Apple 2Q07 Earnings Preview

My colleague at StreetInsight.com, Ben Thomas, will be providing officail coverage of Apple’s earnings report for the site. I’ll be listening to the call and have my own comments but here is Ben’s preview. He captures my views well although I’d add that guidance could be even more conservative than usual given the dealy in […]

Regal Entertainment and NII Holdings 1Q07 Earnings Previews

Regal Entertainment (RGC) and NII Holdings (NIHD) report before the open on Thursday. I’ll be visiting with clients out of town most of Wednesday and Thursday so I won’t be able to get any comments on the results until Friday. The following brief previews should help you put the numbers in perspective….

San Jose Mercury News Clears Jobs of Criminal Activity in Options Probe

In a lengthy article, the San Jose Mercury News is reporting that it is unlikely that Steve Jobs will be charged with a criminal offense in the Apple (AAPL) options backdating scandal. The article leaves open the possibility of SEC action but SEC action would not require Jobs to leave the company. The article contains […]

Monday Morning Media Madness

Here is your Monday Morning Media Madness: • On a year over year comparison basis, it was the worst weekend of 2007 for the box office. When all the data is tallied the decline should be a little over 20%. Fortunately, it is usually a small weekend as studios clear their inventory ahead of the […]

Gannett: Still Cheap But Still To Be Avoided

Special thanks to my intern, Megan Brinkman, a soon-to-be graduate of Northwestern’s MBA program, who did most of the work on GCI this quarter due to a conflict I had with the conference call. The following summary was written by Megan and edited by me. Consistent with what we are seeing across the newspaper industry, […]

New York Times: Still No Upturn in Sight

New York Times (NYT) reported mixed 1Q07 earnings. Results were basically in line with analysts estimates and recent management commentary but there were no signs that print advertising was stabilizing. Additionally, management lowered its forecasted growth rate for internet advertising in 2007 from 30% to something less than that without specifying a figure. Put this […]

AT&T Finally Getting Some TV Customers – Should We Care?

AT&T (T) rose almost 1% yesterday, possibly in response to Wednesday’s afternoon’s press release indicating that the company’s U-Verse TV offering was beginning to gain some customers. U-Verse is T’s multichannel TV product designed to fill out is product bundle that already contains wireless and wireline telephony and high speed internet. U-Verse is based on […]

Mid-Week Media Madness

Time for a little mid-week Media Madness: • It appears that David Poland and I aren’t the only voices proclaiming that “movie theatres are dying” is a flawed thesis. According to this article, long-time media analyst William Kidd of Wedbush Morgan agrees with us. Bill’s report agrees with my thesis that most of the problem […]

Motorola 1Q07 Earnings Offer Little Hope For A Near-Term Turnaround

The message from the 1Q07 results from Motorola (MOT) could be that the worst is over. However, you can also draw the conclusion that earnings power in 2008 remains uncertain. Put these together and the shares should not react too much to the latest news. EPS of 2 cents matched consensus and were at the […]

Private Equity Comes To Canada – Officially

It is now official that private equity has arrived in Canada. BCE Inc. (BCE), formerly Bell Canada, has announced that is negotiations with a group of Canadian pension funds being backed by Kohlberg, Kravis, and Roberts. KKR was the in the original stories about a possible private equity-financed takeover of BCE but the stories which […]