Archive for 2007

  • UnitedHealth Reaffirms Outlook
    , January 8th, 2007 at 12:00 pm

    UnitedHealth reaffirmed its outlook for next year. I pay close attention to these “reaffirm” announcements, and I think too many investors overlook them. For me, it’s nice to see a company give guidance at some point, but I’m impressed to see them back it up a few weeks later. In fact, I’m often surprised by how many good stocks are hidden in plain site. The company is clearly telling us how well things are going:

    The company previously estimated 2006 earnings in a range of $4.14 billion to $4.16 billion on revenue of $71.5 billion. For 2007, UnitedHealth forecast earnings of $4.7 billion to $4.75 billion on about $79.5 billion in revenue.
    Analysts polled by Thomson Financial expect 2006 earnings of $2.97 per share on $71.52 billion in revenue and forecast 2007 earnings of $3.43 on $78.45 billion in revenue. The company did not provide a per-share earnings estimate.
    In a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, UnitedHealth said its outlook reflects the range of $25 million to $60 million in costs it may incur related to a revision in its accounting of stock options.
    The company announced last month that, following a review of historical stock option practices, it expects to book an additional $400 million to $600 million in stock options expenses for the period from 1994 to 2005.

    I’m not sure why they didn’t give an EPS estimate. If we assume UNH will have 1.35 billion shares, that translates to a range of $3.48 to $3.52 a share. That means that the stock is going for just over 15 times 2007’s earnings.

  • Barron’s Gives Thumbs Up to Bed Bath & Beyond
    , January 8th, 2007 at 7:39 am

    I’m not alone:

    A conservative company forecast, inexpensive valuation and its potential as a leveraged buyout target could have shares of home goods retailer Bed Bath & Beyond (BBBY) poised for significant climb, according to a report in Barron’s.
    Fans of the retailer argue that its shares are attractive, “and could rise into the high 40s if Bed Bath & Beyond tops what many deem to be conservative financial guidance for the coming fiscal year,” the report in the Jan. 8 edition of the financial newspaper said.
    Shares of Bed Bath & Beyond closed at $38.40 on Nasdaq on Friday.
    The paper pointed out that Bed Bath shares were trading for a relatively inexpensive price-to-earnings ratio of 16 times estimated earnings of $2.40 a share for the fiscal year ending in February 2008, diminishing the stock’s risk.
    In addition, a weaker housing market has not cut into Bed Bath sales as some on Wall Street feared, Barron’s noted.
    Double-digit annual profit growth looks doable, the paper said, adding that Bed Bath & Beyond could reward patient investors.

  • Effective Income Tax Rates
    , January 7th, 2007 at 4:10 pm

    I thought this was interesting. This graph shows effective income tax rates for different income percentiles going back to 1979:
    image388.png
    Source: Congressional Budget Office

  • Fifty Years Ago
    , January 6th, 2007 at 4:36 pm

  • The Quants Have Landed In Vegas
    , January 6th, 2007 at 8:08 am

    The WSJ profiles Dr. Bob:

    Though he makes a living handicapping college and pro football and basketball, Mr. Stoll rarely visits Las Vegas. He’s never placed a bet in one of the city’s sports books and hasn’t attended an NFL game since he was 9. He does not make a habit of watching sports on TV. “Your eyes can only fool you,” he says. Put him in a different setting and he might be running a hedge fund, developing office towers or monitoring the currency markets.
    But in the last three months, Mr. Stoll has emerged to become one of the world’s most influential sports handicappers. And when it comes to predicting the outcomes of college football games, he is peerless. By his records, which have been tracked by dozens of bettors and bookmakers, the recommendations he’s made on college football in the last three seasons have turned out to be winners against the point spread 63% of the time. In 2005 he finished with 51 wins and 21 losses for a success rate of 71%.

  • Billy Beane Joins the Board of NetSuite
    , January 5th, 2007 at 3:42 pm

    Here’s an interesting story. Billy Beane, the GM of the Oakland A’s, has joined the board of directors of NetSuite.
    Bean was the star of Michael Lewis’ Moneyball, which detailed how he used sabermetrics to run his team almost like a quant fund:

    The Beane appointment represents a public-relations coup for NetSuite, an Internet-based maker of business management software preparing for an initial public offering of stock later this year.
    The Ellison Connection
    The much-anticipated IPO is expected to further enrich Ellison, who dipped into the US$22 billion fortune that he amassed as co-founder of Oracle (ORCL) to bankroll San Mateo, Calif.-based NetSuite in 1998. Ellison is expected to remain NetSuite’s controlling shareholder even after the IPO.
    Beane said he was drawn to NetSuite because of the Ellison connection, as well as the company’s unorthodox approach of selling online subscriptions to software instead of distributing the complex programs on discs that must be installed on computer hard drives.
    “I like to diversify myself,” Beane said during an interview Wednesday. “This is an opportunity to be with a company with an impressive pedigree and to be around people that do things differently.”

  • It’s a Small-Cap World
    , January 5th, 2007 at 12:02 pm

    From 1994 to 1999, the Russell 2000 (^RUT) badly lagged the market. But since then, the little guys have left the rest of the market in the dust:
    image387.png

  • Today’s Employment Report
    , January 5th, 2007 at 9:19 am

    image385.png
    The economy created 167,000 jobs last month. This was more than the Street was looking for, but it’s still pretty tepid growth.
    image386.png
    The unemployment rate stayed the same at 4.5%.

  • Theme for the Year
    , January 4th, 2007 at 4:23 pm

    image384.png
    Oh Seven is not being kind to energy stocks. In just two days, the Dow Oil & Gas Index (^DJUSEN) has dropped 5.7% while the S&P 500 is flat. Well, it’s really up 0.04 points which is 0.0028%, so let’s just say it’s flat.
    Crude oil is down 8.9% in the last two days, and oil is now at its lowest price since June 15, 2005. Since the July 14 high of $78.40, oil is down 29%. Even in euros, oil is down!
    I’m pleased to report that our new Buy List had a very good day. Fifteen of the 20 stocks went up. The Buy List rose 0.72% compared with the S&P 500’s 0.12%. The big winner was Amphenol (APH), which rose 3.2%. Joe Banks (JOSB) also had a good day, rising 2.6%. The company reported that same-store sales increased 1.4% in December.
    Our insurance stocks were the laggards today. Both AFLAC (AFL) and WR Berkley (BER) dropped 0.5%. Naturally, this is one of the many reasons why I’m crazy. By any reasonable standard, we had a very good day today, yet I’m still upset about the few stocks that didn’t do well. I’m sorry, I need help. The good news is that it doesn’t seem specific to either company. The culprit was probably a story from the WSJ on falling insurance premiums.

  • An Inconvenient Truth Means Very Convient Weather
    , January 4th, 2007 at 11:40 am

    It’s another balmy day here in our nation’s capital. The Post said it’s going to get up to 63 today. Here’s a cherry blossom from my back yard:
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    They’re about three months ahead of schedule. Warm weather is bursting out all across the East Coast. Barry Ritholtz said that he rolled top down the other day.
    The warm weather is also having a big impact on the financial markets. Oil is down again today. The latest quote shows oil off $2.73 to $55.59 a barrel.
    (By the way, whatever happened to the Goldman/Paulson/Oil plot to lower gas prices before the election? I thought that prices were supposed to go right back up.)
    Here’s the February contract for light sweet crude:
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