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Stocks

FFO, LaSalle Hotel Properties LHO

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(Aug. 06, 2009) Strategic Hotels misses estimates, sees local revenue fall, quote:

A closely watched measure of REIT financial performance, FFO is net income excluding gains or losses from property sales, plus depreciation and amortization.

(May 1, 2004) Table Is Set for New Round of Hotel IPOs, quote:

Historically, stocks in the sector traded at price/FFO multiples between 4 and 11, with the average being 7, says David Bulger, CFO of Innkeepers USA Trust. Now, many stocks are trading at 12 times FFO.

LaSalle Hotel Properties (NYSE:LHO) audio archives (webcast at its investor relations page)

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Categories
Technology

nook vs. Kindle

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From Fox Business News (via Youtube). The journalist also talked about Google and Android OS used in nook.

Categories
Stocks

John Mack on CNBC

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He talked about job market, compensation, and the events around crisis a year ago.

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Master Series

Peter Peterson on Blackstone, China, deficit and healthcare etc.

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Mr. Peterson has background both in government and private sector: he has been commerce secretary and is co-founder and senior chairman of Blackstone (the private equity group). Very wise guy in my mind.

Charlie Rose interview July 3, 2009 (link)

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Categories
IPO

Stock lessons: IPOs

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First let’s mark Oct 14 2009: Dow 10,000 2.0 (Yahoo Tech-ticker video below)


(did you notice the Yahoo ~~~ in the end, Yahoo became more goofy under Carol)

My topic today is IPO. I have not got much luck from IPO investing (to be more precise, speculating). My lessons are the following:

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Categories
Stocks

Blockbuster dying

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(Update 13Nov09) BBI released not so good earning report (Reuters). One interesting point is they are going to spend $10,000 to $20,000 to renovate the stores (about 1,700).

(Original) Note I am saying “dying”, not “death”. This also does not demonstrate all the hard work of men and women at Blockbuster, from corporate to stores, note I am merely talking about the trend of a business. Full disclosure: I do have a small long position on Blockbuster common stock (NYSE:BBI).

Two points:

First, stock and company are two things, Blockbuster dying does not equal to Blockbuster stock BBI goes to zero immediately. Example: The Motors Liquidation Company (formerly General Motors, MTLQQ.PK). Last I checked, their worthless stock is still trading at 65 cents.

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Categories
Stocks

Is this sucker’s rally ?

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From Yahoo Tech-ticker. I don’t necessarily agree his view (but it’s always good to listen to both sides of the arguments).

Categories
401k and Personal Finance

Portfolio management lessons: ESPP

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Two things I wanted to talk about ESPP: personal bias and taxation.

I remember I grew tired of my undergraduate college at the fourth year, due to various reasons. But after leaving my college for so many years, now I think that’s one of the best places I have been. Personal congnition bias also plays with work. There are always misgivings in the work place, this got intensified with the recession. Recent Economist has an article on this “unhappy work place” topic. But if we take a deeper breath, I think many work places are not as bad as we perceive. In fact, some maybe fabulous business if some reform initiatives being applied.

On the other side of the equation, we all know what happened to Enron and WorldCOM employees and retirees when they put signigicant amount of personal wealth on company stocks. They believed in the pep talk of their CEOs.

Taxation is a complicated matter. Some explaination from Yahoo (Turbo Tax).

Appendix: my ESPP history

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Categories
IPO

Mistras IPO looks interesting

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(Update 22Oct09) SEC filing 424B4.

(Original) I talked about Mistras (NYSE:MG) IPO briefly the other day. Today I read this “MatlinPatterson Global Sells $3M Worth of Huntsman“. And in this news I saw some insiders of Mistras bought some shares in IPO:

Mistras Group (MG) Stamatakis Manuel N DIR 6,000 $75,000
Mistras Group (MG) Peterik Paul CFO 2,000 $25,000

They paid about $12.50 per share (IPO price). Very interesting. For most IPO shares “It’s Probably Overpriced”. But this one seems quite reasonable. After IPO, its market cap is about $300 m, with revenue of about $200 m. The income and earning per share number is eschewed because the company paid quite some preferred share dividend recently. I need to read whether those preferred shares will be converted.

Risks

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Categories
Investing

Check into Strategic Hotels and Resorts

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(Update 21Oct09) Baird analyst downgraded BEE. The stock dropped quite a bit. Also, I found the web site of Vector Group Ltd here. Vector Group bought a 7.1% stake in BEE on July 8 (SEC filing here). Note the owners of BEE includes Bill Gates (via. his Cascade Investment). A Hotel REIT list.

(Original) Ticker symbol (NYSE:BEE), other hotel REITs for comparison: DRH, LHO.

Company web site. Note Bill Gates private investment fund bought a 5.6% stake on Oct. 2008 (Reuters; Seekingalpha).

National Real Estate Investor/Matt Valley: No Respite for Hoteliers
The epic downturn in hotel fundamentals is forecast to slow, but not before inflicting widespread pain.

CEO Lawrence Geller blog ( a bit old)

Other recent developments

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