stlplaceTo summerize,
| 17-Jan-07 | CIBC Wrld Mkts | Initiated | Sector Perform | |
| 17-Jan-07 | JP Morgan | Initiated | Overweight | |
| 17-Jan-07 | Bear Stearns | Initiated | Outperform | |
| 17-Jan-07 | Wachovia | Initiated | Mkt Perform |
The full story is here. I would not take their ratings too seriously (I would like to read their analysis instead). The 60% sales increase in California (No. 6 economy in the world if considered as a country) in 2006 is a good sign. Is California a mature market as the analyst suggested? I don’t know.
I summerized its year 2005 and 2006 (low end) number here. I noted that the revenue year over year growth slowed a bit (consider first 9 months growth about 41%). This can be attribute to the continuing “anti-corruption” campaign in China hospitals.
2005 2006 YoY
Rev (CNY) 1,078,573,000 1,470,000,000 36.29%
Income 205,089,000 360,000,000 75.53%
Earning (CNY) 2.40 3.73 55.42%
You can read the news here.
I don’t know why the stock went down this morning after a good earning report. Anyway guessing stock price’s daily fluctuation is not my job. I did listen to the conference call (script by seekingalpha) and it seems to me Michael and Louis did well, although Michael’s English is not perfect. Some of the growth driver:
1) Elite English, I believe this is more like “business English”, I know in Shanghai there are “WallStreet English”, “Webber English”, etc. Don’t know how New Oriental will do in this new space. But profit margin in this area is better because those customers are not price sensitive.
2) Oversea English Test preparation: I believe things have not slow down because nowadays more and more Chinese high school graduates go overseas for undergraduate education.
They also talked a bit on goverment regulation on “private education sector” and coming lock up expired period.
This is what I got from Ameren UE web site. Note the number 1299 only reflects the outage of my neighborhood. From what I heard from radio Ameren tries to restore majority of customers by this evening.
Current Outage
Outage start date/time: Saturday Jan 13, 2007 7:01 AM
Outage status: Order assigned to servicemen or crew
Cause of outage: Tree contact
Estimated restoration time: Tuesday Jan 16, 2007 3:15 PM
Number of customers out: 1299
All right, New Oriental announced the fiscal 2007 Q2 report today. Here is the report. It seems they are doing well. Some highlights include 33% YoY reveneue growth (beat est. 20%). “The growth was mainly driven by the increase in the number of student enrollments in language training and test preparation courses.”
I imagine people just can not get enough English classes (spoken English, business English, kids English), and all kind of testings (IT, law, graduate school admission, in addition to traditional TOEFL/GRE/ACT/SAT).
I got this one from Paypal, it’s faked but it looks very much like real. I mean the words (as you can see below), graphics and return address etc. Obviously the phishers are gettting smarter. So we need to get smarter too. I would not click on a link in an email unless I know it’s safe. I will open a new window and type the web address myself.
==========================
Your account has been flagged!
PayPal Security Measures.
Dear PayPal Member,
Your account has been randomly flagged in our system as a part of our routine security measures. This is a must to ensure that only you have access and use of your Paypal account and to ensure a safe PayPal experience. We require all flagged accounts to verify their information on file with us. To verify your information at this time, please visit our secure server webform by clicking the hyperlink below:
It seems like it. I noticed the Crocs Kiosk (pavilion) in the malls before Xmas. Now it looks they are going to open stores. The following is what I saw from Chesterfield Mall today.
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Update (19Jan07) I went to the mall again tonight, and found out they changed the display of the “store”. Obviously they are not going to open a Crocs store. This is just a place for display. Sorry for “pull the trigger too early”.
Because of the weather. Just when I felt I was lucky last night (this morning) my condo did not lose power this time, oops, the storm hit us. So next time I should not feel too good about it. Some of the Panera Bread stores also lost power, e.g., the one at Old Olive (where I usually go) and the New Ballas store, finally I set down at the Olive and Woodsmill store. You can imagine this is a very crowd place. Because I am not the only unlucky person.
Interestingly, at Panera I noticed there are three young kids wearing Crocs. I remember the article at fool.com in which the author tried to count the Crocs and Heelys at Disney World in Orlando: an informal way to gauge the popularity of those products.
While power outage bring inconveniene to ordinary people, how will it affect the business? Obviously not good for retailers, restaurants and hotels, because they lose business on this. Some grocery store has backup generator (Schnucks) but they can not generate enough power for the freezers. I can only think of one business currently benefit from this: the tree and limb services companies. They are probablly the busiest people besisdes Ameren UE people.
Are on sale, online or in the store. I bought one pair last weekend at Nordstrom West County store. Drive carefully if you go there today amid all the freezing rains.
Note the MSRP of Lucky Brand is usually more than $100, now you can get it about 50% off. I know it’s a bit expensive, but hey I would rather “being lucky” than “being good” 🙂
I noticed this a short while ago. Basically, if there is a valid US address in the Yahoo Mail, it will be shown underlined (dotted line). And if you move cursor to it, it will be highlighted. Then if you click on it, it will pop up the menu asking you if you want to see the Yahoo Map of that address. From there you can get the driving direction and alll the good stuff. Suddenly, Yahoo is cooler than Google 🙂