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Fun

It’s baseball time

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Forget about the stupid IPOs, stocks, economy,…it’s baseball time in this baseball town.

St. Louis Cardinals is playing NLDS (National League Division Series) against LA Dodgers. Here is the local (St. Louis area) TV schedule.

Gm 1 STL @ LAD Wed 10/7 9:37 TBS Chris Carpenter v Randy Wolf
Gm 2 STL @ LAD Thu 10/8 6:07 TBS Adam Wainwright v Clayton Kershaw
Gm 3 LAD @ STL Sat 10/10 6:07 TBS Vicente Padilla v Joel Piniero
Gm 4 LAD @ STL Sun 10/11 TBD TBS TBD
Gm 5 STL @ LAD Tue 10/13 TBD TBS TBD

(Source: http://www.midwestsportsfans.com/2009/10/cardinals-dodgers-nlds-preview-pitching-matchups-tv-schedule/ )

Categories
IPO

Vitacost: another recent IPO

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(11Nov09) The company announced Q3 09 results. Note the company had higher than expected expense on stock based executive compensation (related to IPO). Basically the company let the executive stock options vested upon IPO.

(Update Oct 08, 2009) I sold it this afternoon (ET) at $10, and got the new IPO Mistras (NYSE:MG). Like I did many times in the past, VITC went up after I sold it, and MG went down after I bought it 🙁 Did I sell it too fast? Maybe. But I felt Mistras has more potential.

(Original) Vitamin, anyone?

Prospectus (424B4 here)

My comment
One interesting point is as the US population aging, consumption of vitamin, other dietary supplements, sports supplements and fitness club memberships are all rising. This buckled the trend in recession. Convenstional wisdom is as we entering recession, people watch their discretionay spending more carefully, which is not good for those business I just mentioned. But we need to notice on the other side of equation, as people felt the economic and psychological effects of recession, they pay more attention to their health: both physical and psychological, hence comes the spending on those things. In this Vitamin and diatary supplements business, obviously Vitacost is a low cost provider which match the cost concious consumers’ need.

Other people’s homework (analysis)

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IPO

Echo Global Logistics

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(Update 2) Some employee reviews at jobvent.

(Update) Market cap calculation: the company issued 5.7 m * $14 = $79.8 m. According to 424B4: (principle and selling shareholders), 1,714,710 shares is about 8.0 % (last row). 5.7 /1.715 * 8% = 3.3241 * 8% = 26.59%. So the market cap is about:
$79.8 m / 26.59% = $300 m

Company has revenue of $203 m in 2008.

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IPO

Education Management Corporation EDMC IPO today

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(Update 2) It appears EDMC IPO had warm reception. After all, it’s backed by Goldman (both as investor and IPO underwriter). Also from Reuters.

(Update) BTW, I found Echo Global Logistics IPO to be much more interesting, will write it up soon.

(Original) Priced at $18 a piece (Reuters), quote:

EDMC (web site), a provider of post-secondary education, said on Thursday that shares in its initial public offering priced for $18 each, at the bottom of the range.

The private equity backed company sold 20 million shares and said it expects net proceeds of $334.8 million. (My comment: 20 m shares is about 17% of the company, this priced EDMC roughly at $2 b).

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Categories
Fun Video

Parade

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From YouTube.

Pretty nice, huh?

Categories
Stocks

China BAK Battery: another speculative play

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(Update Oct-01-2009) Sold all CBAK shares today. I don’t want to hold it in this market. Took a small profit (about 3.5%).

(Original) Some background
As of Sept 28, the big brother BYD market cap HKD 140.9 b = USD 18.18 b; annual revenue RMB 26.788 b (Google finance HK: 1211)

the little brother China BAK Battery (Nasdaq:CBAK) has market cap of USD 242.3 m; annual revenue USD 245.35. More information on CBAK can also be seen at Yahoo Finance.

Note: BYD makes car and fabricate cell phones in addition to its battery busniess. So this is not compare apple to apple exactly. I believe BYD is better positioned and has first mover advantage. But stock-wise CBAK could be a better value.

China BAK battery pic

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Business

Xerox: invented mouse and GUI, but jumping into BPO

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Today Xerox announced a $6.4 billion deal to buy BPO (short for busines process outsourcing, basically IT service) company Affiliate Computer Services (NYSE:ACS), refer to this MarketWatch article for more details.

Both companies are not new to me, because I know Xerox (Palo Alto Research Center, Wiki entry, PARC own web site) invented the computer mouse and graphical user interface (GUI) before Microsoft/PC makers, and Apple populized it. But Xerox did not make any money from those two products. They continue to make Xerox machines, and adding some features to those machines.

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Categories
Stocks

THQ Inc. my speculative game play

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Disclosure: I am not a gamer, my favorite computer game was played on Windows 3.1 in 1994/5. Don’t know the English name, we called it Pirates Ship, basically three guys (one has a shield, one has a knife, and another one can jump) have to work together to overcome the adversaries and achieve the final goal (get out of the prison something). With baby on the way, and the popularity of online games, I envision I may play online games with my kid some day (if you can not beat them, join them 🙂

Disclosure 2: previously I traded Chinese game stocks in 2006, I lost money in all cases (Shanda SNDA, the9 NCTY, Netease NETS). Currently I have some THQI shares. Keep that in mind when reading the following.

company of heros pic best game wallpapers
(source: bestgamewallpapers)

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Categories
IPO

Short First Solar FSLR?

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Barrons has an article on solar plays, specifically it mentioned First Solar recent China project may not hold water. Interesting observation. I don’t know all the facts, but being curious, I listed some stuff here.

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IPO

Stock lessons 2009: buy high, sell low

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That’s exactly how I did with Shanda Games (Nasdaq:GAME) IPO today. Shanda is not new to me. I lost money on this one three years ago (see my old stock lesson here). I am not bitter about losing money either. Because after about 5 (6) years in US stock market, especially the roller coaster ride in the past year, I started trying to get emotion of making/losing money out of the stock game, I am not perfect yet but making progress.

One lesson I should learn is trust my own gut. The spin off of Shanda Games seems odd to me, because from business point of view, typically companies spin off non-core business, like Sohu/Changyou (Nasdaq:CYOU), EMC/VMWare (NYSE:VMW). The Shanda spin off looks like a secondary offering of Shanda Entertainment itself, because Online Game is its core business. Although Shanda (Nasdaq:SNDA) had committed itself to other ventures, including at one point use a sloan like “become China’s own Disney”. It has not make real inroad in other online business yet. Except made some money buying and selling Sina stocks couple years ago.

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