January 16, 2008 – stlplace

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Last Updated on January 16, 2008 by stlplace

By Crocslized I meant the penetration rate of Crocs shoes. From today’s Crocs presentation at ICR XChange, Australia claimed the No. 1 spot in term of dollar spent on Crocs per capita (a.k.a., per person). Canada is second. US is not too far behind. China is also shown in the figure. So, take Australia as an example, on average each person spent $1.40 on Crocs in 2007. A big increase from $0.30 of 2006.

The CEO Ron Snyder is saying Germany, French, Japan and China are increasing doors (retail outlets) rapidly. With the slowdown of US economy and consumer spending, obviously international market is becoming key to Crocs sales in the near term. This is echoed by the new assignment for CFO Peter Case. Peter is going to be SVP for Retail Operations.

Expect seeing more Crocs in China this summer 🙂

Lessons from Longtop

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Last Updated on January 21, 2008 by stlplace

Well, Longtop did not turn out to be long top, it was a short top if you will. I sold most of the shares today (still 50 shares pending in Scottrade).

The problem with Longtop (LFT) is not fundamental, it’s rather valuation. In current market, I think an unproven Chinese financial software (IT service) company like Longtop can not sustain its bubble price at IPO.

Some lessons:

1) Be careful of IPO (maybe I got MR at pure luck, but I did not get it in the first day). Also be careful of all underwriters: from JP Morgan (NINE), WR Hambrecht (XFML, GSIT), and Goldman Sachs (LFT)…NINE and XFML are in my Hall of Shame list, will LFT join them too?

2) Again valuation. A good company does mean good stock. Look at Baidu during 2004 IPO to 2006.

3) Don’t averege down if I haven’t made any money from a stock, e.g., SBUX, LFT,…I think CROX is different because I made money on this one, and has some knowledge on it. In other words, if average down too many times, something must be wrong here.