Archive for April, 2010

• The New Fortune 500 List Is Out
  Eddy Elfenbein, April 15th, 2010 at 2:05 pm

  Walmart (WMT) edges out ExxonMobil (XOM) for the #1 spot. Here are the Top 100 ranked by revenues:

  1	Wal-Mart Stores	408,214.00
  2	Exxon Mobil	284,650.00
  3	Chevron	163,527.00
  4	General Electric	156,779.00
  5	Bank of America Corp.	150,450.00
  6	ConocoPhillips	139,515.00
  7	AT&T	123,018.00
  8	Ford Motor	118,308.00
  9	J.P. Morgan Chase & Co.	115,632.00
  10	Hewlett-Packard	114,552.00
  11	Berkshire Hathaway	112,493.00
  12	Citigroup	108,785.00
  13	Verizon Communications	107,808.00
  14	McKesson	106,632.00
  15	General Motors	104,589.00
  16	American International Group	103,189.00
  17	Cardinal Health	99,612.90
  18	CVS Caremark	98,729.00
  19	Wells Fargo	98,636.00
  20	International Business Machines	95,758.00
  21	UnitedHealth Group	87,138.00
  22	Procter & Gamble	79,697.00
  23	Kroger	76,733.20
  24	AmerisourceBergen	71,789.00
  25	Costco Wholesale	71,422.00
  26	Valero Energy	70,035.00
  27	Archer Daniels Midland	69,207.00
  28	Boeing	68,281.00
  29	Home Depot	66,176.00
  30	Target	65,357.00
  31	WellPoint	65,028.10
  32	Walgreen	63,335.00
  33	Johnson & Johnson	61,897.00
  34	State Farm Insurance Cos.	61,479.60
  35	Medco Health Solutions	59,804.20
  36	Microsoft	58,437.00
  37	United Technologies	52,920.00
  38	Dell	52,902.00
  39	Goldman Sachs Group	51,673.00
  40	Pfizer	50,009.00
  41	Marathon Oil	49,403.00
  42	Lowe’s	47,220.00
  43	United Parcel Service	45,297.00
  44	Lockheed Martin	45,189.00
  45	Best Buy	45,015.00
  46	Dow Chemical	44,945.00
  47	Supervalu	44,564.00
  48	Sears Holdings	44,043.00
  49	International Assets Holding	43,604.40
  50	PepsiCo	43,232.00
  51	MetLife	41,098.00
  52	Safeway	40,850.70
  53	Kraft Foods	40,386.00
  54	Freddie Mac	37,614.00
  55	Sysco	36,853.30
  56	Apple	36,537.00
  57	Walt Disney	36,149.00
  58	Cisco Systems	36,117.00
  59	Comcast	35,756.00
  60	FedEx	35,497.00
  61	Northrop Grumman	35,291.00
  62	Intel	35,127.00
  63	Aetna	34,764.10
  64	New York Life Insurance	34,014.30
  65	Prudential Financial	32,688.00
  66	Caterpillar	32,396.00
  67	Sprint Nextel	32,260.00
  68	Allstate	32,013.00
  69	General Dynamics	31,981.00
  70	Morgan Stanley	31,515.00
  71	Liberty Mutual Insurance Group	31,094.00
  72	Coca-Cola	30,990.00
  73	Humana	30,960.40
  74	Honeywell International	30,908.00
  75	Abbott Laboratories	30,764.70
  76	News Corp.	30,423.00
  77	HCA	30,052.00
  78	Sunoco	29,630.00
  79	Hess	29,569.00
  80	Ingram Micro	29,515.40
  81	Fannie Mae	29,065.00
  82	Time Warner	28,842.00
  83	Johnson Controls	28,497.00
  84	Delta Air Lines	28,063.00
  85	Merck	27,428.30
  86	DuPont	27,328.00
  87	Tyson Foods	27,165.00
  88	American Express	26,730.00
  89	Rite Aid	26,289.50
  90	TIAA-CREF	26,278.00
  91	CHS	25,729.90
  92	Enterprise GP Holdings	25,510.90
  93	Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance	25,423.60
  94	Philip Morris International	25,035.00
  95	Raytheon	24,881.00
  96	Express Scripts	24,748.90
  97	Hartford Financial Services	24,701.00
  98	Travelers Cos.	24,680.00
  99	Publix Super Markets	24,515.00
  100	Amazon.com	24,509.00

• Happy Tax Day
  Eddy Elfenbein, April 15th, 2010 at 10:56 am

  Here are some Tax Day deals to enjoy:
  Subway is coming to the rescue with Customer Appreciation Day. Buy one footlong sandwich and get one for FREE today.
  PF Chang’s is giving you a break by taking 15% off your food bill today.
  Bring in your own reusable mug and Starbucks will fill it up for FREE with their brewed coffee
  Cinnabon is giving out 2 FREE cupcake bites to every customer from 6pm to 8pm on Tax Day (while supplies last).
  Staples is offering 30 pages of FREE tax return copies. Staples is also offering free on-line expert tax advice.
  Whole Foods is offering to pay customers’ sales tax. The tax-free shopping day is a first-time event for the Southern region.
  Barry Ritholtz points us to a document from the IRS detailing what the taxes the Top 400 earners pay. To make the cut in 2007, you needed a minimum income of $138.8 million.

• Have Breakfast with Nouriel Roubini
  Eddy Elfenbein, April 14th, 2010 at 2:07 pm

  The bidding starts at $7,000.
  P.S. I’m willing to have breakfast with any of the losing bidders for only $6,000. I’ll even bring my own Frosted Flakes.
  (HT: Felix)

• WaMu: “I Like Big Bucks”
  Eddy Elfenbein, April 14th, 2010 at 12:28 pm

  Sung to Sir Mix-a-Lot’s classic:

  I like big bucks and I cannot lie.
  You mortgage brothers can’t deny,
  That when the dough roles in like you’re printin’ your own cash,
  And you gotta make a splash,
  You just spends.
  Like it never ends,
  Cuz you gotta have that big new Benz.
  All of that bling you’re wearin’,
  Shining so bright peoples starin’.
  It’s crazy, I gotta ski Aspen
  That’s all I’m askin’.

  This was the same company, by the way, that ran those awful race-based ads:
  

• Progressive’s Impressive First Quarter
  Eddy Elfenbein, April 14th, 2010 at 10:16 am

  Progressive (PGR) is one of those ridiculously profitable insurance companies that I wish I had bought years ago. Just from watching TV, you’re probably familiar with the commercial wars between Geico (Cavemen, the Gecko and Buffett) and Progressive (Flo).
  Here’s the thing: Car insurance can be very profitable industry. And I mean very profitable. Unlike some other forms of insurance, everyone has to buy it and the experts have thorough data on accidents.
  Over the last 35 years, PGR’s stock is up more than 1500-fold compared with 14-fold for the S&P 500. The last few years, however, have not been so kind to Progressive. Near the end of 2005, the stock broke $31 a share (split-adjusted) and it eventually dipped below $10 a share last March.
  Annual earnings-per-share dropped from $2.13 in 2006 to $1.55 in 2007 and $1.29 in 2008. Last year, EPS rose slightly to $1.55. Margins have squeezed the entire industry.
  PGR’s Q1 earnings came out this morning and they were very good:

  Progressive reported a profit of $295.6 million, or 44 cents a share, up from earnings of $232.5 million, or 35 cents a share, a year earlier. The latest period included $30.8 million in investment gains, while the prior year included losses of $73.4 million.
  Net premiums written increased 7% to $3.78 billion, while premiums earned rose 3% to $3.5 billion.
  Analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters projected earnings of 37 cents a shares on $3.69 billion of premiums written.
  The combined ratio, or amount of premiums paid as claims, rose to 90.9% from 89.5%. Meanwhile, the amount of personal auto and special-lines polices in force–largely homes–rose 7% and 3%, respectively, to 7.8 million and 3.5 million.

  This is very good news, but I want to see more before I’m convinced the turnaround is for real.

• CEO Paid To Use Company Jet Less
  Eddy Elfenbein, April 14th, 2010 at 9:36 am

  OMG:

  Abercrombie & Fitch Co. paid its chief executive $4 million to limit his personal use of the corporate jet, according to a securities filing Tuesday.
  The high-priced teen retailer amended the employment agreement of Michael Jeffries, long-time chief executive, to limit his company-covered personal use of the corporate jet to $200,000 per year. The CEO would have to reimburse the company for any use over that amount.
  Previously, Mr. Jeffries was entitled to unlimited personal use. From 2006 to 2008, he booked an average of about $850,000 a year worth of personal travel on the corporate jet. In 2008 alone, he tallied roughly $1.1 million worth of personal travel on the jet. In exchange for agreeing to the limitations, Mr. Jeffries will receive a lump-sum payment of $4 million. The agreement requires Mr. Jeffries to pay back a portion of that money should he choose to leave the company before Feb. 1, 2014.

  Four million dollars works out to about 4.5 cents a share for a company that made $1.12 last year.

• Intel Earns 43 Cents a Share
  Eddy Elfenbein, April 13th, 2010 at 4:46 pm

  Earlier today, I said Intel (INTC) would earn between 45 and 50 cents a share. I was right — they earned 43 cents a share.**

  Intel Corp. said Tuesday its net income in the first quarter nearly quadrupled over last year and reflected an overall bump in spending on technology by companies.
  Among other things, Intel got a lift from sales of new chips for computer servers — the kind of purchase that many companies delayed in the recession.
  Intel is the first major technology company to report earnings for the first three months. It said after the market closed Tuesday that it earned $2.4 billion, or 43 cents per share, in the first three months of 2009.
  Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters were expecting profit of 38 cents per share.
  The company also raised its forecast for a key performance measurement. Intel now predicts a gross profit margin of 62 percent to 66 percent of revenue in 2010, up from its previous guidance of 58 percent to 64 percent of revenue.
  Intel shares rose 1.45 percent in after-hours trading.

  This is very good news. The guidance is key.
  ** Scoring courtesy of the Congressional Budget Office

• Deep Truths about the Markets and Investing
  Eddy Elfenbein, April 13th, 2010 at 4:04 pm

  In his 1988 Baseball Abstract, Bill James listed a number of lessons had had learned so far through his study of baseball statistics. In that vein, I’ll list some observations that I’ve learned over the years:

  The Federal Reserve isn’t nearly as powerful as is commonly believed.

  There isn’t a person or group of people in charge of the market.

  There’s no such thing as a “healthy correction.”

  Good stocks can go down for no reason.

  Bad stocks can go up for no reason.

  A trend can last much longer than you thought possible.

  Stocks don’t know you own them.

  The market doesn’t care about politics.

  The most important variable to the stock market, by far, is the direction of long-term interest rates.

  Mega-mergers rarely work.

  Investment bubbles aren’t due to the moral failings of the market participants.

  Ignore anyone who tells you that the Federal Reserve is a private bank.

  Commodities are almost always terrible investments.

  The stock market hates inflation. The only thing it hates more is deflation.

  The best environment for stocks is a low stable inflation rate.

  As an investment tool, P/E Ratios work much better for individual stocks than for the market as a whole.

  The best three fundamental metrics are (in order) ROE, Debt Ratios and Cash Flow.

  Wherever possible, seek out stocks with expanding margins.

  Dividends are underrated by investors, especially companies that consistently raise them.

  Portfolio diversity is overrated.

  As a general rule, IPOs are a bad deal.

  Boring but profitable always beats exciting and unprofitable.

  CAPM and MPT are nonsense.

  No one can consistently time the market. No one.

  The Equity Risk Premium (over long-term debt) is probably much smaller than commonly believed.

  The data showing a return premium for small-cap stocks is probably wrong.

  The media never questions the bond market. Only stock investors are “greedy.”

  Perma-bears are never held to account for being wrong so if you want to sound smart, be very bearish and very vague.

  The market really does “climb a wall of worry.”

  Follow unfollowed stocks.

  The market is self-aware. Scary but true.

  It’s far easier to rationalize selling than buying.

  The market isn’t efficient—it can be beaten.

  But it’s very, very, very, very hard.

  Most technical analysis is complete garbage.

  A high P/E Ratio is much better sign of a stock to sell than a low P/E Ratio is a sign to buy.

  It’s pointless to measure the stock market relative to gold or in euros or pork bellies or whatever else people can come up with.

  Ignore any chart that has seemingly similar lines trying to show how this market is “just like’ the one in 1831.

  Except at very low levels, volatility is neutral.

  Many gold bugs are quite simply fanatics.

  Whatever the issue, your typical finance professor will blame the investing public and urge more self-denial as the solution. Bank on it.

  Never base an investment decision of demographics.

  The worst investor in the world is the guy holding on to a small loss waiting for the rally because “they don’t want to take the loss.” Again, the stock doesn’t know you own it.

  Very, very few serious companies are traded on the pink sheets.

  Never stress out about what a stock does after you sell it.

• Twittering Away
  Eddy Elfenbein, April 13th, 2010 at 1:15 pm

  By way, you can follow me on twitter at http://twitter.com/EddyElfenbein.

• Intel’s Earnings
  Eddy Elfenbein, April 13th, 2010 at 1:06 pm

  Intel (INTC) is due to report its earning after the close. A nature show could do entire episode on song-and-ritual between a powerful company and Wall Street analysts.
  The current consensus is for Intel to earn 38 cents a share. This is a huge disfavor for individual investors because no one in the world expects Intel to earn 38 cents a share. If they did, the Street would freak.
  Oh…watch the mighty red-bellied rough-winged swallow do its mighty beat-and-raise dance!!
  My guess, and it’s just a guess, is that Intel will earn between 45 and 50 cents a share. Last earnings season, Intel report earnings of 40 cents a share, ten cents more than estimates. Even that didn’t impress the Street. The stock initially bounced but eventually gave it back and more.
  With the last earnings report, Intel gave Q1 revenue guidance of $9.7 billion, plus or minus $400 million. That sounds fair. The real news will be what kind of guidance the company gives for the rest of the year.
  I think they’re playing for the beat-and-guide-higher crowd. Count me a member.