Sohu.com, Inc. (SOHU) $53.88 The Company: Founded in 1996, by Dr. Charles Zhang, Sohu.com is a Chinese online media, search, gaming, community and mobile service group. After completing his Ph.D at MIT, Dr. Zhang joined Internet Securities (ISI) before relocating to China and starting Sohu.com. The company primarily operates in the search engine, online gaming, entertainment and information spaces. Sohu’s group of Chinese language web properties consists of: Mass portal ...
Focus Articles
Focus Article: Corning, Inc. (GLW)
Corning, Inc. (GLW) $13.29 Picking a company for this week’s focus article was challenging because there were two interesting companies with insider purchases that looked attractive. Both companies are trading just below book value, both have strong balance sheets and unfortunately both are experiencing a decline in their core businesses. The two companies I considered were newspaper company A. H. Belo (AHC) and Corning (GLW). A. H. Belo has an ...
Focus Article: Cablevision Systems (CVC)
Cablevision Systems (CVC) $14.76 The Company: Founded in 1973 by Charles “Chuck” Dolan, Cablevision Systems Corporation is a telecommunications and media company with a wide range of operations including advanced digital television, voice and high-speed Internet services, local media and programming properties, and movie theaters. Mr. Dolan was also the founder of HBO and a company called Sterling Manhattan that had wired most of Manhattan for cable TV back in ...
Focus Article: Gilead Sciences (GILD)
Gilead Sciences (GILD) $45.19 The Company: Founded in 1987 in Foster City, California, Gilead Sciences is a research-based biotech company that focuses on HIV/AIDS, liver disease and cardiovascular/metabolic and respiratory conditions. While the company has products to treat cardiovascular and respiratory diseases, it derives a bulk of its revenue and profits from antiviral drugs used to treat HIV and Hepatitis B. Gilead has two billion dollar antiviral drugs called Altripla ...
Focus Article: Genworth Financial (GNW)
Genworth Financial (GNW) $9.22 The Company: Established in 1871, Genworth Financial is a Fortune 500 insurance holding company that was spun off from General Electric (GE) in 2004. The company is diversified geographically across 25 countries like Australia, Canada, Ireland, India, etc. as well as various lines of business such as life insurance, long-term care reinsurance, reinsurance, annuities, wealth management and the red-headed stepchild mortgage insurance. Mortgage insurance is often ...
Focus Article: ShoreTel (SHOR)
ShoreTel (SHOR) $5.74 The Company: Businesses often use phone systems called Private Branch Exchange (PBX) systems to facilitate call handling and use a certain number of phone lines across a large number of extensions in an office. For example a business may choose to get 10 lines and use them across 20 extensions. With reliable and cheap broadband access, businesses started switching from traditional PBX systems to IP-based PBX systems ...
Focus Article: Hess Corporation
Hess Corporation (HES) $60.38 The Company: Hess Corporation, an energy exploration, production and refining company, was established in 1933 by Leon Hess and is currently run by his son John Hess, who serves as the Chairman and CEO of the company. The company operates in two segments: exploration & production and marketing & refining. Hess Energy Marketing provides electricity, natural gas and fuel oil to about 21,000 commercial and ...
Focus Article: United Therapeutics Corporation (UTHR)
United Therapeutics (UTHR) $43.24 Over the course of the last decade, I have sifted through hundreds of companies looking at their business models, poring over their financial statements, reading their annual reports and evaluating their potential as an investment. In all this time, there has not been a single company that has turned out to be unique on so many fronts as United Therapeutics. As a general rule of thumb ...
Hedging Against A Sharp Decline Using Put Backspreads
I received an email from a subscriber a couple of weeks ago with a link to my September 2007 newsletter titled “Hedging Your bets”. His email indicated that it might be time for a part deux. He is seeing a number of warning signs that I am as well. The big rush in IPO filings, the insider sell/buy ratio rocketing eight weeks ago to 186.8 right before the recent decline ...
Special Report – Coca-Cola Enterprises (CCE)
They say the market does not offer any free lunches and for the most part this is true. However market inefficiencies are more common than the academics care to admit and while this Special Report update is not about a free lunch, I hope to show that there is at least a free bottle of Coke to be had in the acquisition of the North American operations of bottling company ...