fictitious.

Internationally, Moody's cut their ratings on Ireland from a little drunk to fucking sloshed as a result of a weakening banking system, increasing deficits, and way to much puke still littering the streets from St. Patrick's day. The downgrade was a full notch lower to Aa2 which as always means absolutely nothing to Money McBags since he knows Moody's is more fraudulent than a Lou Pearlmen business venture or Jamie Lee Curtis's vagina and he has no idea what the difference is between Aa2, Aa1, and Baa other than that two of them are ridiculous and one of them is the noise Roseanne Barr makes when taking it from behind.

Now look, Money McBags is no Donnie Deutsch (and not just because he has no idea who Donny Deutsch actually is, but also because he's not completely full of shit), but it doesn't take a marketing guru to understand that if you are selling something, those buying it should assume it works and also understand what the fuck it is they are buying. Since Moody's obviously has failed step 1, they can at least have their ratings be understandable. Thus if Money McBags were in charge of Moody's, the first thing he would do is fire everyone, the second thing he would do is hire Ines Sainz as his personal assistant (actually, he would do that first and fire everyone second, but whatever), and the third thing he would do is get rid of the stupid rating system and only have three categories companies could fall in to: No Problems, Shit is getting a bit scary, and Stay the Fuck Away.

And it's not just Ireland in the international news today, but Hungary is starving for attention as the government refused further austerity measures which caused the IMF and the EU to get their panties all in a bunch (which wouldn't be a problem if the IMF were Sofia Vergara and the EU were Jessica Biel). The government's stance has apparently called off offers of further aid for the country from the EU/IMF which has led to yields on Hungarian bonds to shoot up like Chris Farley after reading a review of Beverly Hills Ninja.

In stock news, after being swallowed by Nokia and spit out as a JV, Siemens* is sticking to a deal to purchase a Motorola unit that makes telecommunications equipment. The company hopes that upgrading their equipment will help the company grow and thus lead to a stronger, and perhaps better aimed and placed, Siemens' strategy. Also, Apple continues to fall despite saying they will give iPhone 4 users a free case to correct the call dropping problem that happens when holding the phone with a bare hand (also known as phonetile dysfunction). In order to plug the gap in the antenna, the case comes with plenty of lube and a lifetime supply of viagra.

In small cap news, JOEZ sold off again today and remains either cheap or expensive depending on if you think management can go against previous performance and figure out how to turn growing revenue in to something called profits. One company that Money McBags would like to highlight is IBKR which has earnings later this week. Money McBags has talked about IBKR a few times on this blog (just throw it into the search function) and has consistently brought up the statement from their CEO, who owns 80% of the stock, that the company has $2 of annual earnings power, which it earned in 2008.

The problem is that this company has been more of a value trap than Alyssa Milano's crotch and it has done nothing but go down since it went public in 2007. The company has two basic businesses, they are a market maker for listed options and they have an online brokerage. In the market making business, they take no counter party risk and in times of volatility also take no profits as when volatility is low, the bid/ask spread gets compressed with competition increasing. This kills margins in that business worse than cheating on your cancer stricken wife, having a baby with the person you are cheating with, and then claiming the baby is not yours, kills a political career. Margins in the market making business dropped to 7% last Q thanks to actual volatility coming in lower than implied volatility which hurts them since they are long volatility like Lexington Steele is long dongability. So net income in the segment dropped from $118MM to $5MM which is a bigger drop than Mel Gibson's popularity after a few late night booty calls to his wife.

IBKR's other business is an online brokerage unit for daytraders that has had strong growth. The business continues to grow accounts by 25%+ and grew net income from $45MM to $65MM last Q. That said, no one really gives a fuck about this business yet because it doesn't drive the business.

Anyway, the reason Money McBags thinks this is an interesting company right now is that volatilty in the last Q has been spiking like KaKa's popularity in Brazil, and last year when volatility was this high, the company earned $.30 per share. Check out the chart of the VIX below which Money McBags is using as a volatility proxy:

So look, Money McBags has no idea how to forecast this Q for IBKR since their quarters are lumpier than Dolly Parton lying on her back but the business is set up to perform well in volatile times and their earnings in theory should smooth out over the long run (which as Money McBags said in an earlier post, may be eons).

That said, they have proved that they can earn $2 per share and if they can achieve that again, they are trading at 8.5x that which is hella fucking cheap for their growth. Plus, since the economy is teetering on the brink of shitting its pants for the second time, volatility should only increase in the long run and thus IBKR should start to grow their earnings power. Anyway, if ever IBKR were going to put up a good q again, this should be it, so buying a few short term call options may not be the worst idea here. Though to be fair, Money McBags has yet to meet a value investor who has not angrily urinated on their tattered copy of Securities Analysis while cursing Benjamin Graham's margin of safety after investing in IBKR, so buyer beware.

*Money McBags knows it was Siemens Networks and not Siemens, but sometimes we must sacrifice for the joke.

7/16/10 Midnight Report: A load of Bears hit

2010-07-16T23:23:00.006-04:00

The market tumbled today like a broke Boy George on a floor covered with dong as consumer confidence continues to fade like LeBron James' Q score or Haiti. Consumer sentiment fell to 66.5 which is the lowest since August and below the most pessimistic guesses of those not paying attention (also known as economists). The drop in sentiment from June's made up reading of 76 was the biggest drop in two years and was well below the 75 guessed at by economists who eventually will understand that the old data they used to calibrate their regression models no longer holds in our fat tailed society. Newsflash economists: The world has fucking changed, people are all connected, and whatever correlations you saw in the past are now likely more spurious and outdated than civility, manners, and landing strips. Basically everything in the consumer sentiment survey got worse and that is as bad of a sign for future consumer spend as a "You must be 18 to enter" sign is at a NAMBLA convention.

According to a Bloomberg poll, seven out of ten Americans believe we are in a recession, but then again, four in ten believe in alien abductions and six in ten believe that Kathy Griffin is a woman, so whatever. The economic data has gone from marginal to whatever is worse than marginal and it's not clear what is going to stimulate the economy out of this except for maybe a Bobbi Eden promise to take care of businesses if they hire. In other macro news, inflation continues to be modest as consumer prices were down .1% spurring louder whispers about deflation where cash will be king, and not some lame ass king like George III, but a cool one like Henry VIII or Kong.

In other US news, the SEC pulled themselves away from their tranny porn just long enough to settle with Goldman for $550MM as related to GS's shady dealings with their Abacus mortgage CDO. The settlement will be among the largest in the history of the SEC with $15MM a result of the money GS made on the deal and $535MM as a punishment for GS being a bunch of asshats for the past 140 years. Of the fine, $300MM will go directly to the US Treasury where they can either buy 3 new planes for congress, help Timothey Geithner pay his back taxes, or hire Cintia Dicker to massage their data before they stick it in to a GDP model.

Along with a consumer nudging closer to life support (and unfortunately with a pre-existing spending condition, the consumer is no longer eligible for insurance to help them survive), earnings reports were marginally bad at best. BAC plummeted 9% and C dropped 6% after they released decent earnings but showed revenues to be more lacking than rhythm at a Republican convention or diction in an NBA lockerroom. BAC's revenues were down 11% and C's were flat but most worrisome was that the earnings beats were a result of reserving less for credit issues with BAC reserving $5B fewer than last year because apparently they developed retrograde amnesia sometime in June. Ugh. This is going to get uglier than an Amy Winehouse-Michael Berryman love child.

In other stock news, GOOG revenue beat guesses but EPS fell short by $.06 as they earned $6.45 per share vs. analyst guesses of $6.51. That <1% miss of made up numbers was enough to drop the stock 7% and the company has said the are going back in to investment mode which spooked investors as if investment mode were a book and investors were Dexter Manley. Even though the 24% rate of growth was a bit lower than last Q's, this company is still the dominant player in one of the biggest and growing industries on the planet (right after hand set makers, gold mines, and porn) so while Money McBags is scratching his head a bit at GOOG's continued fourth mover push in to things like handsets and social media, he is still a long term owner because if the consumer dies, they are still going to spend time online guessing muffs as a way for cheap entertainment, so online advertising is only going to get stronger.

In small cap news, everything was down today. JOEZ was out with their quarter and it was mostly inline with analyst guesses of $.01 eps but 50% below Money McBags guess of $.02 eps (and see how Money McBags used 50%, instead of $.01 to make it sound much worse than it was?). Anyway, JOEZ put up a nice topline number, growing revenue by 51% to $26MM but once again had earnings leverage more negative than the reviews for an M. Night Shyamalan movie. That's right, despite growing revenue 51%, net income dropped by greater than 50% from $1.3MM to $500k defying the laws of common sense and business savvy. With that kind of inverse operating performance, it's a good thing JOEZ didn't grow their business 75% because then they might have lost money.

It would be easy to blame the drop in net income on the tax rate which grew to 48% over last year's 14% thanks to a shareholder unfriendly earnout struck by management when they acquired Joes, so thanks for that guys, really (oh wait, Money McBags isn't a shareholder, so he doesn't really give a fuck that JOEZ management treated their stock owners like second class citizens in a third world country when structuring the acquisition), but operating income BEFORE TAXES was down 25% from $1.6MM to $1.2MM. So on the extra $8.7MM of revenue JOEZ brought in this Q compared to Q2 2009, they lost $400K before taxes. Wow. Now look, Money McBags is no Jack Welch (though he did manipulate his earnings this morning to Brooklyn Decker), but losing money on incremental revenue is so obviously bad that even business school professors know it is a failing strategy. It's ok to have a loss leader, but when your whole business is a loss leader, you may have a problem.

Anyway, the reason for the operating earnings decline was threefold: 1. Gross margins declined worse than Louis XVI's power in 1792 France or Yasmine Bleeth's career after Baywatch. 2. Operating costs jumped up as if they had seen a mouse, or Kevin Federline, scurry across their kitchen floor. 3. Their core denim business is witnessing a second derivative decline in growth.

As for gross margins, which continued their descent, this time from 51% to 44%, the company said that the drop resulted from the addition of new lower margin product categories such as the T, the Pant, and the Top. CEO Marc Crossman did say that as volume grows for these products, margins should go back up as they can take better advantage of the factories and thus he expects meaningful margin expansion.

As for the increase in operating costs, that is a bit more troubling as costs jumped up to ~$10MM from ~$7MM which they said was the result of new worker salaries, rent costs, and a big night out at their local Rick's Cabaret (ok, maybe not the third one, but whatever). The confusing thing though is that costs were up $400k sequentially when last Q JOEZ said operating costs were artificially higher due to $850k of one-time advertising expenses and the moving of their headquarters. If we strip out those numbers, operating costs were up by ~$1.2MM from Q1 or ~15% while sequential revenue was up only ~12%. So basically this company manages their cost structure about as well as Alan Greenspan managed interest rates, Bernie Madoff managed money, or Magic Johnson managed a condom. The company said with their new lines built out they don't expect operating costs to rise, but again, last Q they pretty much said the same thing and blamed the higher costs on one-time charges which either became two-time charges or were filled in by new costs.

And finally, they said their denim is now a single digit grower (though Money McBags wasn't sure if they just meant in department stores, or overall) so they are going to increasingly need to rely on new products to spur growth and to date, the new products have killed their margins. In a trendy business, continuing to hit on new products is more difficult than solving the Poincare Conjecture or listening to a Ray Romano stand-up routine and not wanting to cut out your ear drums, so this is getting to be a tricky proposition.

In terms of their balance sheet, cash is now down from $13MM at the beginning of the year to $8.5MM, driven by a $3.5MM burn from operations due to rising inventories and helped out by growing accounts payable (which sounds about as healthy as a cock sandwich with extra VD). While they aren't in imminent danger (though at the rate of their cash burn from operations they only have 12 months of leeway), Money McBags would not be shocked by some kind of secondary offering because unless they can get their operations in order and start GENERATING cash, their growth plans are going to have to be put on hold.

So how the fuck does one forecast a company whose growth rate over the past 4 years was 30%, 35%, 10%, and 16%, who sells an expensive discretionary good in the midst of GLOBAL RECESSION, whose management team has grown revenue 46% this year and yet had earnings decline because they understand costs like Donald Rumsfeld understands war strategy or Sheyla Hershey understands when enough is enough, who burned cash in both quarters this year and is getting to the point where the may need to reload faster than Peter North on a day he is filming a double feature, who is in a market that is all about fads and their biggest product is starting to have its growth slow, and who has been so shareholder unfriendly that they stuck shareholders with a 48% tax rate so the management could get a better earnout and thus order a second helping of caviar when they were done screwing equity owners?

One could annualize the $.02 they have made in the first half of the year and call their earnings run rate $.04 and slap some growth on that, but that would be the easy way out. Money McBags is in a good mood today (mostly because he recently discovered Sofia Vergara) so he'll assume JOEZ can kind of keep this up and grow revenue 35% for the rest of the year and 30% next year (assuming they don't run out of cash or can raise cash to continue to expand). He'll call gross margin 51%, operating margin 38%, and the tax rate 45% (though they say it will wind up closer to 40% sometime around the year infinity). Doing that, Money McBags gets to $.16 eps for next year at the high end because every single one of those estimates is giving them a fuckload more credit than they have earned. So next year the company should earn somewhere between their current $.04 run rate and $.16 assuming they don't have to issue more shares to help quell their cash burn. JOEZ is now trading at between 13x and a bazillion x those numbers.

So in short, Money McBags is glad not to be involved in this company as they have been able to deliver profits about as well as George Will delivers a punchline but if one believes what management says and not what they have actually done (like you know, lose money, mismanage costs, fuck over shareholders, and burn in cash), one could make an argument that 13x for a 40% grower is cheap, of course one could also make an argument that Tori Spelling is hot, so be careful to whom you listen. Money McBags remains fascinated by this little stock though as it's not often you find 40%+ topline growers who manage to consistetly shrink their profits.

Have a good weekend, and remember WGP is on facebook and twitter.

7/15/10 Midevening Report: Senate approves financial reform only 5 years too late, next up, what to do about all of those indians

2010-07-15T17:10:00.002-04:00

The Senate passed a sweeping financial reform bill today, though the only thing it is likely to sweep is more problems under the rug. After many compromises between Democrats and Republicans, the bill basically lets regulators feel the financial sector up but then caucusblocks them from going all the way. Sure there are now limits on how much banks can invest in hedge funds and sure some prop trading desks will be sold, but all this bill really did was create a fuckload more complexity in regulating the financial sector and The Street thrives on complexity since they make money by basically exploiting loopholes. So the bill gives the Fed more strength (and really, haven't they earned it?) to create a bunch of redundant regulatory groups and gives them power to do a bunch of shit that they will only do after the fact because pro-active regulation is more of an oxymoron than deafening silence or David Hasselhoff's talents. Money McBags gives the financial reform 3 yawns out of 4 as it's like thinking about putting a band aid on a gaping bullet wound.

In macro news, new claims for unemployment were the lowest they have been in 2 years, until the (No) Labor Department revises them upward next week. Claims dropped by 29k to 429k after they were once again manipulated upward from last week's 454k number to 458k. The large drop in claims is being attributed both to temporary layoffs at factories being postponed as companies like GM announced they will keep their plants open for most of the season, and just making up numbers. One reason the drop didn't move the market up is that the (No) Labor Department concentrates on seasonally adjusted numbers and their seasonal adjustment is likely as good as Sheyla Hershey's boob job so therefore if we look at unseasonallly adjusted numbers, we see that they rose by 45k to 513k, the highest number since January. Also, continuing claims jumped up by 247k to 4.68MM which is as healthy for the economy as smoking a cigarrette spiked with asbestos and Charlie Sheen's taint hair. Either way, Money McBags is sure that the 429k number will be revised upwards to something like 437k next week so it's hard to get excited about a big drop that is really due to a timing issue and will be changed anyway. And just to show that Money McBags is here for you in analyzing the numbers, remember that last week after claims were announced at 454k, Money McBags predicted that:

"The big macro news is that new claims for unemployment dropped to 454k or some number higher than that depending on how much the (No) Labor Department manipulates/readjusts numbers next week. Money McBags is not a betting man (unless there is money to be won or young ladies to impress) but he is willing to wager that next week we learn that new claims for this week should have actually been 459k."

And sure enough they were manipulated up to 458k so either Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis (though to be honest, Money McBags thought we did away with the word "secretary" and were now calling them "administrative assistants," but whatever) is using WGP to set her numbers or Money McBags' forecasting method which involves sticking his finger in the air while figuratively pulling a number out of Sofia Vergara's voluptuous ass is not just more delightful than the bullshit models used by the (No) Labor Department but also hella more accurate. See, anyone can make up numbers.

In other macro news, the NY Fed's Empire State Manufacturing index dropped like George Steinbrenner on Tuesday (too soon?). The index came in at 5.1, only slightly below the 18 economists had guessed, and while Money McBags has no idea what the difference between 5.1 and 18 is (other than 12.9), he's pretty sure something less than 1/3 of predictions isn't good in the same way that being the only female smurf or hiring MC Esher to design your staircase isn't good. Not only did manufacturing in New York decline, but it did in Philly as well where the Philly Fed's manufacturing index also fell to 5.1 which was below guesses of 10, though the 5 point miss was said to simply be stolen like everything else manufactured in Philly. While Money McBags finds it odd that two Fed manufacturing surveys would each register 5.1 in the same month (something about as likely as Paul Krugman winning a nobel prize), he does not find it surprising that manufacturing was starting to slip because we're in something called a GLOBAL FUCKING RECESSION.

On a slightly more positive note, the Fed said industrial production creeped up .1% in June thanks to mining and utilities, on an even more positive note, Brooklyn Decker. Finally, producer prices fell again, this time by .5%, led by a steep 2.2% decline in food prices which were driven by an earlier weather-related jump in the price of tomatoes and an even earlier economy related dive in people's incomes.

Internationally, China's growth slowed in the Q to 10.3% from 11.9% in last year's Q1 while industrial production rose 13.7% which would be great if it weren't lower than what 26 out of 27 analysts on Bloomberg had guessed. Of course on WGP, Money McBags has shown both that analysts have no ability to forecast numbers and the numbers themselves as mostly fictitious like supply side economics, big foot, and Lauren Conrad's career, so ho fucking hum again. While China's growth was basically inline, it left investors hungry for more just twenty minutes later and thus asian markets were down.

In the market, JP Morgan beat estimates in their quarterly game of numbers roulette. Net income was up 76% to $4.8B despite an 8% decline in revenue thanks to a $1.5B reserve release which was the biggest release in NY since Stephon Marbury. That said, while the reserve release is a bit puzzling since the economy is nudging south like a wannabe hollywood actress on her first casting couch, JPM's credit card division turned profitable for the first time in several quarters and overall the company beat guesses by ~$.03 after stripping out one-timers. The biggest surprise though was WGP favorite Dick "Don't call me Richard" Bove who never saw a financial stock he couldn't misunderstand or artificially pump up, lowered his rating of JPM claiming revenue was weak and earnings were more manipulated than new claims for unemployment numbers or Tiger Woods' image. In other large cap news, the market braces for GOOG's earnings release and Money McBags is long the stock but he bets it will drop 8% regardless of whether they beat or not because high frequency traders hate growing companies with solid earnings and instead have calibrated their algorithms to find companies that are correlated to the phases of the moon and since HFTs control 50% of the market volume, they win most of the time.

In small cap news, JOEZ is set to report tonight and they will likely show more revenue growth, and yet declining earnings as their cost of operations and tax rate have them more set to fail than Amy Winehouse in a "girls I'd like to bone contest." Also, Money McBags favorite KITD had their buy rating reitirated by Janney Capital today. Janney maintained their $13 price target which is only ~50% too low, but remember, analysts are paid to just publish and not to be right or stick their necks out for anything. As Money McBags isn't getting paid for his research and has no constituency to please other than his own trading account and the lovely Teresa Palmer, he is not afraid to make big calls and unless KITD's management is completely and utterly full of shit (10% chance but moving up proportionally with their growing A/R), this company is more undervalued than sharing a chilli dog with Natalie Portman.

7/14/10 Midafternoon Report: Retail stales

2010-07-14T16:49:00.003-04:00

Ho fucking hum. Retail sales fell again in June as stores keep trying to charge money for products and people keep not having any. Sales dropped .5% in June, though if you exclude automobiles, sales only dropped .1%, and if you go one step further and exclude anything bought in a store other than ramen noodles and despair, sales would have doubled. It wasn't just auto sales that drove the numbers down though as furniture, building-materials, sporting goods, groceries, and especially Mel Gibson's career, saw weakness. This is in contrast to the ICSC's report last week where they broke out their crayolas and limited knowledge of cropping photos or using excel to put out an eyesore-ingly bad table showing that chain store sales were up 3% for the month. To Money McBags, that means people are skimping on more discretionary items and shifting their spend to staples and to stores with lower overheads that can offer deep discounts, of course, all of the data is made up anyway like leprechauns, unicorns, and Larry Craig's wife, so who really fucking knows.

That said, with the consumer remaining hesitant to spend on anything but lottery tickets and something called jeggings (which Money McBags thinks are a mixture of jeans, leggings, and awesomeness), the stimulus having worked most of its way through the system, and extended unemployment benefits on the same life support as George Steinbrenner, there is little about which to be excited (unless you live next door to Sofia Vergara, and if you do, Money McBags would be happy to quickly come over).

In other macro news, mortgage applications sunk to a 13 year low despite record low mortgage rates, declining house prices, and buy one get free specials at foreclosure auctions. Loan requests dropped by 3% with the federal tax break now over and frictional unemployment becoming less voluntary and more permanent thus causing the supply of people moving for work to shrink more than the attendance will for Yale's women's basketball games once Yoyo Greenfield graduates. Finally, the minutes from the last Fed meeting were released today with the Fed lowering their growth forecast for the first time in a year citing lackluster job growth and the creeping in of common sense. The continued struggles of the economy have them contemplating ways to stimulate the market again if data continues to worsen such as buying more assets, keeping rates low until the next bubble, or having Sara Jean Underwood man the Fed's discount window.

Internationally, word is leaking out that 11 banks may fail the european bank stress test including Germany's Commerzbank, Italy's Banco Popolare, and France's Banque de la Pret Merde. But Macquarie Securities director Alessandro Roccati tells us not to despair because "only 11" of the 46 banks will likely fail and 25% of handpicked banks failing a contrived test set up so that none of the banks would fail is only a minor problem, like the hole in the ozone layer, the oil spill in the Gulf, or John Edwards' Q score. In other international news, Singapore raised their growth guidance from 7% to 9% for 2010 to a whopping 15% citing their burgeoning biomedical production capabilities, strong growth in their electronics cluster, and a rise in demand for helicopters. Also helping the Singaporean economy was the opening of two casinos and influx of tourism for "cane your kid at work" day.

In stock news, INTC beat analyst guesses by reporting record revenue and giving guidance way above the street's guess for next Q. Revenue was up 43% and eps of $.51 easily beat analyst guesses of $.43 as the corporate PC upgrade cycle has finally begun since with fewer workers, companies actually need shit to work. INTC's Q has led a rally in large tech stocks such as CSCO, VMW, and MSFT as the upgrade cycle should benefit PC makers.

In small cap news, Money McBags wants to highlight CTGX once again. Now this is one of the stocks he puked out during the "flash crash" becuase it is less liquid than a corn shit and it only takes one fund with a margin call to sink the name, but long term the company should be fine. Money McBags broke the company down for all of you way back in February, but the quick summary is that they have two businesses, one is a boring crappy staffing and solutions business whereby they supply IBM with people to help map out and install servers (which sounds about as fun as dry humping Bea Arthur while being serenaded by the Charlie Daniels Band) and a health care services business which is growing and set to capture share in the electronic medical records market.

The reason Money McBags brings this company up today is that the federal government issued new rules yesterday that will reward doctors and hospitals for the “meaningful use” of electronic health records. The previous rules were a bit too onerous, like Ted Kennedy's designated driver or Susan Boyle's bikini waxer, but the new ones will allow for more hospitals and doctors to get started on EMR. The main point though is that the Department of Health and Human Services said that doctors and hospitals may receive up to $27B in funds to help install electronic medical records over the next 10 years and while Money McBags is not an accountant (though he plays one on April 15th), $27B is a lot of fucking money. Also, starting in 2015, hospitals and doctors will start facing fines and penalties under Medicare if they are not compliant and while doctors hate taking medicare patients because they can't set exorbitant prices for their inelastic demand service (you want your arm reattached? That will be $1MM and a five minute taint tickle, but with your good arm of course), those patients are becoming an increasingly large part of the health care business. Not only will hospitals be getting money to help install EMR and facing penalties if they don't, but as said prevously here, only 20% of doctors and 10% of hospitals already have EMR and there are only ~6 companies who can install them. So this is a big market that is being funded by the government and CTGX is one of only an Antonio Alfonseca handful of companies doing this.

CTGX has said their operating margins are 10%+ on an EMR project and that they last 2-3 years and bring in $2MM to $3MM per project annually so if they can do an incremental 20 projects a year (Money McBags thinks they are starting or working on ~11 right now) and get 10% margin (which may be low), that would translate to an incremental ~$.24 per share. Their guidance is for this year is ~$.50 eps so say their core business just maintains in 2011, that means they could earn ~$.75 on 50% eanrings growth, >20% top line growth, and they are currently trading at ~10x that number. There is a lot of Y2K about this business but installations should ramp up in 2011 and last for a good five to seven years so once this story hits, the stock should have some nice room to grow. Plus, their competence in installing EMR and the dearth of companies who do it combined with the oncoming demand which should be stronger than Andrew Jackson's hatred of Henry Clay or Faye Reagan's breath after a full day on the set of Cock Pigs, should make CTGX an acquisition target for a bigger company like IBM who wants to increase their presence in EMR.

The things to worry about with this company are the liquidity and their core IBM business going to shit since they have less control over that than Whoopi Goldberg does over her bladder or her face. That said, the company has an ok balance sheet and when EMR hits, there is no reason they shouldn't trade at 15x given the likely growth and that would make them an $11-$12 stock (and to be clear, management has not given any guidance on how many EMR projects they can do or what the margins will be other than at least 10%, so Money McBags is making his own estimates which could be too low or too high). You still have time on this name and as long as the core business is going to spit out ~$.50 eps annually, you have a cushion too, so take a look again and buy the dips.

And don't forget WGP is on Facebook and Twitter and if any of you know a good cheap web designer, shoot Money McBags an email at MoneyMcBags@gmail.com because its time to make WGP look better than something the ICSC or Ray Charles would produce (and that's not because Ray Charles was blind, but because he's dead).

7/13/10 Midafternoon Report: The market is AA-ok as Alcoa foils bears

2010-07-13T16:31:00.003-04:00

The market was off to the races today as if it the races were going to feature Usain Bolt taking on Sara Jane Underwood in the 100 meter dash with the loser having to run a lap in the buff. The big news of course was that Alcoa started off the earnings season by destroying analyst guesses of $.12 eps by earning a whopping $.13 per share in the last Q. That's right, the fact that a whole extra penny (with rounding) is the difference between a down market and an up 2% market makes as much sense as the theory that gravity is an illusion or candwiches.

Making it even more ridiculous is that as ZeroHedge points out, just last month Bloomberg showed consensus analyst guesses of $.16 for AA's Q. So with analysts lowering their guesses before the quarter, AA is now back to where it was when guesses were for $.16 so the would have been $.03 miss has been mitigated by strategic downgrades. Brilliant stuff. As the late great Kurt Vonnegut would say, "No damn cat, and no damn cradle." Analysts are now quickly dropping their guesses on companies across the board because they only get paid when the market goes up and with unemployment benefits going away, they need to keep their jobs like Kathy Griffin needs to keep off of HDTV. That said, AA did raise their guidance for aluminum consumption for the year from 10% to 12% and revenue was up 22% despite cratering aluminum prices as a result of demand slowing down and oversupply given that aluminum is the 3rd most prevalent element in the earth, behind only oxygen and whatever medal Mr. T wears around his neck. That said, the declining prices and rising energy costs are hurting overall profitability but with foreclosures up, demand may surge as the recently homeless grab sheet aluminum to build shanty towns to be known to future generations as WhothefucklentthosepeopleallofthatmoneyVilles or for short Goldmanvilles.

In macro news today, the US trade gap widened to 4.8% or $42B, which is the largest since November 2008 and a gap wider than between the antenna on a new Apple iPhone or the gap between Paris Hilton's legs on a Sunday morning. Not surprisingly, a trade gap is the exact opposite of what economists had guessed and thus once again proves that "economist" is not a real job, like rap music spell checker. Imports were up 3% thanks to a 12% increase in imports from China which, as pointed out yesterday, was driven by people not having any money and thus only being able to afford the cheap shit made overseas. US exports continued to see strength, which is a bit surprising given the weakness in the Euro last Q, as they were up 2.4% which was their best month since September 2008 when the US instituted buy one get one free Wednesdays for foreign countries.

And finally, the National Federation of Independent Business (known better as NFIB or "irrelevant") said optimism declined among small businesses by 3.2% in their monthly survey to which no one pays attention to anyway. NFIB's chief economist William Dunkelberg (who is still smarting from his decision to leave his hosting gig at Small Business Idol to pursue other career opportunities) opined that: “Confidence is lacking and the news out of Washington is discouraging. Until this changes, don’t expect small businesses to start hiring.” He then went and stole an ice cream cone from a little kid, told his wife she looked fat in those jeans, and ordered a ton of coal so he'll be prepared to adequately fill the stockings of everyone at the NFIB during Christmas time.

Internationally, Moody's cut Portugal's debt rating by two whole notches which means absolutely nothing to Money McBags as he cares what Moody's has to say about rating debt as much as he cares what Art Laffer has to say about tax policy, Jeffrey Dahmer has to say about cuisine, or Mel Gibson has to say about anything. Moody's dowgrade stems from Portugal's national debt having risen sharply relative to GDP as a result of stimulus measures and the 168 siesta hour work week. Moody's also warned that weak growth would weigh on government finances for two or three more years while Portugal warned that weak analysis would weigh on Moody's finances for eternity. European markets are up on this news as even they realize that Moody's is worse at their job than a eunuch sperm donor or Alan Greenspan.

In large cap stocks, just about everything was up as we move in to earnings season with INTC, C, BAC, and GOOG to report this week so hopefully analysts already lowered their guesses in order to keep the market moving. One interesting stock to note is AAPL as the company is down after Consumer Reports said it will not recommend the new iPhone 4 due to reception glitches, and Steve Jobs simply being a dick. In their defense, Apple maintains that any cellphone will lose reception if held a certain way, like in a toilet, at the bottom of Lechuguilla Cave, or up Candice Swanepoel's well chiseled buttocks (and Money McBags is volunteering to test that theory out) so there is really no big deal. Plus, to fix the problem, AAPL claims all one needs to do is wrap some duct tape around the iPhone where the gap in the antenna is and who doesn't want a piece of metallic tape draped around their sleek and expensive gadget? It would almost be like fixing a tear in the Mona Lisa by putting a SpongeBob Squarepants band aid over it.

In small cap news, LHCG was down ~6% today after competitor AMED announced a shitactular Q and dropped nearly 25%. Money McBags broke LHCG down the other week after the SEC announced they were investigating AMED and AFAM for potential shadiness in how they were charging medicare for visits that may not ever have happened or visits that were unneeded. Anyway, guesses for AMED were for quarterly earnings of $1.37 per share and today they said that earnings will be closer to $1.12 which makes it almost as big of a miss as the Edsel or Glitter. Money McBags did not hear AMED's call but it is reported they said that their client base changed and they will need to reevaluate their structure and will hold off on full-year forecasts. Now look, without further color Money McBags isn't sure how this will affect LHCG because he has no idea what AMED means by their "client base changing" because either they stopped treating sick people (which would seem a silly thing to do for a home fucking healthcare company) or they started treating fewer sick people and thus had fewer home visits (which is a more likely scenario, especially with the SEC all in their business about charging for too many medicare visits). More concerning though is that shareholders have filed a suit against LHCG for an investigation from April into LHCG's reimbursement procedures, so fuck Money McBags on that one.

The industry makes sense longterm, the cost savings to insurance companies are too great, and home care is simply better, so it remains a good way to play the aging population trend but there is way too much fucking noise right now for an investor without access to industry insiders to get a leg up on the billing practices. As a result, Money McBags would stay the fuck away from this sector even though a few days ago he said LHCG was an interesting longterm buy (and it still remains that way but Money McBags needs more information to be able to make a sensible decision about the SEC investigations). Anyway, with all of this uncertainty, there are easier ways to make money (like TMRK which is a great takeout candidate and is getting a boost with MSFT's entry into cloud computing ) so keep watching LHCG but you probably want to avoid going long in the short term unless you have better contacts in the industry than Money McBags has. In times of turmoil, money can be made, but to do so, one needs to be confident that they have all of the information, so do your work here carefully.

7/12/10 Midevening Report: Hefner bid titilates Playboy stock, shares bust out

2010-07-12T16:54:00.002-04:00

There was little news in the market today as investors waited for AA's earnings tonight as a signal of things to come as everyone knows aluminum production is what really drives the economy (and yes that was sarcasm). Without much macro news other than shit continuing to get worse with temporary census jobs ending, republicans filibustering extended unemployment benefits to further punish the people who likely had little to do with the recession (other than likely borrowing way beyond their means), and no new actresses coming out as bisexual this week, we were left with a flurry of M&A driving the market (as opposed to a flurry of T&A, which likely would have led to a strong rise).

The biggest M&A deal occured between two companies about whom no one gives a fuck, as AON is purchasing Hewitt for $4.9B in cash, stock, and old actuarial tables signed by Elizur Wright. While AON will be in flux for a bit, they should be able to immediately make use of Hewitt's human resource and outsourcing capabilities to fire the appropriate amount of people while making sure that everyone gets a smiley face cupcake. Once done, they can further get value out of Hewitt's consulting business by leveraging them for a business case to try figure out why the hell anyone would have paid a 41% premium of 7.5x forward EBITDA for Hewitt. Of course using their now fully owned Hewitt for that study would either be considered a virtuous circle, a vicious circle, or the least fun daisy chain since full bush was still in style.

In other M&A news, Hugh Hefner wants to take Playboy private (after years of taking it to his privates) at a 40% premium to current price, or about what he pays to the Shannon sisters. Playboy magazine sales were down 48% in Q1 as the business continues to struggle with the invention of a little something called the internet where people can now read the hard hitting and biting journalism Playboy offers for free. The company has gone through a major facelift over the past year by laying off staff, streamlining functions, and putting out bigger and more well-rounded (and very NSFW) articles. The fact is, Playboy still has a recognizable and aspirational (as well as ass-pirational) brand and now that Hefner is opening up his robe for the company, there appear to be multiple bidders including PE firms, top competitor Friend Finder, and the creepy guy in the airport gift shop. The company is definitely at a tipping point with the internet producing more free porn per minute than David Duchovny can view, but in the right hands, and with a stroke of luck, the brand could come strongly back.

In other M&A news, BP may be selling assets in order to pay for a new Gulf. The company is said to be in negotiations with Apache to divest $18B worth of some of the largest Alaskan assets in the world. Finally, JNJ is buying MEND, a company that makes a device for treating brain aneurysms in stroke victims just in time to catch the growing popularity of the KFC Double Down.

Internationally, the European Commission came out with a reform package to boost consumer confiidence from "holy fuck we're screwed" to "at least we're not Kazakhstan." The package includes EU-wide measures to protect bank account holders by guaranteeing savings accounts up to 100k euro and investment accounts up to 50k euro while promising to pay account holders within seven days of the almost certain to come bank failures. Lastly, China anounced exports grew by 44% as more people sink to poverty and can only afford the cheap shit made in China.

In large cap stocks, MSFT is up on news that they are going to make it rain in the cloud computing space by teaming up with Fujitsu to invest money in the growing cloud technology sector while GOOG continues to rise after having their license renewed in China. Money McBags was told that to get their license renewed, GOOG just had to follow the chinese road rules of stopping at yellow lights, driving 20 miles under the speed limit, and using their turn signal sparingly.

In small cap stocks, NLS is up 16% on no news that Money McBags could find other than people hate making money. If you remember back in December, longtime reader Matty McSacks hypothesized that NLS was worth ~$4 per share and it was trading at $1.85 at the time. Money McBags looked in to the matter and thought those estimates seemed high since the company sells expensive discretionary items during a little bit of a recession and after a hella confusing quarterly release and a jump up, NLS has settled back to where it was at the beginning of the year with today's run up. In their last Q, NLS trimmed their losses to only a loss of $.08 per share but their biggest segment, retail, shed 30% of their revenues as if revenue had spent the entire Q working out on a Mobia. The drop in direct business was driven by a 37% drop in credit approvals from their finance partner and while Money McBags is no Fair Isaacs, it doesn't take Isaac Hayes to see that credit isn't going to get better anytime soon. With the direct business lagging, gross margin dropped to 50% from 56% but thanks to restructuring, the company did away with $10MM of operating expenses which allowed them to lose only $2MM and have near breakeven EBITDA. The company hasn't made money since 2006 and with the economy sputtering again, it's not clear who the fuck is going to be out looking for a new Universal machine to build muscle since they won't be able to afford to buy supplements to help maintain that muscle. The only arguments that can be made for this company are that it is trading at ~.35 of sales, they didn't burn cash last Q, and they have ~$12MM of unrestricted cash which is ~20% of their market cap. That said, rat tails, hammer pants, and Bea Arthur will come back before this company does as gyms aren't upgrading their equipment, people continue to get lazier and fatter, and those who used to be able to afford expensive clothes holders for their bedroom (which NLS machines invariably windup being), remember they have something less expensive called a closet and a floor. So even though the stock is up big today signalling something is happening (like potentially a big short investor getting a capital call), Money McBags would not be a buyer because the consumer remains weaker than a virgin tequila shot.

And before we go, on Friday Money McBags told you about TSYS and the opportunity it presented for a short term trade. The company was up 3.5% today (though on light volume) with IWO down ~120bps so something seems to be going on there. The company is hella cheap and while their earnings releases and segment financials are more complicated to decipher than a Rube Goldberg contraption or what the fuck your lady friend is actually saying to you, they are in growing markets and seem to be winning business. Money McBags doesn't have a great longterm feel for the company since he doesn't quite get the step function revenue stream of their text messaging business and why they never seem to make that next step up, but if they can really hit their guidance of $80MM-$85MM of EBITDA this year, this stock should see solid appreciation now that it has seemingly bottomed.

7/9/2010 Midafternoon Report: Investors get excited and take off their shorts to allow long exposure to grow

2010-07-09T15:58:00.004-04:00

It's a quiet day newswise and thus the market is deader than the Cleveland Cavaliers as it awaits the start of earnings season next week. Dominating the news today are non-financial matters like LeBron James betraying his home town team (and Cavs owner Dan Gilbert is said to have slept with his johnson in a freezer as he has promised revenge and literally believes in the old adage that it is a dish best served cold), the US and Russia are trading captured spies (and it's a good thing Money McBags never ran in to accused spy Anna Chapman because he would have spilled his state secrets right to her face, and her chest), and as always, Hannah Hilton remains retired.

The only US macro data released today was slightly positive (unless you actually read the release and not just the headline) as wholesale inventories rose by .5%, though that will likely be revised downward like last month's number (and every other data point released in the past two years) which was revised down from .4% to .2%. The good news is that the inventory to sales ratio is only 1.14 which is near a record low, the bad news is that people aren't buying shit because they don't have jobs and their money is becoming more worthless by the day. While the headlines tout the increase in wholesale inventories (which is mildly positive), they bury the part about wholesale sales decreasing by .3%, and yes Money McBags understands the difference between a leading indicator and a lagging indicator, but this is the first decline in over a year so is likely the reason why inventories to sales remain so low (ie. the people in charge of stocking up see sales slumping in the future and thus are keeping inventories thinner than OJ's alibi or an Olsen twin) .

Internationally, other than a sumo wrestling gambling scandal throwing Japan in to a tizzy (and Money McBags would hate to be the officer in charge of the cavity searches in that case), news remains light. Jean-Claude Trichet was out talking again about the EU's financial crisis and he said that it is too early to claim the crisis is over, that bank stress tests should help the recovery process (wink, wink), and that there needs to be stricter penalties for countries who ignore the EU's deficit limits such as having to move to Latvia, having to hand copy the entire novel Pride and Prejudice while listening to the melodic soul singing of Celine Dion, and having all pictures of Zita Gorog taken away. Most interestingly, Monsieur Trichet maintained that austerity measures and cutting government spending will not hinder economic growth thereby figuratively pissing on John Maynard Keynes' ashes and Paul Krugman's soul (though Krugman clearly sold his soul to Mephistopheles years ago as it is the only way to explain his ascent to NYTimes columnist).

In the market, China renewed Google's license to operate in the country instead of revoking it or simply giving it to Sum Dum Gai. Google could have been forced to shut down their chinese operations but instead they will continue to allow users to opt-in to receive either censored or NSFW uncensored search results. In other news, RIMM is rocketing up today as NTP has filed a lawsuit against AAPL, GOOG, and others claiming their wireless handsets infringe on NTP's patent of awesomeness. RIMM had settled previously with NTP for $612MM so they are free from this round of lawsuits and thus, for a day at least, can enjoy their declining market share and substandard product in peace.

In small cap news, two ridiculously cheap stocks that Money McBags has written about before have started rallying proving the old value investor theory that what goes down, must go up (unless it's ZAGG). One of those is NTZ which a month ago and 20% above its open today, Money McBags said:

"buying shares of NTZ is dumber than jumping in to a Hot Tub Time Machine set for the 1980s and then going Lucky Pierre between Magic Johnson and Rock Hudson. You might as well have bought shares of Amercian Home Mortgage right as the subprime mortgage market was melting down, invested in Daguerreotypes in the mid 19th century, or hired Bernie Madoff to manage your assets."

As Money McBags explained before, NTZ (or more commonly known to longterm holders as NTZero) sells high end furniture, mainly in Europe, and seeing as how Europe is instituting a little something called austerity measures and high end furniture is a more expensive and discretionary purchase than caviar infused lobster tails or a night with Heather Vandeven, that doesn't bode well for the company. That said, NTZ is trading at <3.5x EV/EBITDA and has 1/3 of their market cap in cash (even though they burned some last Q). The point remains that this company is either going to blow through their cash and go out of business (5% chance), is eventually going to come out of this and be worth a fuckload more than it is today (70% chance), or is a total fraud since Italy's version of the SEC is likely more hands off than Richard Simmons at a Rick's Cabaret (25% chance). Money McBags will wager a couple of Vietnamese dongs (as always, his currency of choice) that this is a real company and while he has absolutely no idea when it will turn around, has no faith in the global economy rebounding, and still thinks owning a high end furniture maker in a global recession/depression is as wise as covering yourself in chocolate and shouting "fire" while standing in the doorway of a crowded theatre filled with overweight arsonphobia sufferers, at some point this stock should trade for at least 7x EV/EBITDA which makes it a double from here (unless the EBITDA falls off a cliff, though if it does, there is more of a cusion right now than in Jessica Biel's pants) but that may not happen until 2025, so act accordingly.

The other name that is runnning now is TSYS and Money McBags first wrote about them in February and since then they have done nothing but go down like they were auditioning for a role in The Curious Taste of Benjamin's Button. Their last quarter was decent enough and their guidance has been fine but margins have been compressing, there has been concern about government spending drying up, and it is harder to get one's arms around their business than it is for a young lass to get her arms around Whitezilla's "business" (and you can google that at your own risk). They have a number of sort of related yet disparate businesses including a mobile location based software business, a text message enabling license selling business, and a government satellite communications software business. The company announced a new deal with the Army last night that could pay them as much as $9.8MM through 8/2011. TSYS's EV is ~$325MM and their guidance remains for $80MM-$85MM EBITDA, so it is currently trading at ~4x EV/EBIDTA and oh by the way, they just grew EBITDA by 45% last Q and revenue was up by 30% (though most of it was driven by acquisitions in the commercial segment). Again, this is a bit of a confusing company and portfolio managers just don't want to spend the time learning the different businesses and the complicated way in which results are reported (honestly, try reading one of their quarterly earnings releases, it makes Thomas Pynchon seem like Dr. fucking Seuss). That said, it is ridiculously cheap and with the new contract, perhaps there is more faith that government spending for their technology will continue. The stock has pretty much spent all of 2010 dropping but it may finally have bottomed out (because how much lower can it really go?) so this might make a nice short term trade.

With the market rallying, if you're itching to go long it's best to pick up these already beaten down names than ones that can still fall when the rally ends next week. So if Money McBags were you, the first thing he would do is empty your bank account and take one hella long trip to Vegas, but the second thing he would do is spend some time this weekend trying to get a better handle on TSYS because there is a very good chance of a solid return at these levels.

So enjoy your weekend and remember to follow WGP on Facebook and Twitter.

7/8/10 Midday Report: More bulls hit

2010-07-08T15:44:00.001-04:00

The market jolted up on unemployment news this morning before remembering it had already gone up yesterday and thus quickly settled in like an environmentally friendly squatter in Al Gore's mansion. The big macro news is that new claims for unemployment dropped to 454k or some number higher than that depending on how much the (No) Labor Department manipulates/readjusts numbers next week. Money McBags is not a betting man (unless there is money to be won or young ladies to impress) but he is willing to wager that next week we learn that new claims for this week should have actually been 459k. Anyway, claims were down by 21k, unless you use the number the (No) Labor Department released last week of 472k (not the 475k they redjusted it to this week) and in that case claims were down 18k (though when this week's number gets manipulated up to ~459k, this week's drop will go down in the books as only a 13k drop, but whatever). Regardless of what the number actually was, it likely beat analyst guesses of 460k which would be great if 450k+ new unemployment claims didn't signal an economy less healthy than a Grilled Cheese Burger Melt topped with a spread of Crisco and Pam Anderson's hepatitis.

To be frank (and if Money McBags is going to be frank, he only hopes it is the awesomely named Frank AllCock and not Frank Stallone), the high unemployment rate and the inability of the global economy to bounce out of this is more confusing to Money McBags than a condom is to Shawn Kemp or the definition of securities fraud is to SEC promoted Meaghan Chung. Money McBags understands there are unkowns, half-knowns, and can't-knows in a dynamic global economy, but there are 15k+ PhDs of economics in just the US alone so either all of them are complete idiots or that degree is more worthless than the smallest Vietnamese dong. Seriously, how can we have all of these people who trained for years on this one specific topic not have any fucking answers?

For fucksake, a solar powered plane just flew for 26 consecutive hours and while Money McBags is not a heliologist (though he ardently studies Page 3 of The Sun), he is pretty sure for many of those hours the sun wasn't even fucking out. So let me get this straight. The human race can build something that goes 28k feet in the air and flies around for 26 hours, powered by nothing but the sun and will continue to fly when there is no fucking sun, and yet we can't figure out how to find jobs for 20MM people? WTF? Money McBags is officially announcing the death of the entire field of Economics until one of the 15k+ US PhDs can figure something the fuck out. What other discipline awards titles for studying theories that don't work and coming up with hypotheses that can't be proved? Just think about it. The profession of an economist is a more worthless calling than an Amish computer camp instructor or Heidi Montag's singing instructor. Anyway, the economy continues to struggle and economists continue to watch it melt as they are more helpless than a dyslexic trying to use a calculator set for reverse polish notation (as opposed to reverse polish cowboy).

In other US news, retailers announced same store sales and results were mixed despite discounts, warm weather, and a flurry of unconventional sales efforts including Sam's Cub making small business loans, Office Depot selling items for a penny, and Hot Topic giving away free canwiches with every purchase of a Twilight t-shirt. The Gap led the disappointments with flat sales compared to guesses of up 3.4% as apparently the late 1990s are officially over.

Internationally, the IMF raised their growth forecast from none to none +1, or 4.2% to 4.6% for 2010, whichever you prefer best. They also warned that risks of a calamity have increased faster than the popularity of the high school girl who puts out first and that growth will slow at the end of this year and next year. To quote the release:

“In the near term, the main risk is an escalation of financial stress and contagion, prompted by rising concern over sovereign risk, this could lead to additional increases in funding costs and weaker bank balance sheets, and hence to tighter lending conditions, declining business and consumer confidence, and abrupt changes in exchange rates.”

So no biggie, right? Sign me up for the 4.6% revised upwards growth, nothing to see here. Unfortunately the IMF was not so positive on US growth prospects estimating that growth will fall short of 3% annually for at least the next five years and urged the US to raise taxes, cut spending, and give Alice Eve her own 24 hour cable channel.

Also internationally, the ECB and the Bank of England held rates at historic lows in order to allow already toxic banks to continue to not lend to people and Greece approved a pension overhaul which will raise the retirement age to 65 from birth, will calculate retirement benefits on average pay rather than highest pay, and will cut annual vacation days from 365 to 340.

In US stock news GPS has a bit more than a gap in their strategy (one may call it a hole more gaping than whatever is in the Octomom's pants) as it is plunging like Lara Bingle's neckline. As mentioned earlier, their same store sales disapointed with Old Navy posting flat comps, Banana Republic up 6% after a 20% down in the year ago quarter, and The Gap seeing same store sales drop 3% on top of a 10% down comp. Wow, that is so bad that not even Johnnie Cochran would have defended it. Finally, tax preparer HRB was down ~7% to a 9 year low due to the surprising resignation of their CEO who claims he is about to get a CEO job at a bigger company and HRB should just write-off the losses anyway.

In small cap stocks, news is light today as investors wait for earnings and try not to panic sell everything as they think about the challenges of the economy and the illiquidity of most of these names. LHCG had its second strong day in a row after getting clobbered last week on news that competitors AFAM and AMED were being investigated for false medicare claims. Money McBags broke them down for you last week and thinks it is an ok entry point right now if you need some healthcare exposure. They are in a growing market, offer a superior service, and are relatively cheap for their growth. Sure they don't have control over the majorty of their pricing, sure they are a roll up story, and sure these companies have been dicier than a night in the Baghdad Hilton Suites, but people aren't getting any younger or healthier and hospitals aren't getting any bigger. So if you want a way to play the "we're all getting old and sick and can't pay for it" trend, this is a company to do that with and at a reasonable mulitple.

7/7/10 Midafternoon Report: Bulls hit

2010-07-07T16:26:00.006-04:00

The market was up today because we are due for a brief rally until we resume our fall in to the abyss like King Midas' son Anchurus (only without saving the Earth) or like Alan Greenspan's reputation. The market has reached the point where some stocks have simply been oversold and with the lack of meaningful macro data and the beginning of earnings season, it should take less to get the market excited in the short term than it takes a teenage boy with a bad case of priapism to get excited. We basically have a tired market that is succumbing to VIX (not unlike a tired Gay succumbs to Dix). Today's rally is being driven by State Street announcing they will beat earnings and by retail sales defying all logic, common sense, and income levels and being estimated to have grown at their fastest pace in 4 years.

The International Council of Shopping Centers (known more familiarly as ICSC or "Who?") preannounced the results of the study they will release tomorrow, in affect scooping themselves in a strategic move to try to keep LeBron James's choice of teams for free agency out of the news and to make the ICSC more of a household acronym than PETA, ROTC, and NAMBLA . The ICSC remarked that retail sales "probably" came in at 3% to 4% growth for the month and will average 4% for the first five months of the year. Of course you all might remember that the ICSC also said Teddy Ruxpin will "probably" make a huge comeback, Walmart shoppers "probably" understand that one size doesn't fit all, and Lindsay Lohan will "probably" show up for her treatment any time now, so buyer beware.

Internationally, Europe has installed a cap on bank bonuses with bankers not allowed to take more than 30% of their bonuses in cash. The remaining 70% will now be awarded in stock, gold, or the still beating hearts of freshly clubbed baby seals. Europe bank stocks are also rallying because the rumor is that the haircuts they will have to take on Spanish bonds will be done by Ken Paves and not some dildo with a flowbee at Supercuts. It was leaked that Spanish bonds will only be written down by 3% and not the presumed 10% to 20% some people estimated while German bonds will get no haircuts and thus will go for the Chrystal Gayle look. In other international news, The Agricultural Bank of China raised $19.2B in their IPO yesterday which gives it a valuation richer than C, GS, or Christina Hendrick's bra.

In US stock news, STT is rallying the entire market as they expect to beat earnings guesses soundly by bringing in $.93 per share vs. guesses of $.72. They also announced a $251 injection of capital to support certain trust funds managed by State Street Global Advisors that engage in securities lending and other types of fraud, I mean portfolio maintenance. In theory, this "mitigates potential liability concerns" unless someone really wanted to sue them because there isn't one financial services company that is not involved in shady activities. In other stock news, Family Dollar dropped ~9% after beating quarterly analyst guesses but giving below consensus guidance. Guidance was for $.46-$.51 per share next Q and guesses were for $.53 while CEO Howard Levine said "The environment remains challenging for consumers, and customers continue to buy close to need, that said, we are being conservative but think ultimately we will do well since we sell cheap shit and people can only afford cheap shit" (though the last part of that quote could have bee made up). The sell off seems overdone to Money McBags but he doesn't follow FDO so he is not sure where comps are trading right now but at the high end their full year guidance is only $.01 below street guesses so either the whisper number on the street was much higher (and thus analysts as usual were scared to stick their necks out) or dropping 9% on guidance a Khagendra Thapa Maga nut hair below guesses is a buying opportunity.

In small cap news everything is up (well everything except for ZAGG). KITD is finally rallying after yesterday when Money McBags said "This is the time to be building a position here even though the market is totally full of shit. You wait for chances like this to buy good companies cheaply." Look, Money McBags knows he talks about this company as if they made blow jobs and caviar, but it is one of his biggest holdings and he thinks it has great long term potential and now it is just trading so fuck cheap that if you're going to buy it, you should have a full position. An interview with their CEO was posted yesterday by an industry follower and it is a great read for those trying to understand exactly what the company does, though it does get a bit technical. For instance you learn of their expansive definition of an enterprise customer, their deeper-in-the stack, multi screen strategy (not to be confused with Lexington Steele's "deeper in the sack, multi-scream" strategy), and that 40%-45% of their business deals with the back end side (which is similar to Alexis Texas as 45% of her work also deals with the back end side).

From a stock perspective, the CEO once again addresses the organic growth rate by saying it has been ~55% of their growth, he mentions that they are able to keep "virtually" all of acquired companies' clients, and he talks about some of the stresses of being a public company especially when your stock is down 40% and investors are breathing down your neck and thus need to be coddled like the lovely Emanuelle Chriqui. He also reaffirms that they will beat $75MM revenue guidance as with their last two acquisition they are near $100MM and says their goal for the next couple of years is to grow their global market share from 15%-20% to 50%. Most interestingly, he talked about their last assrammingly dilutive equity raise where shareholders were treated like Mel Gibson at a gay pride parade by saying:

"The raise was driven by an unsolicited reverse inquiry from a large institutional investor. It was a tough decision to take in the money (given the resultant dilution), but ultimately we felt it was the right thing to do in that it allows management to focus on building our business without the distraction of frequently accessing the capital markets to finance future strategic moves."

This was all very intersting stuff and while there wasn't a ton of new information, it was nice to hear the story again and have guidance confirmed given the assawful stock action of the past month. That said, Money McBags is calling bullshit on the $100MM revenue number. Last month Money McBags made the argument that with the declining Euro and ~70% of their business non-US, the exchange rate should make their topline unattainable. In fact, it could crush next year's revenue as well. The company currently has 23.3MM shares so ~210MM market cap and ~$57MM in cash (Money McBags believes those are the pro-forma numbers after their last equity raise and acquisition, but the cash figure may be closer to ~$30MM), so ~$150MM in enterprise value. With the decline in the Euro, Money McBags estimated that next year's EBITDA could be ~$20MM on the low end but in a best case scenario, he thinks they can earn ~$30MM EBITDA. So even on a worst case scenario they are cheap and in a best case scenario, they are cheaper than a Kevin Federline autographed picture as they are trading at ~5x EBITDA with plenty of cash. If you don't have your position built yet, this is the time to get in. It may drop a bit tomorrow after today's run up, and it may drop a bit more with the market, but this is a solid opportunity to step in to this company as a longterm holding.

And remember WGP is on Facebook now and Twitter as Money McBags embraces social networking as if it were Lauren Conrad.

7/6/10 Midafternoon Report: Heat wave melts market rally, or maybe it was common sense

2010-07-06T16:49:00.017-04:00

Holy crap is it hot out today. It's so hot that the only difference between the East Coast and hell is that Jim Cramer isn't in hell, yet. Anyway, the market was rebounding a bit after downing several vials of muscle relaxant to help cure the severe case of lockjaw it developed from going down so much and so frequently over the past few weeks, but that all changed in the afternoon when reality sunk back in to investors' portfolios. While this was likely a minor temporary relief rally, like Mel Gibson's career after his first anti-semitic tirade but before his second tirade where he told his wife that that he was going to burn the house down among other colorful and completely insane ramblings, you should all trade in to it carefully. And yes, things have now gotten so bad that Money McBags is forced to use Mel Gibson's racist rants as analogies for the market, so we've got that going for us, but at least we'll always have the dot-com boom.

The main problem today is that macro news is lighter than Suze Orman's resume and that is why the market tried to rally a bit. The ISM released their non-manufacturing index which measures 90% of the legal economic activity in the US and to the surprise of no one (other than analysts, economists, and CNBC), it fell to 53.8 which was a 4 month low and below the 55 guess of analysts. Out of the 11 metrics the ISM measures, 10 slowed down and one stayed the same (something called Supplier Deliveries, and in this economy all deliveries are being supplied in the rear).

Internationally, Australia kept interest rates at 4.5% claiming “uncertainty about the pace of future global growth." Though if you read the fine print, they say the uncertainty is whether it will be 0%, negative, or global economy crushing. Finally, the market waits for Thursday's ECB policy meeting where Jean-Claude Trichet will try to the soothe the market's fear of european banks failing by assuring them that stress tests will be run and then offering the market a nice sitz bath. While it's nice that the ECB is contemplating stress tests (which will no doubt show that european banks need to add more fish oil to their diets, start running for 30 minutes a day, and clean up their fucking balance sheets to try to get healthy), there is absolutely no way that european banks don't get a clean bill of health and there is absolutley no way the ECB's assessment will be correct. 151 banks just rushed to get funding from the ECB which is the most in a year and if that is a signal of health, than my name isn't Money McBags.

In large cap stocks, a report from the Semiconductor Industry Association showed chip sales were up 47% last month thanks to demand from China, India, and the Lawson family. This has helped lift chip stocks and regardless of the economy, Money McBags is a believer that the pace of technological advancement will continue to accelerate and thus having some semi exposure in your portfolio should be a longterm benefit like windpower should be a benefit to the environment, saving should be a benefit to the economy, and a tracheotomy to Lady Gaga should be a benefit to ending noise pollution. Also, BP was up today after an upgrade by RBS from "Hold" to "Buy." In addition to that upgrade, RBS announced they will be dropping the "R" from their name to hereby just go as "BS" and are retroactively initiating coverage on Enron with an "Accumulate" and Kate Beckinsale with a "Sell."

In small cap news, it is ugly out there. Money McBags favorites KITD and KIRK continue to get pounded even though they are so cheap that if they were materials, not even China would use them. KITD is a bit funky because so much of their revenue is Euro driven so Money McBags has no feel for their upcoming revenue because a lot will depend on the average fx rate they use in conversion as well as the actual revenue split. So he expects them to miss analyst revenue estimates in the short term but long term, this company is growing 50%+ ex. currency effects, it is in a fast growing market, and they are among the biggest players with cash to spend to continue the roll up. This is the time to be building a position here even though the market is totally full of shit. You wait for chances like this to buy good companies cheaply, same with KIRK, so keep KITD and KIRK front of mind.

One interesting name which continues to fall and is becoming more appealing is IMAX. Money McBags broke them down a few months ago but basically they have been able to grow rapidly due to a JV theater strategy that has allowed them to open more theatres and take less risk. The did $42MM of adjusted EBITDA in Q1 but that was driven by a little something called Avatar which has now passed through the theater system like a kidney stone through a urethra only with less pain and with more aliens.

In the quarter prior to last, the company did ~$20MM in EBITDA (so $80MM annual run rate) and estimates are for $100M both this year and next year with the Avatar business leaving but new theaters picking up that lost growth. The current EV is ~$800MM so the company is trading as 8x to 10x EV/EBITDA which isn't terribly cheap on the high end, but at the low end, it is getting to be attractive (not quite Alice Eve attractive, but probably Amber Lancaster attractive, and Money Mcbags is ok with that). The problems are that there has been a lot of retail money in this name which needs to get out, there is fear of pricing pressure killing their high ticket premiums, it is unknown how many JVs they opened this Q, and the business still relies on content and content is fickle (as noted by the brilliant WGP which every now and then misses the mark, like perhaps today, but in Money McBags' defense it is very very hot).

The most recent Shrek movie underperformed because at some point even little kids can only take so much of Mike Myers so that, on the heels of Avatar going CGbye, is setting up IMAX for a top line miss. Today, the stock was down 10%+ on no news other than pretty decent numbers for the latest Twilight movie which is sure to slowly, unoriginally, and vapidly kill pre-teen brain cells everywhere. IMAX brought in $9MM from that likely abortionally bad movie in the opening week which is certainly at least as good as they could have expected.

Look, Money McBags could talk about EBITDA, revenue growth, and Ashley Greene in 3D, until he turns bluer in the face than a depressed smurf but the issue with IMAX stock is not the fundamentals, it's the investor base. The stock was a high flyer, a momentum trendy name that drew in a lot of retail investors who institutional investors and hedge funds were able to continue to milk until deciding to blow out. Basically, once Avatar left and the story went from "we have the hottest fucking movie in history in a unique format" to "come watch an animated donkey in 3D," growth investors ran. They bought the rumor and sold the news as if the news had slept with Magic Johnson. So now IMAX is in that weird stage where momentum investors have left and it is not yet cheap enough for value investors to buy. That thesis makes less fundamental sense than string theory, but it is what it is. So with institutions having puked this out, retail sellers are now taking their losses and when they wash out, value investors may start to kick the tires, check the oil, and make sure all of the company's johnson rods are in order.

So look, Money McBags thinks this company is certainly on pace to do $80MM-$100MM of EBITDA this year and will likely at least hit those same numbers next year as JVs grow and people take even fewer vacations and thus spend more money on cheap family entertainment. So if you are a longterm owner, you don't need to ditch anything here. That said, this should trade down with the market as people take gains and value investors probably won't get interested until ~6x EV/EBITDA and if they earn $80MM-$100MM of EBITDA, that is still 25%-40% down to go, so you can probably still find a better entry point. Now it is possible for the company to earn much more than $100MM of EBITDA next year, but one has to make a few leaps of faith on JV openings, content, and the economy not going to $0, to get there, which is why Money McBags prefers to use the safer $80MM-$100MM run rate. The company basically needs to show they can perform without Avatar and while Money McBags thinks it is likely they will continue to drive traffic, he would hold off buying for another 20% down (and if it rockets up and you miss it, you need to be ok with that) because no matter how much you try there are four things you shouldn't do in life: Spit in to the wind, start a land war in Asia, forget to look for the Adam's apple, and fight the market. So keep IMAX on your watch list and get ready to pounce when it washes out.

And don't forget, When Genius Prevailed recently joined Facebook to make it easier to spread the gospel.

7/2/10 Midafternoon Report: More bad macro data leaves US worker in desperate need of a hand, job

2010-07-02T15:53:00.008-04:00

Money McBags was initially in a good mood this morning as when he was scouring the internet for news/data/information, he learned that Wonder Woman was turning a delicious 69 (and it is news like that for which Money McBags lives), but then the jobs number came out and didn't just put a turd in his punchbowl, but took the punchbowl, spilled out all of the punch, and then proceeded to fill it with a cacophony of fetid bile made up of what had to be 10 year old kimchi, expired mayonnaise, and Lindsay Lohan's saliva. The headline was that 81k private sector jobs were created despite 125k overall job losses due to the firing of 225k temporary census workers. And while that is mostly true, it obfuscates exactly how bad the numbers were like Goldman has obfuscated their real derivatives dealings with AIG. Money McBags doesn't usually drop tables here (instead he drops all kinds of rules of decorum, manners, and grammar) but he has to do it today to explain exactly how bad the jobs number was and why it is a terrible sign for the economy going forward. So Money McBags went to the BLS' actual press release (and readers should know the "L" in "BLS" is silent) and broke out the numbers since financial reporters hate doing work like Kafka hates writing endings to novels. That said, below is his table showing the actual jobs report numbers:

There are several things of note:

1. The BLS said the Government lost 225k temporary census jobs but had total loss of only 208k jobs, so one can backsolve in to a 17k government job creation number ex. census workers, which is kind of like a pyrrhic victory only without the fucking victory. Anyway, there is no way to know if those 17k job adds are temporary or permanent workers, but whatever, 208k net losses still sucks worse than a hooker with a bad case of xerostomia.

2. Of the 84k private sector jobs that the headline touts as somehow being positive, 21k of them were temporary, and the last time Money McBags checked his dictionary for "temporary" it hadn't changed to being a synonym for "permanent." The point is, only 63k real "thank the great Nipsey Russell in the sky I don't have to look for another job in a month or so" jobs were created, not 84k.

3. The birth/death model plug which as noted before is the biggest black box Money McBags has seen since Vanessa Del Rio's in the 1980s, added 147k jobs to the total and it would be easier to verify that the meaning of life is in fact "42" than anything from the birth/death goalseek. Again, you can read all about the model here but it is basically the BLS' way to rig the numbers, I mean estimate the number of jobs created/destroyed by new or dead businesses not in their survey. Now look, Money McBags is no Dale T. Mortensen and wouldn't be able to debate the merits of the Beveridge curve or a backward bending labor supply curve (though he would like to give some beverages to Olivia Munn to see if she would bend backwards over his supplied curve), but how the fuck are more businesses being added now than are closing, when economy is going south faster than Mel Gibson's chances of winning an NAACP image award? Yeah, Money McBags gets it, big businesses are no longer hiring so people are trying to start their own things, sure that could be one solution. But what about all of the small businesses that are dying because people don't have fucking income? Are we really supposed to believe that 144k more people started businesses or joined start-up businesses than were laid off because their companies died? Sorry, but that doesn't pass Money McBags' sniff test and he's got a hella good olfactory system. So taking out the fictitious birth/death model, 271k jobs were lost and 63k private sector jobs (temporary and/or permanent) were destroyed. Feel free to believe the birth/death model is remotely accurate, but Money McBags has more faith in Alan Greenspan winning this year's Playgirl Man of the Year than he does that phony model.

4. As always, and not sure why Money McBags even keeps pointing this out, but analysts missed the number by a margin wider than a Larry Craig stance. Analysts guessed that 110k private sector jobs would be added and as you can see from above (and excluding the birth/death plug) only 84k or 63k were added, depending on if you give a shit about temporary workers. So Wall Street, WHY ARE YOU PAYING THESE GUYS? Money McBags is giving you better insight for free (well the cost of your dignity), so for the price you pay those highly distinguished economists, hire 20 people who are unemployed and Money McBags bets at least half of them come up with a better guess than the supposed experts.

So now that we know the jobs number was worse than reported, do we even bother debunking the drop in unemployment rate from 9.7% to 9.5%? Yeah, it fell, but that's because the labor force participation number dropped by 652k as more people just gave the fuck up. The drop in unemployment rate is more full of shit than the birth/death model, Eliot Spitzer, or a constipated elephant with an overactive liver. Using what type of math can job losses increase, but the unemployment rate go down? No really? Is it some arcane rule of boolean algebra or perhaps Pythagoras' lost theorem that says A^2 + B^2 = Whatever the fuck you want? The point is, the economy is not recovering (the real unemployment rate including discouraged workers was 16.5%) and with the stimulus running out, republicans denying extended unemployment benefits (so up to 4MM-5MM people potentially losing their safety nets), and retirement funds dropping daily as the market tries to find a new bottom (and as always, Money McBags only hopes it is Brooklyn Decker's bottom), we are now at the tipping point where either Uncle Obama steps in again or we double dip our way back to 666 or below.

In other US news, factory orders declined by 1.4% which was triple what analysts had guessed, though that shouldn't surprise anyone since we have already proved that the economy is getting worse and analysts suck at their jobs.

Internationally, Europe's unemployment rate held at 10% (which Money McBags believes converts to 12.2% in American) but it's still the highest rate in 12 years since the great black jeans shortage of 1998. Austria came in with the lowest unemployment rate of 4% which would be great if anyone actually lived there and Latvia came in with the highest rate at 20% which is great that no one lives there.

As for both large and small cap stock news, who really gives a crap today. It's all going down right now so even though this is a party weekend, keep your shorts on as long as you can. And remember, follow WGP on facebook and Twitter and enjoy the fireworks on this 4th of July weekend.

7/1/10 Midafternoon Report: Market sucks again, swallows investor gains

2010-07-01T16:05:00.009-04:00

It was another volatile day in the market as initial jobless claims came out and were much worse than expectations which is not surprising to anyone except for those who make those expectations. Claims were up by 13k to 472k while analysts had guessed that they would drop to 452k which means on average they couldn't even get the 50-50 directional guess right. And as usual, claims were part of the weekly we suck at math derby (also known as "Numbers Manipulation Thursday") as last week initial claims were 457k, so if they grew by 13k this week, that should have made claims 470k, but of course the (No) Labor Department wants to try to mitigate the fuckawfulness of the economy so they always release a slightly better number and then revise it worse when no one is paying attention. So last week's claims were revised up to 459k and thus we get the true mathmatical equation 459k + 13k = Holy shit we're fucked (or 472k, potato, puh-tato). The good news is that people claiming extended benefits dropped by 376k, the bad news is that number fell because the government voted to stop paying them, so um, welcome to the double dip (and not the kind where you only get bacteria), make sure you are properly supplied with canned foods, matches, and plenty of viewing material because this could get interesting. And to reiterate, Republicans filibustered a bill to continue extended unemployment benefits which is the first time this has ever happened with an unmeployment rate above 7.5% during a recession and it immediately cuts off 1.5MM unemployed people from cash flow they may need. If ever Money McBags wanted to lose an election, that is exactly what he would do, fuck the people who need help in the midst of the biggest recession in history. What wasn't reported was that Republican Senators also filibustered dignity and common sense while proposing legislation to have unemployed people serve as speed bumps on Pennsylvania Avenue to keep drivers from going to fast.

In other US macro news, pending home sales also hit the shitter (and hit it with the force of a taco bell bean burrito slathered in extra hot sauce and Ecoli) which surprised analysts but shouldn't have surprised readers of WGP. The pending home sales index fell to 77.6 from 110.9 because the first time home buyers tax went away which is only something that has been known for months. The 30% drop in the index dwarfed the 12% drop analysts had guessed once again proving that past performance is no indication of future performance in regression models when we live in a fat tailed economy. Finally the House passed a financial overhaul bill which will now go to the Senate for a vote on what should be sweeping changes but has been watered down more than Christina Hendricks in a wet t-shirt contest.

In addtion to macro news that was so bad not even Chris Dodd could have done something to make it worse, Goldman was further questioned by the FCIC today on their derivatives trading as relates to AIG (and as usual Money McBags would love to have the FCIC's Heather Murren question him about the exposure of his long derivative). CFO David Vinnar was nice enough to constantly conflict himself by telling the commission that Goldman doesn't have a "derivatives business," but when questioned on how Goldman can call themselves a "top five derivatives dealers in the world," he acknowledged that Goldman's derivatives business is "a very big part of what we do."   Money McBags guesses that kind of logical fallacy or semantics masturbation is bound to happen when one talks out of their ass. Anyway, this whole thing is just theatre since if the government really wanted to shut themselves, I mean Goldman, down, it would take about 3 minutes of actual investigation.

Internationally, China is showing more signs of slowing down than Robert Byrd, as new data shows the second derivative of their manufacturing sector is likely abating. Two indexes (indices? indi? indiyouknowwhatthefuckimean) came in below analyst guesses, though still showed expansion (but that expansion is now more like from flaccid to quarter chub as opposed to full pitched tent). Tao Wang (not to be confused with Tiger Wang, Dong Wang, Peter Wang, or Wang Chung) an economist at UBS China said “economic growth is strong but momentum has peaked” and if that is true, the global recovery may need another shot of stimulus or else it could flatline worse than Gina Lee Nolin's acting career. In other intentational news, Spain was able to sell 3.5B of 3 year Euro bonds after promising not to default on them and promising to have Rebecca Ronda personally deliver them to all buyers along with a refreshing spanish milkshake.   The fact that Spain was able to get their bonds out and not at a too exorbitant yield is a positive, though Moody's has now placed Spain’s credit ranking on review for a possible downgrade, citing “deteriorating” growth prospects, challenges in meeting deficit targets, and the fact that no one in the country works. That said, Money McBags cares what Moody's has to say about as much as he cares about Donald Rumsfield's thoughts war strategy, Chuck Klosterman's opinion on pop culture, or Aristotle's view on the heliocentric universe.

In stock news it's uglier out there today than it was in Barbara Streisand's bridal suite when James Brolin went out for a smoke. One stock moving nicely up though is Ford as they announced a 13% rise in sales for the month of June led by the Ford Focus, their Super Duty F1 series, and pure luck. That said, the company announced a $4B buyback yesterday so has had good news two days in a row which currently qualifies it for the award as greatest stock ever. In other news, financials continue to sputter because there is currently less faith in the financial system than there is in Norse mythology. The Treasury department has been reducing their holdings of C which is good because the government shouldn't own public companies, especially ones going $0.

In small cap news, ZAGG is unsurprisingly selling off after it hit $3 for no reason the other day and Money McBags broke down why the stock was at least $1 too expensive. One sector that Money McBags has liked but is getting destroyed today like a college senior's hopes and dreams is the home health care sector. Small cap names AFAM and LHCG have been solid performers as they offer a service that is both cheaper than hospital stays and better for patients as home recovery rates are better than hospitalization recovery rates. The problem is these companies rely heavily on medicare funding and their billing practices have always been questioned.

Well today, the SEC announced they are launching an investigation in to AFAM and AMED around the companies billing more home visits to medicare than they actually made. That news is less good than waking up next to an unshaven Kathy Bates. As a result the sector is down 10% today and rightfully so, in fact if Money McBags owned any of these companies he would be puking them out like a bulimic with a vomit fetish. That said, LHCG does not seem to be part of the investigation so it could be a good time to try to pick this up on the cheap once things settle. Money McBags has always preferred LHCG in this group because they are a bit more rural than the others and therefore face less competition. That said, the market is enticing as it is growing 10%-15% a year as the population ages and home health care becomes a more ready solution. It costs medicare $132 per home health care visit vs. $6k for a hospital stay and as mentioned before, recovery rates are better at home because patients aren't around so many fucking sick people all day.

LHCG earned $.64 a share in Q1 and gave guidance for $615MM to $625MM in full year revenues and $2.75 to $2.85 eps.   With the sell off today the stock is trading at only 9x this year's eps guidance and yet the market is growing by double digits. Revenue was up 17% last Q and guidance does not take in to account any de novo branches which only take a year to reach full margins. The company has ~$13MM net cash to still make acquisitions and the market is ripe for continued rolling up as the top 4 players are only ~10%-12% of the market. The problems are the reliance on medicare funding and the government's ability to slash that at any time, the need for continued acquisitions, the uncertainty of any future medical liability issues (as with all health care providers), and the current SEC investigation on competitors. Still, this is a growing market and is a cheaper alternative for medicare and insurance companies that ultimately provides better service and better results so why not buy this for 9x earnings when you can? As he said, Money McBags would let this settle because the last time fudged billing fears struck the industry, these stocks got pulverized even though none of the public companies were found to be complicit. So bide your time but put this on your buy list. And to reitirate for those of you new to WGP (and if you're new, don't forget to join WGP on Facebook), Money McBags' buy/interesting list consists of KIRK, KITD, TMRK, CTGX, CRUS, QCOR, NTRI, EPAX and now LHCG among others. Many of those are getting to be pretty washed out (KIRK, KITD, CTGX) and yet have nice earnings streams and solid longterm businesses so once the market is done dying, those are companies that should see positive momentum. And while the market drops, there is always WGO and ZAGG to short, or just buy TWM and watch Wall Street burn.

6/30/10 Midday Report: Technical levels blown, now they just want to cuddle

2010-06-30T15:50:00.006-04:00

The market was flattish for most of the day until the last hour as some of the fears about Europe abated in the morning thanks to their banking system remaining open for at least another three months (so long enough for depositors to carve out space in their mattresses and pull their funds before the next bank run). The big news is that european banks didn't seek as much capital from the ECB as people feared they would with the ECB's 442B Euro line about to expire like the late great Diaperman. Banks only needed an additional 131B Euro 3 month loan which was below the 210B Euro estimate and only 131B Euro above being healthy. In other international news, German unemployment was down for the 12th straight month as German workers have to put in overtime to make sure their Spanish counterparts can take their proper siestas. Ahhh, to be young and in the Euro.

In US macro news, private employers added 13k jobs in the US in June according to ADP which makes a huge dent in the 20MM unemployed/underemployed/already given up people in the US (and by huge dent, Money McBags means the opposite of that). Really, 13k out of 20MM is as significant as a null hypothesis with a p-value of 1 trillion or as likely to change the current atmosphere as a stink bug crawling in to Lady Gaga's underwear changes her cuntosis. Analysts had guessed that 60k jobs would be added in June so they were only ~250% too high which for them is good enough to win Institutional Investor's golden shovel as analysts of the year which can then be used clear out all the crap they have been spewing. One has to remember that analysts have confidence intervals wider than the divergent opinions on global warming or Taylor Rain's rectum. The report should quell hopes of Friday's Labor Department jobs number release being positive so the government may need to hire Melissa Archer to deliver the release in order to keep investors from paying attention to the actual numbers. In other US news, the FCIC is beginning their two day hearings on AIG and Goldman's relationship to understand how those firms exacerbated the financial meltdown through their selling of derivatives and then how Goldman profited when AIG was bailed out as AIG used the bail out money to repay their mortgage partners of which Goldman was one (Goldman was repaid to the tune of $12B and Money McBags is told that tune is a mash up of Flight of the Bumblebees and Don't Worry Be Happy). While Money McBags doesn't believe anything will come from this inquiry, if it just puts the FCIC's Heather Murren in the spotlight for a few minutes, he will at least be moderately titillated (and yes, that is Heather on the left).

In market news, S&P is cutting their ratings of Moody's which is a bit like Jeffrey Skilling calling Dennis Kozlowski a fraud, Attila the Hun calling Ivan the Terrible a bit mean-spirited, or Lindsay Lohan calling Paris Hilton a whore. S&P cited that with new financial regulation investors now may be able to sue (and rightfully so Money McBags will vociferously add) rating agencies for sucking at their jobs (and as a reminder, their only job is to recognize when bad debt exists, and they missed the entire subprime/Alt-A fiasco like an anorexic misses dinner), there could be reduced demand for ratings if regulation removes the need for companies to be rated by nationally recognized organizations (here here), and Moody's sucks at their job. It is only a matter of time before Moody's lowers their ratings of S&P on the same concerns and we get a tit-for-tat ratings agency cock-off. In other news, Playboy announced a restructuring where they will become even thinner by eliminating low level workers but will keep senior executives to remain properly top heavy and Ford was rising after paying down $4B of debt and telling people they changed their name to Tesla.

In small cap news, ISLE continues to get shellacked and was doing so even when the market was slightly up today. Two day ago Money McBags told you all shorting ISLE would be a good trade and now you should be up 8% to 15% on it depending at what price you were able to short. A healthy company with a ton of debt doesn't just dilute shareholders by ~23% unless bad shit is happening. That said, this was purely a trade so if you want to lock in your profits and go home, Money McBags would applaud that move like he applauds charitable donations, rags to riches stories, and rainbow parties. Also, old friend COOL has dropped below $.70 and remember Money McBags broke them down after their last Q and said the $1 they were trading at was much too high and he would be short if the stock were more liquid. Well if you were able to short it, congratulations but you might want to start covering because the easy money has been made. The point is, Money McBags has been hitting some good names for you all and providing you with enough dick jokes to make even Bob Saget shudder so tell a friend, tell an enemy, and follow WGP on twitter and facebook because the revolution has begun.

6/29/10 Midevening Report: Market searches for a bottom, hopefully it's Brooklyn Decker's

2010-06-29T18:19:00.007-04:00

It was ugly out there today, real ugly, like a Lady Gaga- Alan Greenspan love child with a bad case of facial neurofibromatosis. Investors are worried that China is slowing down (they are), that Europe won't be able to roll their debt (eventually they won't), and that US consumer spend will shrivel up like Khagendra Thapa Magar's muchkin in a cold shower (it will). Leading the the market down was a sell off in China after the dynamically named research group The Conference Board (which apparently researches everything but how to market a business) said they had recalculated the leading economic index for China to show a 0.3% gain in April which is much lower than the 1.7% gain they reported two weeks ago and they blamed it on a calculation error (no really they did, but Money McBags doesn't believe that for a second because aren't asians supposed to be the good ones at math? Oh right, The Conference Board isn't asian). Anyway, with the people calculating the economic data unable to actually calculate it properly, we are once again left guessing at what is really going on and all we have to go by is what we see and that is a lot of closed retail stores, packed job fairs, and blurry objects as our health care ran out and we can't afford new glasses. As China is the engine that is fueling the global recovery (the lobster in the bisque, the plutonium in the flux capacitor, or the extra F in the MFF, if you will) any slow down in their economy will certainly put a damper on economic growth and thus reduce all of us to subsisting off of Ramen Noodles and our tears of despair. Also, with Spain having to roll over debt on Thursday, the same day the whole European banking sector will have their one year 442B Euro line of credit from the ECB expire, Europe is jitterier than Michael J. Fox going through the DTs. Thursday could be a momentous day in the market as Spanish banks are hinting that the ECB's line of credit is crucial to their viability so we may see a financial crash so bad one would think Ted Kennedy were driving it over a bridge.

Unfortunately, US macro news wasn't any better with consumers only confident that the economy sucks. The Conference Board (the research group who miscalculated China's leading indicators, so take the following with a grain of salt, though if you're feeling really adventurous, take it with several grains of salt firmly planted around the rim of a shot glass containing tequila) reported the US consumer confidence index fell to 52.9 from 62.7, a number which was also downwardly revised (likely due to a goal seek input error in Excel). Basically every metric measured by The Conference Board fell except for belief that things will get worse, belief that there will be fewer jobs, and belief that Keynesian economics is a farce. Not helping matters was that the Case-Shiller index posted only a .8% gain despite government tax credits still juicing the system like a Lance Armstrong steroid cocktail. Sure a gain is better than a loss, but the gain should have been higher even with 18 out of 20 cities showing increases. Of course with that tax credit now expiring, there is certain to be a pull back next month so large that it will make even Kenny Rogers shudder. If there were ever going to be a double dip recession, now is the time, so sit back and cross your fingers that the government will re-stimulate the economy and push the second dip off for another few years when you'll be too old to care.

In stock news, shares of C were halted at one point today because the market couldn't believe the company hasn't hit zero yet. The stock traded down 17% thanks to what is being reported as a fat finger trading error (and again, we call that the Portia Di Rossi because someone who looks like this must have some hella fat fingers to keep the lovely Ms. Di Rossi satisfied) though it was likely just the run of the mill high frequency trading stock manipulation. New circuit breakers were put to work for the second day in a row and trading in C stock was shut down for five minutes until it had time to cool down and think about what it had done before re-opening down only 5%. In other news Barnes and Noble dropped 20% as with the advent of TV, the internet, and the NSFW spankwire.com people no longer read books. The CEO announced the company will be investing $140MM in to their digital book business and their digital book reader, the absurdly named NOOKie (and if Money McBags were running BKS the first thing he would do would be to change the name of the NOOK to something more catchy like "iPhone" or more honest like the "not going to be around for long" since the market is going to be dominated by the Kindle and iPad). Anyway, 2011 guidance was for break even to a $.40 loss per share due to falling margins and investment, and as analysts had guessed the company would be profitable, shares sank faster than General McChrystal's chance at winning a Medal of Honor this year. Finally Verizon was break even in a down market as they are rumored to be signing a deal with Apple and Tesla Motors (TSLA) shot up 40% on its first day of trading despite never earnings a profit, having $300MM of lifetime losses, not forecasting a profit until 2012, and having their business revolve around selling an electric car when we all know eletric cars only exist in the land of make believe where it rains gumdrops and every Friday is free blumpkin day at the local Rick's Cabaret.

In small cap news everything was down except for ZAGG which Money McBags exhaustively broke down for all of you earlier today (so check it out, really). A name Money McBags told you about last week, KIRK, continues to get hammered but it is getting to the point where one may have to actually step in, put some gloves on, and catch the falling knife as it's now at 8x Money McBags' high end earnings estimates with ~20% of its market cap in cash. Also ISLE was down 6% after Money McBags said yesterday it would make a good short trade. Of course Money McBags isn't bragging about that call because everything went down faster than a call girl working for tips only, so any short call from yesterday looks prescient. There may be a short term rally tomorrow but Money McBags is warier of this market than Thomas Hoenig is wary of keeping rates too low for too long, so he is staying on the sidelines for now.

And don't forget WGP is on Facebook, even though it goes against everything in which Money McBags believes.

Small Company Update: ZAGGing off

2010-06-29T14:38:00.003-04:00

Money McBags will get his daily market update out later today, but he got a bit verbose with a small cap name this morning so will pump that out here in a separate post. The company he is talking about is ZAGG and it has caught Money McBags' attention again as it has been moving up over the last few days despite a market more pissawful than a halitosis sufferer's breath after a "shower" with R. Kelly. Money McBags told you ZAGG was a short way back in January and it has done nothing but fall until recently. The company was up 10% yesterday on news that their new Zagg InvisibleShield Dry will be available at all AT&T stores for customers to walk past and not buy. Here's the deal, this company sells an overpriced commodity product that takes way too fucking long to apply and they don't even own the patent on the materials that go in to it. What they sell is a plastic wrap that goes over your iPhone, blackberry, Xbox, nutsack, to keep it from getting scratched or damaged. It's a nice product to have but it takes a day to fully adhere to your device and one needs to be a PhD in putting shit together to apply the Shield. And it's not just that, but the company is selling these things for $25 a pop when there are cheaper and easier to apply alternatives out there ranging from fewer than $10 for this kind of stuff to free for simply not being a dipshit and putting your iPhone in a different fucking pocket from your keys. And let me touch on one point Money McBags previously mentioned, they don't actually own the patent on the materials that go in to the Shields, they merely have exclusive marketing rights and Money Mcbags is pretty sure that if this were a real business opportunuty, Apple would out negotiate Zagg for those exclusive marketing rights and sell the product themselves.

Anyway, ZAGG's new dry product is supposed to be easier to apply unless you google it and find that it is still the same pain in the ass for people to put on their PDAs (and Money McBags would love to put on some PDA with Sara Underwood who would certainly look delightful under his wood). Some of the recent stock movement up was the company being moved to the Russell Microcap Index last week and the rest is purely a way for shorts to once again make money. Not only is this company a one product company whose other ventures have yet to really add anything (this was their big new idea business venture a few Qs ago whose failure is as surprising as findng out that Chris Henry had brain dammage or Robert Byrd died), but their earnings keep getting worse. While revenue in Q1 grew 8%, net income fell from $1MM to $800k dropping eps from $.05 to $0.03 because gross margins sunk by 800bps as they had to move in to the more expensive whoesale channel from the cheaper internet channel where their margins are obviously lower on the overpriced commodity product they sell. Oh yeah, there's also this which is the one fucking thing about this company which Money McBags doesn't understand (other than who would buy their product) and would love for someone to explain to him (though if you could use small words and lots of pictures, he'd be happy), their invoiced shipping costs were $267k and the actual cost to them for shipping was ~$1MM. So they lost $750k on shipping? Pardonnez-moi, s'il vous fucking plait? How the fuck does that happen? Is this an industry norm (and really it may be) as it seems more bizarre than sell side economics or the popularity of that Twilight thing.

The company earned $.14 per share last year but in the past 2 quarters, despite revenue growth, has only earned $.04 and that includes their supposedly biggest Q that ends in December which saw costs ramp up faster than Nouriel Roubini's heartbeat when spelling "double dip recession". So one could annualize the $.03 from Q1 and say the company will earn $.12 (even though Q4 should not perform like the other Qs), but that is sort of the easy way out. The problem is, there are three huge unknowns with this company:

1. How low will gross margins fall? Last Q1 they were 64% with the wholesale channel accounting for 45% of sales and the internet channel accountng for 45% of sales. This Q1 they were 56% with wholesale accounting for 62% of sales and the internet accounting for only 22% of sales. So how much more does this mix skew?

2. Is this really a growth company anymore? Revenue grew 8% last q. Excuse me while I yawn myself to fucking death. The growth story is that as iPhones grow, so will ZAGG, and while Money McBags may not be as smart as Stephen Hawking (though he is certainly far more mobile and verbally melodic), it doesn't take a nuclear scientist to realize the iPhone has been growing like a fucking steroidal weed while ZAGG's sales only grew 8%. iPhone sales were up more than 100% last Q and all smart phone sales were up 50% and yet ZAGG grew by fewer than 10%. Growth story, de-mythed.

3. What the fuck are they going to fail at next? First it was the ear buds that no one cared about, then it was the appstore which has revolutionized the app business like the Edsel revoutionized the car market, and next the CEO has been talking about ZAGG stores which are not just likely to be expensive, but complete busts as selling dinky plastic coverings for PDAs are not enough to pay the rent (unless the store is located in Detroit where businesses can operate rent free, though they are also sales free).

The Merriman Curhan Ford analyst somehow thinks this stock is worth $5 to $6 but there's a reason that analyst works for Merriman and not a reputable organization like WGP. Seriously, to get to a $5 valuation, you have to think this company can earn $.25 a share and trade at 20x and the company can do that if they grow revenue by 25% while keeping margins flat (and as mentioned, margins have been falling faster than Larry Craig's shorts at a gay pride parade), so Money McBags guesses it is possible, but if anything, that growth will take until 2011 and why would you put a 20x multiple on a company that will take 2 years to grow revenues 25%? What is more likely is that this one product company continues on with single digit growth and decreasing margins and maybe, maybe, squeaks out $.10 to $.15 in eps this year and Money McBags wouldn't pay anything more than 14x for that which gives us a target price of $1.40 to $2.10. The company may be too small to short or to even give a fuck about, but Money McBags would rather be long Afghanistan than long ZAGG.

6/28/10 Midevening Report: Finance ministers come together as G-20 hits the spot

2010-06-28T17:47:00.014-04:00

Stocks were bouncing around today as macro data came out, courts made some rulings, and the Unicorn meat industry took a hit. Consumer spending numbers were reported and shockingly, income grew faster than spending which means that either the numbers are going to be adjusted later, consumers had their credit card lines lowered significantly, or common sense has crept back in to the US consumer after a 30 year Dionysian spending orgy (and Money McBags will vote for 1 or 2 before he votes for 3). Spending was up .2% which beat the median guess, while incomes were up .4%, pushing the savings rate to its highest level in 8 months since back when people were snowed in and couldn't overconsume.

The bigger news on the day though was a couple of court rulings which brought slightly positive news to the markets. First of all, the Supreme Court decided not to listen to the federal racketeering case against the tobacco industry because it would have interferred with their daily viewing of Judge Judy (and Money McBags is told Justice John Paul Stevens would like to drop his case load onto Judy Sheindlin's thin docket). The decision is a positive for both the tobacco industry and the health care industry as tobacco companies are now unlikely to face large industry crippling fines and instead will be free to continue bringing cancer to people everywhere while also helping the top line growth of health care companies.

The other big news of the day of which Money McBags could give a fuck about (right up there with the World Cup, General McChrystal's dismissal, and anything having to do with Miley Cyrus), the Supreme Court upheld the Sarbanes-Oxley law except it allowed the SEC to now fire members of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (known better as the acronymly challenged PCAOB). So now the SEC, an institution that was so fuck awful that they promoted the person who ignored Bernie Madoff's machinations despite evidence gift wrapped for them, and an institution so incompetent that they spent their days investigating tranny porn instead of securities fraud (when we all know the night time is for tranny porn, the day time is for NSFW guessing muffs which thankfully is back up and running and its return has truly made Money McBags understand how Pamela Smart's family felt when they found her alive), has the ability to fire the members of some board that supposedly does something to track public auditors. Well thank you for that Supreme fucking Court, really. Money McBags is glad you are wasting your time on shit like this instead of abortion, gun control laws, and banning Ray Romano from network TV. But hey, it's great that the SEC can now fire any of the five board members of PCAOB for any reason and not just incompetence, especially as THERE ARE ONLY 4 CURRENT MEMBERS of the PCOAB board. So hoo-fucking-ray that a board which does absolutely nothing based on the fact that no one has ever heard of them and is not even at a fully staffed level, can now be better regulated. Perhaps if we got our panties out of a bunch and stopped regulating regulators (especially ones as irrelevant as PCOAB) and instead tried to stop fraudulent activity, the economy would be a wee bit less fucked.

Internationally, world leaders are still coming down from the G-20 summit which likely featured as much excitement as a summer theatre production of Pride and Prejudice. Finance leaders seem to have come to an agreement to cut deficits by 2013 yet made it clear the deficit reduction is an "expectation" and not a firm or binding deadline. In a similar vein, Money McBags has agreed to marry Brooke D Williams by 2012 but that is also just an "expectation" and not a firm deadline (he'll give her until 2095 if she really wants). So basically, all that happened at the G-20 summit is that no one fucked anything new up and everyone agreed to keep the staus quo until the the status quo causes the next major downturn, whew. Not only were fiscal policies less changed than Michael Vick after a prison sentence and rehab, but banks avoided new regulations as policy makers said any regulations won't be finished until the next G-20 summit in November, will take longer than two years to institute, and will be just as bad as current regulation but in a different way. So now we wait until Basel III for new regulation which will likely be the worst performing sequel since Karate Kid III: The Puberty Years or Speed III: Runaway Segway.

In stock news, tobacco companies were up due to the previously mentioned supreme court ruling and BA dropped 44% before the markets opened in trades that were cancelled and were either the result of a fat finger (as always, known on WGP as the Portia De Rossi) or the fact that the market structure is more broken than John Edwards' wedding vows. The market continues to ponder circuit breakers to avoid manipulated fluctuations like BA had before hours (even though only 1k shares were traded). The fact that 50% of volume is made by non-fundamental investors should make fixing the market structure a priority for all 1,800 regulatory groups looking in to Wall Street, including the now can be fired board of the PCAOB where four out of five members exist.

In small cap news, ISLE dropped 14% today as they announced their intention of issuing 9MM shares to raise $100MM (or at this rate, $75MM by the time of actual issuance). The shares should lead to ~22% dilution and Money McBags broke the company down after their last Q in which they put together a marginal quarter and yet were still burning cash. The problem with this company is that their balance sheet makes Greece look like a fucking miser and they have run down casinos that need to be upgraded because even though gambling is essentially inelastic, it's not inelastic in shitty casinos with 1970s carpeting that smell of old men and despair. So ISLE needs more cash to modernize their real estate and yet is already almost as highly levered as a Bernie Madoff fund (and his leverage was $50B to $1). So there is room for this company to fall even more since the drop today didn't equal the dilution (32MM shares going to 41MM shares so owners now own ~22% less) and thus if you want a short term short trade, what better way to do it than jumping in on a shitty company with bad things happening?

6/25/10 Midafternoon Report: New finance legislation may cause banks to find different ways to screw customers

2010-06-25T15:32:00.001-04:00

The market is up today after congress reached an agreement on legislation to better regulate the financial services industry after only two short years of debate and an economy that people have less faith in than Scientology. The legislation, being called the Dodd-Frank bill (and Money McBags only laments that Senator Tim Johnson did not sponsor the bill instead of Senator Dodd and thus we could have had the Johnson-Frank bill), was watered down though as politicians were worried it might actually accomplish something so they unanimously decided take out anything that might cause someone to change anything meaningful that they do. If passed, the new laws will include the creation of a Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (whose first rule of action will be to tell people to stop borrowing so much fucking money), a requirement for banks to segregate their derivatives portfolios by doing more than just creating separate water fountains for them on the trading floor (though banks are still allowed to use derivatives to hedge, still allowed to trade currency and interest rate swaps, and still allowed have a few years to move their CDS into capitalized subsidiaries, so suck on that Blanche Lincoln), and a monthly reminder to be delivered by Timothy Geithner to stop fucking so much shit up. What the legislation doesn't do is restrict the size of banks and thus banks still have ability to grow too big to fail (which is the only way banks won't fail). The most controversial act though was the Volcker Rule which was supposed to limit banks from proprietary trading through bank owned investment vehicles for the near future until banks could find loopholes around it. Luckily, they won't have to waste their valuable time finding loopholes as the rule now merely limits banks' ability to invest in these kind of investment funds to no more than 3% of a bank's tangible equity or 3% of a fund's capital, so bankers can go back to spending their time dreaming of AnnaLynne Mccord and new products to be used for predatory lending.

While agreement on legislation that may or may not turn in to law and may or may not be affective (and Money McBags will bet on the "may not" if anyone wants to take the other side) dominated the news today like the winner of a NSFW Ultimate Surrender match dominates her conquered foe (though the news domination involved many fewer dildos), the government managed to sneak in a downward revision of GDP. Due to consumers spending less than the Commerce Department previously guessed, GDP for Q1 was lowered from 3% growth to 2.7% growth which wouldn't be a terrible number if the economy weren't coming back from nearly going to 0. Finally, consumer sentiment rose according to the University of Michigan's survey thanks to the one employed person in the state of Michigan the University found to answer their questions.

Internationally, not a lot was going on today as world financial leaders spent their day trying to get through customs in Toronto and exchange their currency for singles to prepare for this weekend's G-20 summitt and group outing to the NSFW Brass Rail. Chinese currency hit a new high as China's central bank set its key daily reference rate for the renminbi at 6.7896 per dollar meaning you now need ~350 renminbi to be loved for a very long time in Shanghai.

As for the market, with the Dodd-Frank bill more toothless than the perfect hummer, financial stocks are getting a short term boost. Investors were expecting worse so there is a bit of a short squeeze going on today since capital raises for derivatives books will be lower than previously thought and banks will still be allowed to partially invest in hedge funds, private equity funds, and any other type of SPE, SPV, or BBW to which they desire. While the market is mostly up, Ontario based RIMM is taking it in their arse ("arse" of course being Canadian for "badonkadonk") as they once again missed analyst guesses of revenues which is becoming more of a trend than twitter, bros icing bros, and condoms. For those of you who don't know RIMM, they are the company that produces the blackberry, you know, the thing people used to use for communicating before the iPhone came out. The company reported revenue of $4.24B which was up 24% but below analyst guesses of $4.36B while EPS was also up 24% to $1.38 and bested analyst guesses of $1.34 and yet featured no earnings leverage. The average blackberry price fell as did new subscribers but guidance was basically inline. RIMM maintains that their new product releases at the end of the year will help boost revenue growth but this company needs to start beating estimates as competition is only going to get more difficult.

In small cap news, QCOR is up 6% for no reason and even noted piece of shit MLNK is up 4% which means today's rally is likely on light volume and just short term trading. Money McBags broke down MLNK after their last Q (just use the search box if you're so inclined) and concluded that the company is cheap as balls in the Castro, yet is that way for a reason. Their performance has been worse than a Rich Little stand-up routine without the impressions and nothing about their business should turn around in the short term. Long term it could be a great value if you're willing to stick with it, but there are probably better ways to not make money between now and a couple of years from now (like keeping your money under your mattress or joining the Peace Corp). Money McBags mentioned SPRT as a potential trade earlier this week but he hasn't been able to get to a full break down yet but he will try to next week. That said, you should also keep your eyes on EPAY as they have traded down, yet have an interesting little niche business where they are building a payments network for banks as well as continuing to help automate bank cash management and business payment functions. The stock is trading at ~11x guidance with ~$2 of cash on the balance sheet and should continue to grow revenue at 20%+ while also having nice recurring revenue streams. So while you're lounging around tomorrow trying to shake off your hangover, check out EPAY and do some due dilligence. Money McBags will try to get to it and SPRT next week, but until then, enjoy the weekend.

Oh yeah, Money McBags is trying to figure out this facebook thing so feel free to be his friend (just don't ask him to hold hands, unless your hand hand is well manicured and is attached to this body).

6/24/10 Midnight Report: Market dials up LifeCall as it has fallen and can't get up

2010-06-24T22:22:00.003-04:00

The market tanked at the end of the session like Money McBags' day which has caused today's column to be late, short, and in need of one more read through, but it is what it is. You see, Money McBags was cranking away at his terminal, busily breaking down the news, perusing 10Ks for cheap stocks, and most importantly scouring the interweb for just the right picture of Kelly Brook, when life got in the way and he was called out to the cruel cruel world to fix some dumb shit. With dumb shit marginally fixed, Money McBags is drained of his energy and thus will be publishing his halfway done column today. It ain't Shakespeare or Fante, but luckily it also isn't Santelli, Colmes, or Bartiromo, and so it goes...

New claims for unemployment came out today and they were down 19k, or 15k, depending on if you want to use the number reported last week as your baseline or the "revised/manipulated" number released today. Last week new claims were 472k and this week claims were supposedly down 19k to 457k. Once again, if you do the math you get an equal sign more confused than Helen Keller's dogs (because how the fuck would they know to sit, stay, or roll over when every command sounded like "arhgahgaha."). Analysts guessed new claims would come in at 460k, so they were close enough that one might be deluded in to thinking their regression models actually regress to something believable and that this week's close call was not just luck caused by a random fluctuation, but Money McBags knows better and knows that those models have no clothes (though he is usually in favor of clothes-less models). Either way, the job market remains more challenged than a bus driver in El Salvador or a color blind synesthiac. 4.55MM people remain on traditional unemployment, another 5.3MM remain on extended unemployment, and another 10MM remain on no employment and must subsist off the heat generated from their dying hopes and dreams. Luckily there was news out today that was portrayed as slightly positive with durable goods orders excluding transportation (and durable goods are anything expected to last for 3+ years like cars, machinery, and Savannah Stern's chest) rising by .9% after a .8% decrease in April bringing orders slightly above where they were in March. So in honor of tonight's NBA Draft and the great Derrick Coleman, "whoop-de-dam-do." Additionally, orders for non-defense capital goods excluding aircraft, rose by 2.1% which gives a bit of confidence to the markets that businesses will still be operating in a month.

Internationally, Greek default swaps reached record highs as common sense creeps back in to the market. Eventually Greece isn't going to be able to roll over their debt so we can either make like math doesn't exist and time doesn't move linearly (Einstein's relativity be damned) and live in a happy world where Greece can function in perpetuity despite a debt level so fuck awful that even Stephen Baldwin laughs at it, or we can just buy the fuck out of Greek CDS and get our fiddles ready so we can pull a Nero when Athens burns. In other international news, Australia elected their first female prime minister in Julia Gillard who was born in Wales, is a lawyer by trade, and though never married, dates a male hairdresser which I believe makes him a well trimmed beard. Gillard promises to work with mining companies and be tough on spending to keep Australia's economy from going down under (eat your heart out on that one Jay Leno).

In earnings news, Nike just did it, well that is if "it" is missing analyst guesses of revenues. NKE profit was up 53% which was inline with guesses but revenues of $5.08B were up only 4% (ex. currency flucutations) and missed analyst guesses of $5.15B. Orders were up 9% though and the company did earn $1.04 per share so while the stock sold off ~4% today, it's not like they totally shit the bed or perhaps more appropriately, it's not like they shit on the cold floor in the corner of the room where 20 sweat shop workers sleep on the hour they have off in between shifts of sewing fucking swooshes on canvas sneakers. In other earnings news, Discover found their way to a strong quarter with profit up 14% thanks to improving credit trends, increased customer spend, and the House financial reform bill not having been passed yet. Charge-offs were up year over year to 8% from 7.5% but down sequentially from 8.5% so depending on what trend you want to use, card users are acting better or worse.

In small cap news today KIRK was down ~7% today and as Money McBags said yesterday, he thinks this is a good entry point (though not as good of an entry point as the gap in Jessica Hart's teef). That said, Money McBags refuses to catch falling knives and this stock is clearly falling as investors take profits on shit that has gone up as the market now falls, so wait for this to settle before jumping in as fundamentally it remains as strong as Money McBags' belief in truth, honesty, and Hayley Atwell.

6/23/10 Midafternoon Report: Economy of Stale

2010-06-23T16:58:00.002-04:00

The market was only marginally down today despite terrible macro data and a Fed statement about as optimistic as Nouriel Roubini at a funeral (the funeral of course would be for the US economy). New home sales dropped 33% to a record low as once again, and for all of you keeping score at home, THE GOVERNMENT TAX CREDIT EXPIRED (caps and exasperation intentional). According to the New York Times, analysts guessed home sales would drop to 400k from April's previously reported 504k, while according to CNBC, analysts guessed home sales would drop to 410k, and finally according to the WSJ analysts guessed home sales would drop to 430k, so no matter what news source you used, analyst guesses were still fuck awful and worse than Manute Bol's skin. On average, analysts predicted a ~19% drop in new home sales but the number being reported is a drop to 300k, so analysts' guesses of a 19% drop were off by ~25%. Wow. Money McBags wonders if their regression models suffer from colinearity, heteroskedasticty, or just stupid fucking dependent variables. To be that wrong about something and yet still be called professionals stretches the definition of the word "credibility" in ways that would make even Noah Webster's dictionary flaccid. And as usual, making the numbers seem slightly better is that last month's new home sales number was manipulated (Money Mcbags means readjusted) downward to 446k from 504k. So the drop being reported is 33%, or 446k to the all-time record low measurement of 300k when in actuality, the number fell 40% from 504k (which was the reported fucking number last month) to 300k. Readjusting the number downward before the awful report left 7% of "down" out of the reaction of investors who weren't paying attention and instead were busy trying to figure out who they have to fuck to get a job at CNN (And now we finally have a delightful answer to that). Making matters worse is that the supply of homes on the market was up 47% leaving an 8.5 month inventory (though the denominator in that equation, which Money McBags believes is the current annualized sales rate, is creeping towards zero which means we are getting closer to an undefined supply of homes on the market at which point Money McBags believes they should all logically be free and thus homelessness in this country will cease to exist, so perhaps that is the admirable goal of all of this). The point is, home sales/employment/Heidi Montag were all manipulated up over the past few months by tax breaks, stimulus plans, and plastic surgeons, but now that that is over, they are starting to turn back down and that could be worse than eating a shit sandwich with extra E. coli.

In addition to the drop in new home sales, the Fed came out today with their statement from their June meeting which was about as uplifting as the Diary of Anne Frank or nut cancer. According to the statement:

1. Housing starts remain at a depressed level
2. Financial conditions have become less supportive of economic growth on balance, largely reflecting developments abroad
3. Bank lending has continued to contract in recent months
4. Household spending is increasing but remains constrained by high unemployment, modest income growth, lower housing wealth, and tight credit
5. Investment in nonresidential structures continues to be weak
6. Employers remain reluctant to add to payrolls
7. Hanna Hilton remains retired from porn

Honestly, all of that was taken verbatim from the Fed's statement (well, except for maybe the last one, but they were all thiking it). The Fed's statement paints a bleaker picture of the US economy than what Picasso would have done in his blue period. The Fed then went on to say the rates would stay between 0 bps and 25 bps for an extended period and at least we're not fucking Greece, yet. Money McBags doesn't see how anyone can get excited about the markets after reading that, but then again, he can't understand how anyone can get excited over soccer, so what does he know? But as an aside, congrats to the US soccer team for beating a country with 1/10th of the population of the US on a last minute goal. Truly impressive. For their next feat, Money McBags hears the US soccer team will challenge Michael J. Fox to a game of Jenga.

In Europe, data was just as bleak as in the US although it was reported with one of those foreign accents so it sounded much more charming. The Eurozone PMI is having a bit of PMS as it cramped up and fell to 55.4 from 56.2 while Germany's Ifo was stronger than expectations but future sentiment eroded and stunk like month old sauerkraut left out in hot sun.

In stock news, JBL rocketed up after beating estimates, announcing above the street guidance, and promising to body slam the competition as if the competition were the lovely Meredith Whitney. Also CarMax's earnings took off and beat expectations thanks to selling cheap ass cars in an recessionary environment. The company earned $.44 per share, up from $.13 and easily beating analyst guesses of $.33 while growing revenue by 23%.

In small cap news, there isn't a lot going on but Money McBags wanted to spend some time talking about KIRK today as it has been selling off and is now getting to be cheap enough that you all should consider adding it to your portfolios. KIRK basically sells cheap shitty trinkets that midwestern housewives love to put on their mantels, on their side tables, or over their walls to cover up the beer stains. In yiddish, they're called tchotchkes and in english they're called garbage. That said, the company has been selling a lot of this shit as people are staying home more often and not travelling and thus they are looking for cheap ways to spruce up their houses with a nice Elephant Mother/Baby statue, a Drama Queen plaque, or (and I am not making this up) book boxes to give the illusion that they have some of that fancy learning while keeping the practicality of having somewhere to store their spare teeth and can of wintergreen Skoal. The point is, the company sells goods that are perfect for a recession as they are inexpensive and can brighten up the place where people spend most of their time.

Not only should there be demand for their products, but management has done a fantastic job of turning this company around. Basically a few years ago a PE firm had taken over and the management team was smart enough to saddle themselves with expensive mall based real estate, add too many product skus, and try to bring their products up market and sell their customers gold plated mirrors when all they really wanted were some monogrammed candles and a fucking amber wall sconce or two. The point is, the management team had misread their customers, killed their margins through higher operating expenses, and basically performed worse than a John Meriwether investment vehicle. Of course this was all happening as the recession was starting so it made everything much worse, but luckily Carl Kirkland got fed up with the dumb shit and took over his company again and brought in a management team to turn things around. Since then they have cut the skus, pared expensive real estate (they are now ~75% off mall), and focused the strategy back on selling cheap tasteless crap, and that has worked phenomenally. The company's revenue was flat in 2008 and grew in 2009 and last Q revenue was up 12% despite having 15 fewer stores (they now have ~280 stores). The plan is to open ~20 net new stores in the second half of the year and thus grow for the first time since the recession hit.

But here's the best reason to like this company, it is fucking cheap. They earned $1.71 last year and estimates for this year are ~$1.60 due to an increasing tax rate. That said, top line guidance is for 5% to 8% growth with 3% increase in operating margins so if you take the best case scenario, the company could actually earn ~$1.85 to $1.90 for the year. The stock has sold off recently and is now ~$18 which is <10x best case scenario and ~11x analyst guesses but they have ~$3.50 cash per share on the balance sheet and no debt which makes this almost as attractive as Nicole Trunfio. At a minimum this company should have a 14x market type multiple and throwing that on analyst guesses (which could be low) yields a $22.50 price and if you add the $3.50 in cash to that and you get to ~$26 target price which is ~40% upside to today. Also, they had ~$52MM of EBITDA last year ($47MM op. income + $~$15MM depreciation) and have a current EV of ~$300MM so are trading at <6x forward EBITDA since EBITDA should grow with growing top line and slightly improving margins. The negatives are that margins have pretty much topped out, they now have to show they can profitably grow new stores, and like all retailers they need to keep their merchandise relevant. That said, the stock has traded off for no reason so it's a good time to start a position (and if the position is a reverse eiffel tower, even better) because it's cheap and they seem to have a solid grasp of their target market.

6/22/10 Midafternoon Report: Home Un-Improvement

2010-06-22T18:01:00.002-04:00

The market had trouble finding a direction for most of the day as news is thin and the summer is beginning so most volume is moving to the Hamptons where portfolio managers can sip on lemonade, listen to yacht rock, and denigrate the poor all while ignoring the economic data which has been so lackluster that it is in line for its own NBC prime time sitcom (tentatively titled: Just Dilute Me!). There was one bit of macro data released today which was about as encouraging as the letter "L" is to Jackie Chan on a read through script and helped send the market tumbling end of day. Purchases of existing homes fell last month and somehow analysts are surprised about that since reading comprehension is not one of their strong suits and thus they missed the part about the government tax credit running out and sales being pulled forward like Eddy Curry's pay check. Home sales dropped 2.2% from last month despite near record low mortgage rates and falling prices and are now starting to roll over and play dead like a trained circus dog or Brittany Murphy. The best part is that the National Association of Realtors is blaming part of the drop on a processing delay which is holding up 180k mortgages as apparently the red "Rejected" stamp has run out of ink. Analysts guessed sales would be up 5.5% to 6.12MM homes which was such a close guess that it only missed by a nut hair, that is if the nut hair belonged to a brontosaurus, and not any brontosaurus, but a brontosauros with elephantitis of the nuts. But hey, maybe the 180k "processing" hold up was real (though something smells fishier about it than Paris Hilton's penis flytrap after pissing out a Long John Silver's fish taco platter with extra tartar sauce because Money McBags doesn't remember hearing about any processing holdups when 7MM+ mortgages, or 25%+ more than last month, were being processed monthly in 2005, but whatever). Anyway, if we assume the hold up was real and add the 180k home sales that were delayed due to "processing" to the monthly figures, exisiting home sales would have been up .8% which is still way fucking short of the 5.5% increase analysts guessed. And making it even worse is that analysts used a lower number to build their forecasts as last month's sales were just readjusted upwards to the 579k number so analysts were actually forecasting greater than 6% growth. Money McBags hasn't seen a miss this bad since Men Who Stare at Goats (and really, that movie was so fucking awful Money McBags wanted to stare in to the fucking sun so his retinas would burn and thus he wouldn't have to watch the whole movie) or any economics paper released by Art Laffer. With the expiration of the government tax credit, the real question is if home sales are merely taking a breather after an artifically pulled forward sales surge or if the housing market is about to take another dip and send the economy back to it's bad place.

In international news, Britain released a new emergency budget which includes an additional 17B Euro of budget cuts (25B Euro in total, or about what Money McBags would pay Britain for a chance to have Lucy Pinder and Nikkala Stott star in his personal home movie "The Mystery of Bonehenge"). The cuts are aimed at stricter rules for what qualifies someone to get disability pay (simply listening to Madonna's music will no longer be considered a disability, though listening to it and liking it will remain a sign of real impairment as only the auditorily challenged can bear that shit), a freezing of welfare benefits, an increase in the value added tax from 17.5% to 20%, a new tax on banks, and the biggest revenue generator will be a fine levied on those with crooked teeth. In other international news, the yuan fell back a bit after yesterday's rise as the Chinese government is determined not to let it appreciate too quickly for fear of losing a large part of their manipulated competitive advantage. Chinese state owned banks are now buying up dollars to either prevent a rapid yuan appreciation or to have more worthless paper to burn to keep warm when fiat currencies fail and the world reinstitutes the barter system.

In stock news, Walgreens announced a crappier than expected quarter and is trading down as if it spilled 1B tons of oil in to the Gulf. The stock was down 7% after revenues rose 6% and earnings came in at ~$.53 taking out one-time charges which was $.04 below analyst estimates. Speaking of Gulf oil spills, BP was down another ~3% today because it still has not hit zero (and yes, Money McBags is going to use that same joke every day until BP is actually at zero which will be sometime between tomorrow and when investors get their heads out of their asses). And finally, AAPL is up today because in direct opposition to BP, it hasn't reached infinity yet. AAPL's price target was raised by Deutsche Bank to $375 based on their new iPhone 4 release, the continued strong sales of the iPad, and a need to publish research to get portfolio managers to trade with Deutsche Bank.

In small cap news, WGO sold off hard on no news that Money McBags could find other than perhaps people realizing that paying more than 30x for a company in a declining industry with an expensive discretionary consumer product and a fleet of cheaper alternatives, is probably not the best thing to own. Shit, Money McBags would rather own NTZ which might be the worst idea for a business right now (high end furniture in Europe), worse than even selling ice to eskimos, unfunny jokes to Jay Leno, or panties to Britney Spears. The difference between NTZ and WGO of course is that NTZ is trading like it is a stupid fucking business while WGO is trading like it is selling super powered iPhones which give off pheremones to attract Aubrey O'Day rather than $100k gas guzzling unnecessary RVs. After last Q, Money McBags hesitantly raised his WGO top end target to $9 from $7.50, so there is still plenty of room for the stock to go down. In other small cap news NTRI has continued to try to make a run. Money McBags wrote about them after thier last Q and they remain a very interesting watch list name as the company has a ton of earnings power, trades like a momentum name, and just put up a quarter of positive new customer growth which fuels their sales. It's still a bit early for this company as they keep fucking up their ad spend and their affiliate program sucked a donkey dick (which was certainly pleasurable for Eeyore, yet did nothing for investors) to the tune of a $3MM charge last Q, so management clearly needs to figure out how to better execute (perhaps they should ask the state of Utah for ideas) but it's trading inline-ish with peers, has a nice dividend, and if they can put up a good next Q should have significant upside. The only problem is Money McBags doesn't have a lot of faith that next Q will be good and he doesn't gamble (unless he is in Las Vegas, Atlantic City, his apartment, the car, etc..), so he is not going to buy. Money McBags prefers more certainty than he has for NTRI right now so while it has a number of things going right, Money McBags would still just be guessing at their next Q. One data point is good, two are better, three is a trend, and four is time to think about selling. We're at the first data point now, so do your due dilligence.

6/21/10 Midafternoon Report: China drops its peg, exposes its growing yuan

2010-06-21T17:47:00.003-04:00

The market rallied today in the morning like a chubby chaser with a bottle of crisco on his way to a Peter Paul Rubens exhibit until it faded in the afternoon thanks to common sense and volume. Rallying the market in the morning was news that China is going to unpeg their currency from the dollar thanks to pressure from global leaders who felt that the currency peg gave China an unfair trade advantage in selling their cheap shit even cheaper. The announcement comes ahead of the G-20 summit in Toronto this weekend where finance ministers and central bankers from around the world will no doubt descend upon the NSFW Brass Rail and flaunt their ability to negotiate currency while manipulating bottoming assets (of course after the EU's latest bailout, finance ministers will certainly wonder if that is a printing press in EU central bank governor Jean Claude-Trichet's pants or if he is just happy to see them). While it's good that China is willing to let the renminbi/yuan float (and if anyone can explain to Money McBags the difference between "renminbi" and "yuan," other than several letters, he'll send you a free autographed poster of Gong Li), China has stated that they will do it gradually so as to avoid a potential destabilization bubble like what happened in Japan when the yen was unpegged from the dollar in the mid-1980s or like what happened in Britney Spears' pants after she was unpegged from Justin Timberlake. With the return of a "managed floating rate," the yuan/renmindbi/johnson rod was up ~40 bps against the dollar to its highest level in five years which means happy endings just got a little less happy for all of us.

In US macro news, less is happening today than on a Bernie Madoff trading desk in 2006 or in a eunuch's pants. The SEC is going after a firm called ICP Asset Management for manipulating CDOs in ways that would have made even Meggan Mallone blush. ICP is accused of pumpng up CDO prices to increase the value of their funds, pushing profits to their owners rather than their investors, and being what I believe the SEC called "a bunch of dicks." In other news, the proposed Durbin Bill which is supposed to keep credit card companies from charging merchants exorbitant interchange fees as a way for those credit card companies to have adequate reserves when their customers charge off due to the high prices the customers have to pay for goods which of course are partly caused by merchants raising prices to make up for high credit card interchange fees (it is the least fun daisy chain Money McBags has ever encountered), is rumored to be losing steam. News today is that the bill will take out "network fees" from interchange and thus credit card companies will still be able to charge retailers the fuck out of transactions due to a semantics loophole. The result of all of this is that V and MA shot up at midday while politicians once again do their best to to take the bite out of their bark or the steam out of their cleveland steamer if you will.

In stock news Alcoa ran up today as high frequency algorithmic traders have stumbled on to the phonebook approach and are just buying the first company listed alphabetically (though a smiliar strategy worked for Malachi Constant). Actually, AA is up as over the weekend their CEO said he expects demand to grow 10% with half of that coming from China and with China releasing their yuan today, demand for imports in China should improve. In other stocks, BP is down again today because the stock hasn't reached zero yet and Goldman Sachs cut their earnings forecast for banks causing banks to rally as investors realize trading against GS' recommendations and thus WITH GS' ACTUAL BOOK is the best way to make money. GS front runs and ditches shit to clients once it has appreciated more often than marginal celebrities come out as bisexual (and today it was some singer named Vanessa Carlton who claimed she is bisexual which would have made Money McBags excited if he knew who Vanessa Carlton was and if she didn't look like the man in the relationship). Anyway, the short GS recommendation, long their actual book trade wins again.

In small cap news a Money McBags favorite KITD was down 9% on no news that Money McBags could find though he wouldn't be shocked if they were getting ready to dilute shareholders another 25% just because they can. This company is more frustrating than a one-armed man trying to solve a rubik's cube. That said, Money McBags still believes in the long term growth story so is not sweating their huge Euro exposure and their predilection to raise equity as a daily operating procedure. Money McBags is short on time today, so no detailed analysis of any small cap names but if the market has topped out here with the sell off in the afternoon (and Money McBags is no chartist, though he will technically analyze Hilary Rhoda's bollinger bands if need be), then he would be selling his illiquid names in to the downturn.

6/18/10 Midday Report: Gold hits new highs, silver plans an intervention

2010-06-18T16:49:00.004-04:00

It's quadruple witching Friday today in the market which is unfortunately just the day where stock index futures, stock index options, stock options, and single stock futures all expire and not the day where the market finally gets a 5-some with Elizabeth Montgomery, Barbara Eden, Melissa Joan Hart, and Omarrosa. While this is usually a volatile day, the market has been quieter than the Clinton's bedroom as there has been little macro or company news released today. That said, owners of gold are being showered with rewards as gold has reached a record high today thanks to investors betting against the current fiat system remaining viable. While it's likely we'll hit a deflationary period before inflation takes off like Shawn Kemp from a delivery room, holding gold as part of your portfolio right now as a hedge against volatility and the potential crash of the Euro makes more sense than pairing Suaterenes with a nice foie gras. In other US news, Tim Geithner is apparently getting new and more power which he has easily earned given how he has revived this economy from dead to about to die again and helped to bail out the firms who caused this mess. Geithner is set to lead a new council run by the Treasury Department to identify companies that might be shut down because they pose a risk to the financial system. So does that mean the government is going to shut down the SEC, FCIC, FINRA, FDIC, and NAMBLA? Don't they all do the same fucking thing? Hey, I know how to solve a problem, let's just create other fucking groups to do the same thing that current groups do but hope they do it better. Unbelievable. Money McBags just wants to know when more bureaucracy has ever fixed anything other than creating meaningless jobs. Somewhere Josef K. is scratching his head.

Internationally, the Eurozone added Estonia as the lastest member in their global ponzi scheme. Estonia now has to pay $1B to Greece, and then Greece will pay 80% of that up to Spain, who will then pay 80% of that up to Germany. Funding problems solved. While it is certainly odd timing for a country to be joining the eurozone, Estonia said they had no choice after the University of Texas decided to stay in the Big 12 and and Utah beat them out for the last spot in the Pac 10. “It’s a great day for Estonia,” remarked Estonian prime minister Andrus Ansip, who was perhaps (an)sipping on a little too much Saku Originaal as getting in to the Eurozone right now is about as desirable as joining a tv show co-starring Ted McGinley or being drafted by the Washington Generals. Anyway, for those of you unfamiliar with Estonia, here are some quick facts: They were 4th out of 173 countries in the Worldwide Press Freedom Index narrowly being edged out by Canada and their NSFW Naked News, they've previously been occupied by more countries than Zsa Zsa Gabor's vagina, and the person they most admire is Yosemite Sam. They've been independent since 1991 and are finally looking to settle down after 20 years of hard drinking and nordic flirtations in order to raise their favorite offspring Tiiu Kuik in a stronger family environment. So welcome to the Euro Estonia, just don't burn all those Kroons quite yet. In other international news, the IMF backed Spain's austerity measures after downing one sangria too many and learning about imaginary numbers.

In stock news, C is planning on raising $3B because they haven't lost enough investor capital already. Just remember, this bank is so poorly run and has such bad judgment that they fired someone for being too hot, and she's not even really that hot, I mean we're not talking about Sara Carbonero for fucksake. And the best part about this is that they are raising money for their private equity and hedge fund groups right before Paul Volcker slaps his rule on the table and bans banks from owning those type of funds. Wow. Good for the funds but that makes about as much sense for C as it did for Saddam Hussein to build a new palace in Baghdad in March of 2003 or Simona Halep to go bra shopping right before the summer of 2009. Money McBags is sure C's CEO Vikram Pandit will retain some type of personal interest in these funds when the Volcker Rule takes effect so I guess it makes sense for him but for C shareholders it seems like a whole lot of wasted time and energy (though if you're a C shareholder, you have bigger problems to worry about than the company raising money for funds they are going to have to give up soon). In other news, CVS and WAG decided to end their snit over prescription drug benefit reimbursement and just go back to screwing Medicare and the American health care system together. Finally Moody's lowered their ratings of BP by 3 notches from the unintelligible Aa2 to the just as unintelligible A2 (or maybe it was the other way around, who the fuck knows). It's nice to see that weeks in to one of the biggest environmental disasters in history, Moody's is still on the ball. Good job guys, Money McBags eagerly awaits your downgrade of daguerreotype companies within the next 6 months. Though to be honest, any investor who needs Moody's to tell them BP is more fucked than a cupcake in Kirstie Alley's house probably shouldn't be investing.

In small cap news CRUS continues to rocket up. Money McBags believes $24 (20x his $1.20 estimates) is a plenty fair price but at $20 he'd start to think about trimming to take some of the hella sweet profits you've made off the table (and rememeber Money McBags first brought CRUS to your attention when they were trading under $8 and he told you he bought them shortly thereafter. The fact that he dumped them after the "Flash crash" for liquidity reasons doesn't change his valuation, it only makes him angrier that he believes the market structure is so broken that fundamentals may not matter). And if any of you are interested in a high flying small volatile momentum name, check out SPRT. Money McBags will try to break them down next week but they are basically outsourced and remote computer repair. It's like Geek Squad only you don't have to have a fat smelly skeevy fuck show up at your house and stink the place up while he wipes all of the porn off your computer to clean up whatever virus you downloaded while searching for that Miley Cyrus upskirt pic (and Money McBags will not be linking to the pic since he believes in the legal system). It's certainly an interesting and potential low cost business model and the company is currently scaling up their technicians faster than a young hollywood starlet scales up her ambitions. It is doubtful that in this market Money McBags would ever own this stock because a lot has to go right for it to be valued even near what it is trading today, but it has a nice story has some real opportunity, and more than anything it has strong momentum and a rapidly accelerating business. If you have money you don't care about, send it to Money McBags for a night out at Rick's, otherwise, do some research here as this might be a good trade.

6/17/10 Midafternoon Report: New claims for unemployment claim the economy still sucks

2010-06-17T17:49:00.008-04:00

The market didn't do much today as it tries to come down off its volatility high which was fueled by mass uncertainty, broken technical barriers, and a fuckload of pixie sticks. In macro news, new claims for unemployment were much worse than analyst guesses and also once again tested the (No) Labor Department's ability to do simple math. Claims were up by 12k, bringing total claims to 472k which would make sense if last week claims weren't 456k. You see, once again we're left with an equal sign that has to be more confused than Chastity Bono's bikini waxer because 456k +12k = 472k only in the land of make believe where it rains gum drops, pants are optional, and everyone looks like Diora Baird. Once again the (No) Labor Department (though the parentheses may drop from the No if claims keep up at these levels) revised last week's number upwards by 4k which only gives initial false optimism and then leads people to believe any of these results about as much as they believe in the existence of the Loch Ness monster, vampires, or Abe Vigoda. All one can glean from things is that directionally things remain bad no matter what made up number is given by Hilda Solis' henchmen and henchwomen and that when the number is released next week, this week's 472k new claims will have been revised up to somewhere between 475k and "we're all fucked." With the federal government now paying 73 weeks of unemployment on top of the 26 weeks people already receive from the states, 10MM Americans are being paid to fix up their resumes for the one current job opening in this country which is for a ticket taker at the Regal Cinemas in Topeka, Kansas (and if you're interested, just leave your resume in the box). Job growth remains more stunted than He Ping Ping with a bad case of whiskey dick. In other macro news, the Philly Fed announced today that business activity for manufacturers in the Mid-Atlantic region declined which was most surprising because everyone assumed the Philly Fed had been robbed and burned down like everything else in Philadelphia. The Philly Fed's index of business activity fell to 8.0, from 21.4 in May, and was well below analyst guesses of 21.0 since analysts are clueless and no one in Philly can afford shit. Finally the CPI was out today and was up 2.2% from last year but basically flat with last month which is a good sign for those worried about inflation but a bad sign that the Fed is going to continue to keep rates at a level where the next bubble is only a financially engineered instrument away.

Internationally, the EU says they will release the results of their bank stress tests but will release them only in the ancient and dead language of Yola. Of course the language is irrelevant because Money McBags is 100% sure that the results will show European banks are in better shape than a young Jack LaLanne and he is also 100% sure he won't believe any of those results. It serves Europe, the US, and the whole global financial system no good to be honest about the banking problems in Europe unless we really want to try to fix the problems rather than sweeping them under the rug for another few years as we bask in our own delusions and continue to fight windmills for the love of Dulcinea (though if she looks anything like Elizabeth Canalis, it will certainly be worth it). Also, a Spanish bond offering went off without a hitch as Spain saw strong demand for their 10 and 30 year bonds thanks to raising the premiums by 80bps and 110bps and promising that Nereida Gallardo would personally service all of the debt.

In stock news, AAPL is reaching record highs as they announced they sold more than 600k of their new 4G iPhones in one day (though they failed to disclose that the iPhones were laced with heroin and MSG). Apple's news is also pushing up a Money McBags' favorite small cap name CRUS. Goldman was up despite Credit Suisse cutting their price target on GS from $235 to $225 once again proving that Credit Suisse moves the market about as much as Stephen Hawking moves his trachea. And finally the great Dick "Don't call me Richard" Bove cut his price target on USB from $29.50 to $27 continuing his run of cutting bank price targets to only 40% above their current prices making him as bearish (though still as deluded) as he has ever been.

In small cap news, WGO came out with earnings today and Money McBags told all of you to keep your eyes on it as the company has run way ahead of actually putting up any kind of numbers. Those who have owned the company got in earlier than a NAMBLA member gets in to the dating pool. While Money McBags has hated the stock and still thinks it remains overvalued, he will give them credit for putting up a decent quarter, though not as decent as the headlines would lead you to believe. The good news for the company is that sales grew 165%, they were profitable, had positive ~$8.5MM EBITDA, prices were up 20% for an average of $98k per unit (because they've now infused their motor homes with the scent of Diane Kruger's vagina which I am told smells like talcum powder, fresh rose petals, and rich people), and apparently people will still buy expensive shit that they don't need. Honestly, Money McBags is flummoxed by this one. He understands why people would be dropping $100k for new motor homes when they are on sale for a fuckload less than that at maybe a year old on the used market as much as he understands Naked Lunch or country fucking music (and if it's not clear, that is "not at all"). Now the bad news for the company is that the earnings headline number was 2x what it really was thanks to a tax benefit, the sales growth rate slowed down from last quarter, gross margins are still fuck awful and below 10%, accounts payable jumped, they are trading at a ridonkulous multiple, and the economy still sucks like Nikki Dial on the set of White Men Can't Hump.

Ok, so let's just look at the quarter a little bit. Revenue was ~$135MM, up 165% year over year but up only ~20% sequentially. Alternatively, last year in this sequential Q revenue was up 60% while last Q year over year revenue was up 247%. So sure, it sounds stupid to call 165% growth bad, but contextually sales are slowing down after a big ramp up post stimulus. More importantly, headlines say the company earned $.21 per share but that number is phonier than Jack Nicholson's accent in The Departed or a married woman who says she likes giving hummers. WGO had $.21 in earnings per share thanks to a $2.4MM tax benefit. If we take out the tax benefit, they had $3.4MM in operating earnings for ~$.11-$.12 in EPS. But hey, Money McBags will give them credit for making money, good on them, really, too bad their unrecognized tax benefit is only going to last another couple of quarters. Anyway, Money McBags' big concern is that they can't keep up this pace and have reached a new near equilibrium level and at that new equilibrium level they are still more expensive than bald eagle foie gras (and nowhere near as tasty). The market cap is $357MM after today's run up and they have ~$77MM in cash so an enterpirse value of $280MM. This Q EBITDA was ~$8.5MM so if we annualize that, WGO is trading at ~8x-9x EV/EBITDA. Also, they just earned ~$.115 per share so annualizing that yields ~$.46 eps and they are trading at ~27x that. Obviously those who own the stock think that they are not at run rate earnings levels and can continue to grow even though the economy is stagnating, even though inventories have already been rebuilt, even though input prices are rising for WGO, and even though someone spending $100k on a completely discretionary item in this economy is more confusing than Schrodinger's cat (and newsflash, it wasn't the poison that killed or didn't kill Schrodinger's cat, it was fucking curiousity as he tried to figure out why the fuck he was in a box). Anyway, it could happen, really, sales could somehow keep growing but this industry was in a sector decline BEFORE the recession hit and there is no way one can call this a growth company over the long run. Money McBags would never put more than a market multiple on WGO and thus to justify the current $12.30 price WGO would have to earn $.82 next year to have a more likely 15x multiple and that just doesn't seem reasonable. So look, Money McBags was expecting worse than what WGO has done and it's been a crappy short, but he still thinks the stock is overvalued. Let the short squeeze die down today and monitor this company for another quarter to see if they can replicate this success before making any big calls. Money McBags previous downside price was $7.50 and now it's probably closer to $9 (15x ~$40). WGO was at ~$11 when Money McBags posted his initial short thesis and the market has been flat since then, so it hasn't been a good trade, it happens. If Money McBags were right about everything he'd currently be in the Bahamas about to share a cleveland steamer with Hannah Hilton and not writing this, so it is what it is.

6/16/10 Midday Report: BP sets aside $20B to be used on an oily day

2010-06-16T14:34:00.001-04:00

First of all, Money McBags would like to thank all of you for your feedback yesterday. His inbox is currently overflowing like Whitezilla's urethra after downing three cases of Mountain Dew in ten minutes (and feel free to google "Whitezilla" on your own time, Money McBags refuses to link to it due to good taste) but he promises to try to get back to each and everyone of you. The feedback was helpful as Money McBags learned that he does both too much analysis and not enough, the posts are both too long and too short, and the jokes both add to the analysis and detract from it. The only thing that was universal was that his readers love the pics so Money McBags is thinking of dropping all subject matter, words, and rational thought and turning WGP into another NSFW photo site. Anyway, Money McBags is still just short of his goal of 1MM visitors so if you all could spread the word, he will be able to continue to provide you with what you like best.

In macro news today, US housing starts declined by 10% to their lowest level since December (driven by a 17% drop in single family home building ) as the government tax credit finally disappeared like poor old Yorick did from the Danish royal court back in the day or America's global domination. Not only did housing starts drop but they were way below analyst guesses as data and common sense apparently don't figure in to analysts' regression models (and Money McBags is anxiously awaiting the day analyst guesses regress to some fucking mean where the mean isn't "dead wrong" or "not even fucking close"). Analysts guessed housing starts would come in at 650k, which would have been down 22k from last month's 672k or down only 9k from the Commerce department's newly manipulated number from last month of 659k (though the Commerce department uses the less pointed word: "readjusted"). In actuality, new housing starts were 593k, which is the 10% drop that is being reported, but since analysts used the 672k number released last month in their models (and not the newly made up 659k number), the drop was really 13% which shows that analyst models work as well as a union member in Greece or a Rush Limbaugh marriage (but hey, maybe the 4th time will be the charm). So by "readjusting" last month's number, the market got the bump from a better than expected number in April and now doesn't feel as bad about the drop since it's being reported as 10% and not 13%. That is mind fucking boggling. Money McBags has less faith in any of these numbers than Elin Nordegren has faith that Tiger Woods wasn't "sinking his putts" in only grassy holes.

But the most mind numbing thing about it all is that analysts were expecting only a 3% fucking drop. Really? I guess the government PUBLICLY announcing that the first time home buyers' tax credit was going away didn't make it up to the top of the ivory fucking towers on Wall Street where analysts dance their fat tails around pictures of Carl Freidrich Gauss while discussing their homoskedasticity and ignoring common fucking sense. Look, last month was a record month for new home starts and featured a 6% increase which was the most since October 2008, so the rational person would probably start with saying this month will probably feature a 6% decline, you know, the amount of the ARTIFICIALLY INFLATED (as opposed to artificially fellated) increase last month. And since the economy has improved by at most a Herve Vellachaize nut hair since then, why don't we start by knocking some shit off the 6%, I don't know lets call the baseline a fucking 8% decrease and then based on which way the wind is blowing, we'll move it a couple % from there. Is that so fucking hard? While it's an out of the ordinary least squares regression and the coefficient of determination may be less determinable than Caster Semenya's gender, it makes a fuck load more sense than whatever analysts are doing. So here's the deal. Money McBags isn't going to open up his excel, he isn't going to look at any data or any trends, and he's going to spend fewer than 10 seconds on this guess but he'll say next month's new housing starts will come in a 585k, a slight downtick from this month as the economy remains stagnant and those people who rushed to get the tax break the other month will still have a negative effect on the absolute number of housing starts. Anyone want to bet if that guess is better than the econometrically arrived at bullshit spewed by the economists on the street whose PhDs are less practical than a bridge to Gravina Island? Rant fucking over, but Wall Street analysts, it's on like Donkey Kong and this fucking Mario is going to save the princess.

In other macro news, manufacturing expanded by 1.2%, building on its .7% gain last month, and setting everyone up for a bigger drop when no one buys rebuilt inventories because they don't have fucking jobs. Capacity utilization at manufacturing plants was up slightly and companies like Deere are seeing improvement as they said sales of utility tractors rose in the “double digits” last month, largely due to the need to shovel all of the shit economists have been spewing about the economy. Also, Producer prices fell .3%, or rose .2% if one uses the ridiculously derived core PPI that excludes food, energy, and intelligence. These low prices give the Fed a longer time frame to hold rates flat and reinflate the bubble (I mean economy).

Internationally, France and Spain are increasing their austerity plans. France has pledged to raise the retirement age by 2 years from 60 to 62 (though since they use the metric system, Money McBags believes that really translates to 29 years old), wants to raise income taxes on the rich, and will start charging fees based on the amount of armpit hair their women are sporting. Leaks of the proposed actions have somehow caused the French to once again surrender to the Germans while praying to the great Jerry Lewis that he'll dump the MDA and adopt them as the new enfants de Jerry. C'est dommage bitches! Spain is also getting frisky with their workers again (though if those workers include Helen Lindes, who can blame them?). The Spanish prime minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapata, who never saw a spanish name he couldn't add to his own, is seeking to spur full time hiring by employers while easing their layoff burden in order to get unemployment to drop from 20% to Spain's historic unemployment rate of 19%. Money McBags isn't sayng the people of Spain don't work, well, actually, that's exactly what he is saying.

In stock news, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have been told to delist from the stock exchange though the FHFA's acting director Edward J. DeMarco (and the J apparently stands for "just kidding") said that the action "does not constitute any reflection on either enterprise’s current performance or future direction, nor does delisting imply any other findings or determination on the part of F.H.F.A. as regulator or conservator.” Really? The performance of those two shitawful enterprises which has led their stock prices to drop below $1 because no one wants to fucking own them is not a "reflection of current or future performance?" Fuck, if that's the case then markets are terribly inefficient (which they are thanks to high frequency traders) and Mr. DeMarco should sink his entire life savings into those shitrags (and Money McBags says shitrags with all due respect). In other company news, BP's credit default swaps are now showing a 40% chance of default which means the market is only mispricing them by 60% so if you can, there is money to be made here despite BP agreeing to put $20B in escrow to pay claims from the oil spill while somehow also creating enough new water to drain the entire Gulf and refill the whole fucking thing since they've basically ruined that natural habitat like Robin Williams ruined comedy or Simona Halep ruined her post tennis marketability (and ask Soleil Moon-Frye what losing one's Punky Brewsters can do to one's career). In other stock news, Fed Ex is down despite a good Q thanks to a disappointing outlook casued by growing pension liabilites and increased maintenace spend needed for their aircrafts. Now Money Mcbags doesn't want to sound overly morbid here, but why not just not fix the planes and have the older workers fly them and thus kill two birds with one stone (figuratively and literally).

In small cap news, QCOR is up another 10% despite getting the Heisman from the FDA on Friday, pushing back the decision on approving Achtar for IS for the 9 billionth time. Money McBags has talked about this ad nauseum (though not as nauseum as Lady Gaga's face, or her music) and he likes the company, especially with the potential for the NS market, but the stock is starting to get overvalued here. Money McBags only has them earning $.60 next year and their gross sales were actually a bit disappointing this last Q. Net sales had been running at ~68% of gross sales and this last Q they were 78% and Money McBags still hasn't heard why that was other than perhaps their reimbursement issues with Tricare were fixed. The point is, Money McBags thinks this Q coming up will disappoint and you will get a better opportunity to buy this in a couple of months. That said, the CEO has done a nice job turning this company around and pointing them in the right direction. Finally, keep your eyes open for WGO's earnings report tomorrow to see if their core business can break even and how much cash from operations they burn. They might have one more decent manipulatedly good quarter, but this stock is looking at a bigger uphill climb than Stedman Graham has to take on "couples night."

6/14/10 and 6/15/10 Midvacation Report: Searching for the Fountain of Truth

2010-06-15T11:01:00.001-04:00

That's right, Money McBags is off until Wednesday, unplugged like a high frequency trading system during the "flash crash" (though far less nefarious), as he tries to find the meaning of life. He is pretty sure the meaning of life involves accelerating sales, low discount rates, and plenty of Hayley Atwell, but he needs to find out for sure.

While he's out, he's also pondering ways to make When Genius Prevailed better for his readers (though making When Genius Prevailed better is a bit like making an inelastic demand curve more vertical, Greece's balance sheet more fucked, or the BLS's birth-death model plug for their jobs report even more fictitious).

Improvements may include more stock analysis, more frequent (though potentially shorter) posts, and a special scratch and sniff section (don't worry, Paris Hilton's hooha and WGO stock will be excluded from that section due to their potential to cause anosmia).

Given that, if you have any feedback Money McBags would find it most useful as he's trying to figure out who his readers are and what they like best (and royal blumpkins is not an acceptable answer).

If there are stocks you'd like analyzed, suggestions for the site, or even just some positive feedback, either:

1. Leave a comment below
2. Email me at MoneyMcBags@Gmail.com
3. Send Money McBags a strippergram with your thoughts
4. See #3

And comments can be anything from making fun of the abortionally bad and pedestrian site design, taking aim at Money McBags' horrendous grammar, or simply requesting more Kelly Brook.

See you Wednesday with more market summaries, stock analysis, and if we're lucky, even a Golden Girls joke or two (like what's the difference between Betty White and Bea Arthur? A hearbeat.).

Bottoms Up,

Money McBags

6/11/10 Midday Report: Retail sales drop as stores still insist on charging money

2010-06-11T14:35:00.088-04:00

The market has been relatively quiet today after yesterday's meteoric rise on news less relevant than the Pound-Dong exchange rate (and oddly enough Pound Dong was also the name of Alexis Texas' last movie) or the 93rd decimal of Pi (which incidentally is 2). In US macro news, consumer sentiment was better than analysts guessed, largely because the survey was taken on payday and was done while Melinda Messenger lovingly massaged consumers' fears away. The index came in at 75.5 which was up from 73.6 last month and above the median guess of 74.5 and was driven by consumers' stated interest in buying durable goods such as cars and storage crates to put all of their shit in when the repo man comes to take over their homes. Interestingly enough, while consumer sentiment was up, US retail sales dropped proving once again that actions speak louder than words and all of the data is made up anyway. Spending fell 1.2% last month driven by auto sales being down 1.7% even though according to the consumer sentiment numbers, peple are looking to buy autombiles. These two data points couldn't be more diametrically opposed than John Calvin and free will, Hemmingway and adjectives, or Richard Simmons and pants. Consumers intend to buy cars, but they're not. Hmmm, maybe because 10% of them are unemployed and another 10% are underemployed or just not looking? Hey, Money McBags intends to buy a gold plated, diamond encrusted caviar dispenser that runs on the dreams of wide-eyed children, but he is just a few million euro short, but that is just a minor detail. So University of Michigan, put that in to your ridiculously misleading consumer sentiment survey and report it. One other interesting data point from the consumer spending numbers warrants mentioning and that is that sales in hardware stores were down 9.3% which likely means that people are spending less time fixing up their houses as they anticipate foreclosure.

In market news, Mary Schapiro is going after high frequency traders as tenaciously as a squirrel (or Ricky Martin) goes after a sack of nuts. High speed transactions now account for half of the market volume which is as healthy for the markets as Miley Cyrus' singing is to a hemophiliac (because her singing of course makes one's ears bleed). Money McBags applauds Ms. Schapiro for not letting this relatively arcane corruption of the markets continue without regulation especially as high frequency trading was more negligent in the "flash crash" of the other week than the E! channel has been negligent in the devolution of american culture. Circuit breakers are now being put in to the market to halt shares of actively traded stocks when they move by +/- 10% in a 5 minute period which means BP stock should be halted on an hourly basis.

Internationally, things are relatively quiet today as the market awaits Greece's impending default which is a worse kept secret than Burt Reynolds' toupee or Lindsay Lohan's implants. Greece has less ability to pay back their debtors than Athens did of defeating the Spartan-Persian alliance that ended the Peloponnesian war. Europe continues to hope that the IMF bail out can push Greek's default out far enough so that Spain, Italy, and Amy Winehouse, can get themselves in order before the figurative shwarma hits the pita. In other international news, inflation in China rose to a 19 month high with consumer prices up 3.1%. Given the increasing pricing pressure and the rapid growth, China may start to allow their currency to fluctuate in a tight band, that is until the drummer of the band OD's on heroin and the lead singer shacks up with the 2010 version of Bebe Buell.

In stock news, BP is pondering a dividend cut, something about needing the funds to help to clean up a mess resulting from spilling a fuckload of oil all over the Gulf and ruining an entire ecosystem. BP shares are now down nearly 50% after they tried to turn the Gulf into their own personal scat film.

Finally, Money McBags promised he would get to MLNK today. Why? Because apparently he likes writing about shitty stocks that underperform on a more consistent basis than the Alabama public school system. MLNK is a global supply chain management company that basically sets up shop next to electronics makers in Asia/Europe/The US. They manage the shipping process of the electronics makers' products, the rebates and warranties, and then either don't charge enough for their services or haven't figured out how to do them efficiently, hence they lose money. They also recently bought a company called Tech for Less which sells used and refurbished computers which would seem like a good business to be in given the economy, but this business is only ~4% of revenues and based on how they run the rest of their business, is likely losing money. Anyway, this quarter MLNK's revenue was down 7% to $213MM and below expectations because their new business is taking longer to set-up and their unit volumes are shrinking as inventories are no longer being added by retailers due to the fact that people seem to have stopped buying shit. New business revenue was $16MM compared to $44MM in fiscal Q3 last year which is so bad that Bernie Madoff wouldn't even want to fake invest in this company. With revenue down, gross margin was down as well from 14% to 11% and EPS was a loss of $.08. However, taking out discontinued operations (though perhaps the whole operation should be discontinued), the loss was only $.03 per share. Non-GAAP income which is a proxy for EBITDA was $8.3MM, down from $16.1MM and defines the term "fuckawful." That said, the company has no debt and $161MM of cash, cash equivalents, and broken promises. Free cash flow was $500k, just below last year's fiscal Q FCF of $16MM, and yes, that was sarcasm. They did institute a new $10MM share buyback plan which Money McBags appreciates since he will likely be selling his shares so is glad there will be a buyer. And in the most bizarre ending to an earnings call ever, there were no questions. None. Zip. Zero. Nada. Investors were more silent than an electrolarynx user with a severe case of laryngitis.

So basically the only one who marginally gives a shit about this company is Money McBags since despite their consistently awful performance, MLNK is cheaper than a tattered Rusty Kuntz rookie card (and quick bit of trivia: "Rusty Kuntz" was actually the pre-production working title for the sitcom The Golden Girls). The company has a $288MM market cap and $161MM in cash so an enterprise value of $127MM. Their EBITDA had been as high as $18MM per Q, but this quarter shrunk again to $8MM. If we annualize the $8MM, they are trading at 4x EV/EBITDA and they previously said they expect business at the end of the year to be better. Of course last year they said they expected business at the beginning of this year to be better and it has fallen off faster than Yasmine Bleeth's looks, so what they say needs to be taken with a grain of salt, or several grains of salt around a shot glass filled with tequila which is what the management team seems to be drinking before they give guidance. Money McBags has no idea how to evaluate this company any more as consumer spend is once again going in to the toilet and MLNK has shown less ability to execute than the state of Ohio. There is basically no good news for this stock on the horizon, they have significantly underperformed for several quarters in a row, and no one is interested in the company. So basically this is a value investor's wet dream (well, that is if MLNK were going Lucky Pierre between Benjamin Graham and David Dodd, then it would be a value investor's wet dream), or it's a straight up value trap. Money Mcbags is likely going to dump his shares but it's such a small position (and growing smaller by the day), that he may hold it for the improbable chance that they get better at their jobs.

Enjoy the weekend.

6/10/10 Midevening Report: Market rallies in anticipation of tomorrow's sell off

2010-06-10T17:11:00.002-04:00

Readers, Money McBags apologizes for his absence yesterday, unfortunately he has a life outside of the great When Genius Prevailed and that life required him to spend all day watching Anna Paquin scenes now that she is oh so comfortable with her bisexuality, so you can't really fault him for that. Anyway, today the market seems to be running like a lobotomized senior citizen with an advanced case of alzheimers as it forgets Europe is about to collapse under a pile of oversized debt, the US unemployment rate is stagnating like the rebuilding of the Twin Towers, and the great Hannah Hilton remains retired. That said, short term macro news is pushing the markets to new heights, levels it hasn't seen since at least last Friday, so ring those bells because the economy is all of a sudden back (until tomorrow).

Driving the market up today was that the ECB raised their growth forecasts, China showed an increasing trade surplus, and clothes-less emperors are now becoming the rage (because despite today's numbers, the economy still has no pants). The ECB said GDP growth for 2010 will now be 1% which is above the .8% they had repviously predicted and above the potential 0% on which most investors are betting. While they raised 2010 GDP forecasts, they lowered 2011 from 1.5% to 1.2% which means the absolute level of GDP at the end of 2011 is now expected to be lower than it previously was (since multiplying last year's GDP by 1% and then 1.2% yields a lower number than multiplying it by the previous forecast of .8% and then 1.5%), but why let math get in the way of a market rally? Honestly, if logic, common sense, and facts mattered then the markets would be efficient and Burton Malkiel would be so celebrated that he would be applauded by young and old on his daily random walks. In other big news, China's trade surplus rose in May giving investors hope that China can keep fueling an expanding global economy. Imports and exports both grew by ~50% in May driven largely by an increase in purchases of lead paint to go with an increase in sales of toys. With a $19.5B trade surplus for the month, the Chinese government should get loved for a long time at the Beijing Rick's Cabaret but is getting even more pressure to let the renminbi float like Kelly Madison's renminbis in the deep end of the pool in her San Fernando Valley abode. Finally, Japan revised their GDP upwards from 4.9% to 5% as they forgot to include the new buttress they put up around Tokyo to defend Godzilla's impending attack.

While international news seemed to be strong, US macro news was mixed at best, which has left Money McBags scratching his head over today's rally (though it could also be the lice). The good news is that the budget deficit fell to $136B (and for those of you scoring at home $136B might be more than the price of all of the tea in China) thanks to higher tax receipts. Money McBags is not clear where the higher tax receipts came from as unemployment has remained the same so perhaps it is from people filing their quarterly capital gains taxes which should have been higher with the strong market rally which has now fallen faster and harder than Money McBags did for the lovely Amanda Seyfried. So we've got that going for us. In other US news, the trade deficit widened and housing foreclosures fell largely because banks have run out of repo men as bank repossesions reached a record high last month. While fewer foreclosures are good for the markets, the reason for it is as positive as saying fewer people walked out of the last Robin Williams movie (since of course fewer people attended). Finally, new claims for unemployment came out today and were worse than analyst guesses as claims fell by 3k to 456k. Making things more confusing was that last week's new claims for unemployment were 453k so once again the (No) Labor Department has either confused the basic tenets of addition, lost some beads off of their abacus (no doubt purposely taken off to replace one of the office's missing anal beads that likely got lodged in Hilda Solis' shapely derriere during the department's recently passed Memorial day picnic), or is just MAKING THE FUCKING NUMBERS UP. Last week Money McBags wrote how 460k -10k somehow = 453k and now the (No) Labor department is at it again by restating last week's number from 453k to 459k, which is how this week we get 453k - 3k = 456k. So last week's disappointing number was actually more disappointing than previously thought (which Money McBags predicted) which makes the new claims for unemployment numbers now less believable than Ellen Degeneres as a romantic lead (like in the ironically named Mr. Wrong, and of course what was wrong with Mr. was that he peed standing up). The market seems to think that continuing claims falling by 255k to 4.46MM is good news except for the fact that: 1. It's not clear that the 255k drop wasn't just people exhuasting their benefits, having been unemployed longer than the making of The Man Who Killed Don Quixote has been in production. and 2. 4.46MM people unemployed is still a fuckload of people. But hey, rally on my freinds, rally on.

In stock news, just about everything was up except for GS which has broken through their $135 support level on their way towards extinction. It will be interesting to see how aggressive the government goes after itself (I mean Goldman) because even Meagan Cheung could find fraud on their trading desks. Also, BP rose 6% after Jim Cramer finally said to sell which once again proves his ability to be negatively correlated with the markets. That said, Money McBags wouldn't go near BP unless he were wearing an extra strength contamination suit and had a lifetime supply of Lamivudine.

In small cap news, KITD hit its first short squeeze and jumped 8%+ and Money McBags hopes this is the first of many while MLNK was up a bit after crapping all over itself with yesterday's earnings announcement. Money McBags is short on time today but tomorrow he will break down MLNK's shit awful Q where their EBITDA dropped in half, their cash flow barely broke even, and they continued to pawn it off on new business taking longer to start-up. Wow. You know what Money McBags calls it when your new business takes longer to develop? Deep doodoo, and yes that is a bit of a technical term.

6/8/10 Midevening Report: Bernanke speech fails to significantly rally the market, says he'll overpromise more next time

2010-06-08T17:31:00.011-04:00

The market was relatively quiet today as there was a lack of macro news though Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke was out late Monday saying: "My best guess is that we’ll have a continued recovery, but it won’t feel terrific like a blumpkin from Sara Varone followed by a nice wipe with that oh so soft aloe infused Cottonelle. Instead, it will feel more like having your nut hairs pulled out while listening to the smooth adult contemporary sounds of Sade". Ok, Money McBags made part of that up but that's not the point, the point is, Bernanke is hedging on this recovery like he just bought FAZ in his IRA. While he says the economy won't likely have a double dip recession, he did not say it wouldn't have a single dip recession followed by a falling off the cliff depression, so it's merely a matter of semantics. Bernanke also dusted off his Phillips curve (though it wasn't as curvy as Kimberly Phillips) and added that the central bank would raise rates before the economy returns to full employment, which should be any century now. That's great, but Money McBags would like to know what the full employment rate is? Is it 4%, 6%, or whatever proof the whiskey was that Milton Friedman was drinking when he came up with NAIRU (seriously Milt, you couldn't have come up with a catchier name than the Non-Accelerating Inflation Rate of Unemployment? Really? That name could put Ritalin out of business because just reading it has to make even the most hyperactive person drowsy.)? The point is, the full employment rate is a bogus hurdle as there is no set rate so saying rates will rise before we reach that level is as helpful as saying you'll stop running when you catch the horizon. With the stimulus funds coming to an end over the next few quarters and the economy already starting to show signs of coming down from its stimulus induced bender where it got drunk off of bail outs and hand outs and now finds itself waking up in a pool of its own spending while dry humping Greece's Aegean coast to the sweet whisperings of Benjamin S. Bernanke and and his magical money making machine, the economy is in a precarious position (though not as precarious of a position as Kirstie Alley's girdle).

Internationally, the new government in Hungary has announced a set of austerity measures aimed at solving their debt crisis. The austerity measures include cutting public wages, overhauling the tax system, banning mortgage lending in foreign currencies, and stopping free cookie day at the National Assembly. Also, the European Union's finance ministers met in Luxembourg with the most important outcomes being an agreement to allow tighter oversight on countries suspected of falsifying economic data and an agreement that Ginger Spice was the hottest of the Spice Girls.

In stock news, AAPL introduced a $199 iPhone which has a front facing camera that should now allow users to masturbate on chatroulette wherever they may be. The new iPhone is slimmer than the previous version, has better picture quality, and doesn't insist on cuddling when you are done with it. In other stock news, MCD had better than guessed at growth for the month of May of 4.8% worldwide thanks to the fact that they sell cheap shit and people can only afford to eat cheap shit. The company announced the falling Euro would impact yearly earnings but announced that to make up for those lost earning they are forming a partnership with American Heart Association to get a portion of the profits from all angiograms caused by eating their food. Finally, analysts were busy today with INTC downgraded by SIG to neutral because the analyst had to do something to try to drum up trading business for SIG and Dick Bove, who never saw a financial stock he didn't like and didn't understand, cut his price target at JP Morgan from jizztastic to just ballticklingly good.

In small cap stocks, Money McBags favorite KITD continues to get pounded like Alexis Texas on payday. With ~70% of their revenues coming from Europe, topline should be impacted by the 15%-20% drop in the Euro with investors seemingly betting on worse. Given that, it is difficult to come up with a short term valuation for KITD as the Euro appears to be falling off worse than proper grammar or Britney Spears' top. Last Q, the $/Euro exchange rate was somewhere around $1.38 and this Q, it's likely going to be around $1.25, and after that, who knows? So lets take a worse case scenario where we assume the exchange goes to parity. So that would be a 28% drop in the exchange rate from last Q. Money McBags thinks at the high end KITD can do $150MM of revenue next year, but let's call it $130MM because of the global uncertainty. The thing is, that number was derived off of the old $/EU exchange so if we knock 70% of their revenue (their EU exposed revenue) by 28%, revenue decreases by ~$25MM. So insted of $130MM, a worst case scenario yields revenue of $105MM and at 20% EBITDA margins, that is ~$21MM EBITDA. The company currently has a market cap of $210MM but they have somewhere around $30MM in cash after their last deal so they have an enterprise value of roughly $180MM and thus are currently at a worst case scenario of ~9x EV/EBITDA and topline growth in that scenario would still be ~20% (and dollar euro parity is almost as bad a scenario for the financial markets as having your daughter bring home Jordan Van Der Sloot for Thanksgiving Break). Of course all of this assumes that their costs and revenue are tied together so if the euro drops by 28% the associated costs with that will drop by 28% and thus margins will remain intact. The point is, Money McBags still likes this company longterm as they are in a rapidly growing space that is going to continue to grow for several years, but there are certainly short term currency issues. However, they are diversifying their revenues in to the US and Asia so as to become less dependent on Europe so while things look bad now, in the long run this company should be fine. With uncertainty comes opportunity and it is getting to the point where this company is just getting stupid cheap.

6/7/10 Midafternoon Report: Hold on to your shorts as market continues on wild ride down

2010-06-07T17:49:00.009-04:00

The market was chugging along today, taking a brief respite to lick its wounds after Friday's jobs report gave even the most virulent Bull a bad case of Foot in the Mouth disease, until it dropped precipitously in the last half hour like Helen Thomas' reputation at a B'nai B'rith fundraiser. With Europe's ongoing debt problems and the US' stagnant at best job growth, investing long in the market remains more perilous than fighting a land war in Russia in the deepest of winters (though not as deep as Money McBags would go in Ophelie Winter) or challenging Anamika Veeramani to a spelling bee (or just challening Anamika Veeramani to spell her name). The US news that had the most effect on the markets early today was that Goldman Sachs was issued a subpoena from the FCIC, also known as the "too little, too late" commission. Money McBags eagerly awaits the FCIC's findings in several years, after no doubt much excrutiatingly toilsome research and much tax payer money has been spent, where they will 100% determine that we are fucked (of course we could save the time and money and just look for the reset button, but that would be too easy). Seriously, that we need a 10 member commisson to figure this out makes as much sense as firing an employee because she is too hot (reason #989 why C is going to $0. And as an aside, if Money McBags owned a bank, he would hire Ms. Lorenzana to manage his branch deposits anyday). Anyway, the subpeona was issued as Goldman refused to submit documents the commission requested and when reached for comment, a Goldman spokesman said they just wanted to see if FCIC Commissioner Heather H. Murren would deliver the subpoena in person. All along, Goldman Sachs has maintained that the suit is “unfounded in law and fact” and if one can't believe what a company that has manipulated the market while bringing in absorbitant profits and destroying value for average citizens thanks to their buddy-buddy taint tickling relationship with the federal government says, then whom can one trust? As Money McBags has maintained all along, Goldman and every other Wall Street bank were complicit in the destruction of the US financial system and it would be easier to find incriminating evidence on them than it is to find rolls of back fat on a topless, sunbathing Kathy Bates, you just need to find someone with the stomach to do that dirty job. So it's good that the FCIC is trying to grow a sac and go after them, but until they actually make some charges, this is all still lip service (though if the lip service is coming from the aforementioned Heather Murren, perhaps it's not all that bad).

Internationally, German factory orders apparently grew faster than the cells of Henrietta Lacks as they surged due to the weaker Euro, increased private sector investment, and the uptick in demand for industrial strength floor buffers to help clean up the sets of Germany's growing scat film industry. Orders were up 2.9% in April from the 5% they were up in March which for the first time ever makes Germany Europe's shining example. Also, Hungary is still in the news as investors continue to try to find it on a map and wonder if to solve their financial crisis they should just gobble up Turkey. Hungary's financial crisis is the biggest turd to hit the country since the famous Diet of Turda in 1558 which established the freedom to practice Catholicism, Lutheranism, or by the name, apparently coprophagia. Finally, fears are starting up again that China is increasing prices which will cause world wide inflation as they raise the minimum wage by 20%, though it will still leave workers wanting more half an hour after they receive their paychecks. However, if China unpegs their difficult to spell renminbi from the dollar and allows their currency to appreciate while the their own product prices increase, foreign exports could become more competitve than Alan Greenspan at a bubble blowing contest.

In stock news, BP is showing their first signs of progress in stopping the oil leak which is destroying the Gulf and causing the slogan "drill baby drill" to be returned to Peter North where it rightfully belongs. At this rate, the oil leak will be stopped and cleaned up somewhere around the time Paris Hilton finds some dignity. Also, Money McBags favorite Dick "don't call me Richard, or Rich, or Rick, or Rightaboutanything" Bove (and again, Bove rhymes with "Oy vey") lowered his price target on BAC yet maintained his buy rating, mimicking his brilliant market call of Lehman right before they collpased. Bove cited increased regulation, foreign exposure, and his lack of understanding of the financial markets for the price target cut. Finally, BMY shares are taking off today as they announced that their experimental drug for skin cancer was found to extend the lives of patients with incurable melanoma by 4 months. Patients were ecstatic, until they were told that four months that were being extended were Winter.

In small cap news today ISLE is falling back to where it was pre-earnings and after earnings Money McBags said the jump up was likely a quick short squeeze as the stock wasn't cheap and the company is debt-ridden, and features bleaker properties than the Detroit version of Monopoly. Not only is ISLE falling but WGO is finally ticking down under $11 on its way to $7.50. The price of this stock makes less sense than the 11 dimensions of M theory or any song by the Black Eyed Peas. And look out tomorrow for MLNK earnings. Money McBags has written about this company many times as it is cheaper than a kissing booth being manned by Gabourey Sidibe after she downed a gallon of extra spicy garlic fries and 2 liter of Dr. Pepper. It is trading at 3x a run rate EV/EBITDA with 50% of their market cap in cash. They key to tomorrow's release will be their cash flow statement to see if they were able to avoid burning cash as their business will likely have another sluggish quarter (according to them, though Money McBags doesn't quite understand why, since their biggest customer HP had a good Q, but perhaps tomorrow they'll make it more clear). So look for the release because when the markets get better (which is sometime between 2015 and the next Galactic Empire), this stock should have some nice upside with its current limited downside (again, barring a huge cash burn this quarter).

6/4/10 Midafternoon Report: Jobs report challenges Marmaduke movie for biggest bomb released on Friday

2010-06-04T17:12:00.012-04:00

The (No) Labor Department's jobs report came out today and was well below analyst guesses which sent the market tumbling like Tony Hayward's Q score at a Greenpeace convention. The US added 431k jobs in May which was the biggest increase in a single month in over a decade since the internet was founded and needed people to set up all of the tubes. While on the surface that number seems spanktastic (though not nearly as spanktastic as Rosie Huntington-Whiteley who Money McBags would let hunt his whitey anytime), the market was surprisingly not fooled by it. First of all, analysts had guessed 500k jobs would be created so the actual number came up shorter than a Kristen Bell skirt or Bernie Madoff's alibi. But what makes matter worse is if one digs in to the numbers it is doubtful any real jobs were created despite the government claiming that a whopping 41k private sector jobs were created, and honestly, bragging about 41k private sector jobs being created is like bragging that you won the spelling bee on the short bus. But let's look at the numbers more closely.

Of the 431k jobs created, 411k were temporary census workers and 31k were temporary service workers. So already were at a net -11k permanent job creation number unless the government decides to turn the US into Oceania and thus take a new census every month thereby making those temporary jobs permanent. Now the Labor Department said the government cut 20k permanent jobs so the 411k census jobs added led to a net 391k new government jobs. So since the top line number was 431K, they solve for x in 431k - x = 391k and get "you're fucked," I mean ~40k for private sector job growth. But here's the thing, as we said above, 31k of those ~40k were temporary fucking jobs so even using the government's hunky dory jobs created numbers, there were only ~10k PERMANENT private jobs added to the economy or 10k total permanent jobs lost including the government figures. That number is more piss awful than having to listen to Lynyrd Skynyrd put to music any of George Will's essays about baseball. But wait, it gets even fucking worse, like being married for 21 years, or being for 21 years and then finding out your spouse was gay the whole time, and yes I mean you Fran Drescher (though to be fair, having to hear Fran Drescher every morning might turn Money McBags gay as well). You see the BLS uses something they call a birth death-model to estimate the lag between the creation of new businesses and the close of businesses that their survey misses in the short term. They don't release the methodology so it is the biggest black box Money McBags has seen since Vanessa Del Rio graced the screen in the 1980s. For May, the BLS' birth death model showed an increase of 215k jobs, which again is an estimate likely based on population levels, claims for unemployment, and shoving one's thumb far up one's own ass. So based on our previous numbers where we showed 10k permanent private sector jobs were created and 10k overall permanent jobs were lost, we can now deduct a number somewhere between 0 and 215k from that (and Money McBags believes the number is closer to 215k since the birth-death model is likely more fictitious than strippers who dance just to put themselves through college) to get the real job DESTRUCTION number which was likely more negative than a disgruntled anion. So we've got that going for us.

Other tidbits from the jobs report show that 6.8MM people have been out of work for more than 6 months, the average length of unemployment is now 34 weeks which is the longest period since the government started keeping track in 1948, and Chewbacca was a wookie. Some may spin the drop in the unemployment rate from 9.9% to 9.7% as positive but that was more likely caused by people leaving the workforce as the Labor Force Participation Rate, which oddly enough measures the labor force participation of working age adults, decreased to 65.0% from 65.2%. So no matter how the government spins the jobs number, it sucked harder than a young lady trying to fellate Whitezilla all by herself.

In international news, everything was down as the Euro broke through the critical $1.20 mark on its way to extinction. Traders now see $1.18 as the next short term technical downside target for the Euro until it falls below that. The latest fears coming out of Europe revolve around Hungary which is apparently starving for funding. The newly elected vice president of Hungary, Lajos Kosa, channeled his inner Joe Biden late yesterday by saying that Hungary is in a Greece-like sovereign credit crisis. In response Prime Minister Viktor Orban didn't deny the issues but did call Kosa a dicknut for speaking out of turn and promised to punish him by uninviting him to the new administration's meet and greet with Zita Gorog. The new government is now in the process of determining the real state of the budget, and will report this weekend on whether they are fucked or just lovingly violated. The fear of Hungary defaulting is causing a spike in european CDS and has caused the price of European default insurance to rise to it's highest price since Jean-Paul Marat forgot to lock his bathroom door.

In stock news, everything is down as the government can't even properly manipulate the economy anymore. MCD is showing weakness because they annonced they will have to recall 12MM Shrek drinking glasses that contain the toxic metal cadmium. The irony in this is that the cadmium glasses are still less toxic and better for you than the nine piece Chicken McNuggets. And WMT had their annual shareholders meeting today where they announced a five year plan to add 500k jobs, insitute a $15B stock buyback plan, and continue to make the world a worse place.

In small cap news, WGO took it in the winnebago again today since the stock remains more overvalued than multi-family dwellings in Detroit before the subprime crash. Money McBags has been through this before but the company is not going to make money this year and is trading at a valuation that makes less sense than the rules of cricket. This is a best a $7.50 stock and on high volatility days it will get pitched around like the SS Minnow because valuation is based solely on hope and hope doesn't put food on the table (though Hope Dworaczyk could put her melons on Money McBags' table any day). The fact is, every small cap closed down except for somehow CTGX, JOEZ, TZA, and TWM (and that last two are funny because they are leveraged small cap short ETFs) because no one wants to hold illiquid little shit when the economy is still struggling, Europe is going to 0, and we now have to give a fuck about some do-shit country called Hungary who dropped a steaming pile of ghoulash on the markets today.

Oh well, at least try to have a good weekend.

6/3/10 Midevening Report: BP apologizes for oil spill while investors await market's apology for recent 12% drop

2010-06-03T18:12:00.013-04:00

The market held steady today like the Universe according to Fred Hoyle or the unemployment rate over the past several months. Speaking of unemployment, jobs data came out in advance of tomorrow's already leaked positive government non farm payrolls report which will no doubt feature a birth/death model plug so large that it will be able to stop up even Jennifer Lopez's ample backside. Today's release by ADP showed that private firms added 55k jobs in May which was below the 70k guessed by economists. That said, 55k new jobs out of 20MM unemployed workers is so irrelevant it's like the Octomom and her likely cavernous hoohah getting any pleasure out of being boned by the late great He Ping Ping and his little ding ding. It's called a hot dog down a hallway my friends. Also, new claims for unemployment fell by 10k from 460k to 453k as the Labor Department apparently hired Dostoevsky's Underground Man as their accountant and he finally got his wishes of 2 x 2 not equalling 4. Last week Money McBags reported on the 14k drop in new claims to bring the number down to 460k, but the Labor Department went to work (pun intended) and recounted their made up estimates and have revised last week's new claims upwards to get to 463k which means claims dropped by 11k and not 14k last week. So that is how 460k - 10k = 453k. Money McBags eagerly awaits next week's made up number that will also test the limits of believability and mathematics like claiming Josie Maran isn't hot or trying to divide her awesomeness by zero. In other macro news, the ISM’s index of non-manufacturing businesses came in at 55.4 for the third month in a row which was below the median guess of 55.6 but still showed some expansion with the service sector going from flacid to half mast.

Internationally, markets in Europe rose before the open as economic data showed that Europe has yet to adopt the barter system even with the Euro on life support (though hopefully better life support than what Rue McClanahan was on). Markit's UK services purchasing managers index (and Money McBags dares you to say that 3 times quickly) rose to 55.4 in May which is strangely the same ordinal number that the ISM's US service sector index showed, so it's good to see that the US and UK are both goalseeking for the same numbers. Now Money McBags doesn't want to tell the governments how to collude, but perhaps they should use different fucking numbers when making shit up and make us at least attempt to use Benford's law to call BS. While the Markit number showed expansion, digging deeper showed a slow down of new business growth and employment which is as positive of a sign for the UK as the "narrow bridge, use caution"" sign was for Ted Kennedy. Finally, Japan's finance minister Naoto Kan, is said to be in the lead to become the new Prime Minister and who could be a better choice to run the world's second biggest economy than a guy who has twice had to resign positions for failing to make his pension fund payments (no really, he did). With judgment and ethics like that, Kan is said to be in discussions with the US to extradite Bernie Madoff and appoint him to the now vacant finance minister role.

In stock news, Moody's and Fitch cut their ratings on BP because apparently it wasn't obvious to the whole world that BP is fucked. Rumor is tomorrow the ratings agencies will be cutting ratings on Enron, New Century Financial, and Jimmie Walker's career. Also, retailers reported their monthly sales numbers and results were mixed and came in at 2.5% growth, .1% below guesses with weakness seen in the West. Surprisingly, Costco had one of the biggest misses, though they still grew 5%, as people are still buying cheap shit but apparently not as fast as expected, perhaps because they bumped into the top of their credit lines.

In small cap news today, JOEZ shot up 6% today on average volume and no news that Money McBags could find other than that they opened up a new store in Cincinatti last week. Wow. Really? You're selling premium priced fashionable jeans and the place you find to open your 13th store is Cincifuckingnatti? Really? What's wrong, was Des Moines? Too upscale? Opening up a Joe's Jeans in Cincinatti makes as much sense as Simona Halep's decision to become less top heavy (listen Simona, you're ranked 166th in the fucking world by the WTA, so here's a little hint: It's not the fucking boobs that are holding you back, it's that you're just not that good at tennis. So as long as your ground game blows, why not continue to highlight your volleys?). Now look, if Money McBags were in charge of strategy at JOEZ, first of all, he would strategize the operations guy out the fucking door since they have controlled costs as well as Al Gore controlled his son, or his marriage. Secondly, he wouldn't be opening any damn stores in Cincinatti or the entire state of Ohio until he had penetrated the entire East Coast, West Coast, and Amanda Seyfried. Heck, Money McBags would open a store in the deliciously named Butte, Montana before Cincinatti because where better to have a jeans store than Butte? That's some free marketing and strategy right there. Anyway, Money McBags is sticking with his $.13 to $.15 high end range for JOEZ' eps so he doesn't think it is terribly cheap in an environment where uncertainty is dominating which makes small growth stocks that are highly levered to consumer spend and fashion trends riskier than playing grab ass with a person suffering from a bad case of irritable bowel syndrome.