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RadioShack’s Slide Continues; Cash Flow is Terrible

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Electronics retailer RadioShack (click ticker for report: ) reported a terrible fourth quarter Tuesday morning. Sales fell 7% year-over-year to $1.3 billion, below already tempered consensus estimates. Earnings per share were a disaster, falling from $0.12 in the fourth quarter of 2011 to a loss of $0.63 in the fourth quarter of 2012—though this number was negatively impacted by a $67 million non-cash charge. We’re steering clear of shares in the portfolio of our Best Ideas Newsletter. Consistent with what we’ve seen all year, the company’s core business continues to deteriorate, with same-store sales dropping 7% during the fourth quarter. The firm also announced earlier in the year that its mobile-store relationship with Target (click ticker for report: ) has … Read more

Best Ideas Portfolio Holding eBay Flashed a VBI of 10 and Has Never Looked Back

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Valuentum members have been blessed by the good fortunes of eBay (click ticker for report: ). The firm has been one of the best performers in the entire market after it registered the very top rating of 10 on the Valuentum Buying Index (VBI) in September 2011. Very few firms ever score a 10 on the VBI, so when a company does, members take close note. Google (click ticker for report: ) was the most recent firm to do so, and it has since rocketed to new all-time highs. In most cases, we tend to add firms to our Best Ideas portfolio when they register a 9 or 10 and remove them when they register a 1 or 2 on … Read more

Marissa Mayer’s Yahoo! Revitalization Continues

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Monday afternoon, former tech darling Yahoo! (click ticker for report: ) reported solid fourth-quarter results. Revenue jumped 2% year-over-year to $1.35 billion, and revenue ex-TAC (traffic acquisition costs) came in at $1.2 billion, a 4% year-over-year increase that was in line with consensus expectations. Operating earnings per share jumped 28% year-over-year to $0.32, easily exceeding consensus estimates. As wonderful as it is to see revenue grow, the real story at Yahoo! remains the turnaround that CEO Marissa Mayer has embarked upon. Given the incredibly competitive market for talent in the tech industry, Mayer has worked to transform the company into one of Silicon Valley’s best places to work. She noted in the conference call: To date, we introduced rigorous hiring … Read more

Best Ideas Newsletter Portfolio Holding Google Rebounds with a Strong Fourth Quarter

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Search giant and Best Ideas Newsletter portfolio holding Google (click ticker for report: ) reported better than expected fourth quarter results Tuesday afternoon. Revenue, excluding traffic acquisition costs (TAC), grew 39% year-over-year to $11.3 billion, a tad short of expectations. Earnings, adjusted for extraordinary items, were up 12% year-over-year to $10.65 per share, exceeding consensus estimates. We still like the company’s current valuation. Google’s core business continued its strong performance during the fourth quarter. Total revenue at the core business soared 22% year-over-year to $12.9 billion. Google-owned sites and Google network sites experienced strong growth of 18% and 19%, respectively. Traffic acquisition costs grew a little faster than revenue, up 25% year-over-year, a trend we will continue to monitor closely, … Read more

So…It’s Not a Smartphone: Our Thoughts on Facebook’s New Graph Search

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Rumors have swirled since Facebook (click ticker for report: ) announced an event to reveal “something it was building” that took place earlier today. We’ve heard everything: Facebook is buying RIM, the company is building its own smartphone, or maybe Zuckerberg was ready for his Steve Jobs moment, where he’d show the world something we didn’t even know could exist. At the end of the day, it was an evolution of the existing timeline feature and a direct attack at Google (click ticker for report: ), Yelp (YELP), and even Twitter. This innovation is the Graph Search. When we profiled Facebook after its IPO, we suggested that one of the company’s greatest paths to profitability was search, and we continue … Read more

Dear Valuentum Member

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In such a short time that you’ve known us, you have seen us do so much: from generating more than 25 percentage points of outperformance in our Best Ideas portfolio since inception (May 2011) to delivering on our high-single-digit return goal of our Dividend Growth portfolio during 2012 to the Valuentum Dividend Cushion score predicting the dividend cuts of JC Penney (JCP), SuperValu (SVU), Roundy’s (RNDY), and others. You’ve seen us identify a triple in EDAC Tech (EDAC) and predict the bankruptcy of the parent of American Airlines (AMR). These are tremendous accomplishments. There’s an old saying in the market that if your winners are outperforming your losers, you’re doing a great job. Through November of last year, 87% of … Read more

The Valuentum Ideas100; A Compilation of the Highest-Quality Firms on the Market Today!

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Financial advisors and investors literally have thousands of stocks—large and small, domestic and foreign–to choose from. So what are they to do, and where can they go to find the most trusted opinions on the highest-quality companies on the market today?   That’s the question we seek to answer with our Valuentum Ideas100 publication. In this document, we showcase the highest-quality firms from each sector (100 in total) on the basis of our assessment of their competitive advantages (ROIC less WACC spread) and risk profiles (our ValueRisk™ rating). We believe the strength and sustainability of a firm’s return on invested capital (ROIC) is the best quantitative way to assess a company’s competitive advantages, and we believe a deep dive into … Read more

Apple’s Market Share Is Great; Its Profits and Cash Flow Are Even Better

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Adding to the wall of worries that has crushed the share price of Apple (click ticker for report: ) during the past several months are fears that the firm doesn’t have incredible market share outside of the US. Recent estimates peg Apple’s US market share at 53.3%, up tremendously from its 35.8% market share registered a year ago. Such a figure reveals that more than half of all smartphone sales are coming from Apple, even though its phones tend to cost more than those of its competitors—even for an out-of-date model like the 4S. No one seems to be denying the firm’s top-notch execution and performance in the US. Android (click ticker for report: ), on the other hand, has … Read more