Not bad – strong profit growth of 40% versus last year, with Trade Me and Digital leading the way. Trade Me showed $32m in EBIT, which is for the 6 month period to December 2007. That, apparently, puts them at tracking to hit the $60m required to complete the $50m earn out to March 2008. …
Category Archives: Investing
The Joneses listing is cancelled
Bugger. That was an obvious short on the housing market, in spite of a very interesting game changing revenue model.
Big Deals: Summary
The Yahoo and Rio Tinto deals have one thing in common, besides being abnormally large. They are both being initiated by new CEO’s where the predecessor has just departed. This makes it seem that they are trying to stamp their own mark on their companies, and that is perhaps true. It is probably likely that …
Big Deals: Microsoft and Yahoo
OK – so I’m almost always picking the bearish side for investments, but this one seems pretty clear. It’s a case of a lousy company buying a lousy company. First let me explain what the implicatons of that are, and secondly lets breifly look at why Microsoft and Yahoo will be a hard combination to …
Rio Branding
Amusingly Rio Tinto’s “internal” branding website is open for all and sundry. I wonder whether this is a symptom of a poor intranet at Rio?
Big Deals: BHPB and Rio Tinto
BHP Billiton is a great company, and yes, I am consulting to one of their plants at the moment. Despite their size, they are able to run over 100 businesses in 25 countries (be they mines, smelters, refineries or new projects). And they run them well. Check out their latest production report, and note how …
eBay makes fundamental changes – enough?
Massive changes today announced for eBay’s economic model, in response, I take, to the increasing power of Amazon and Google. Listing fees down 25 to 50%, especially for bigger sellers Gallery is free final value fees (commissions) are up – 8.25% under $25, which is up from 5.25% and huge. Most sales are in this …
eur 50 billion? Off with their heads
If you are the boss of a financial institution that holds a position of 50 billion euros from a ‘rogue trader’, then you do not deserve to be there. Neither do the senior and relevant junior people responsible for risk management and auditing and the line staff above said trader. Neither does the board of …
Infratil, Bogoievski and real estate
Interesting. Lloyd Morrison gets a COO for Infratil, and Bogoievski gets to stay in Wellington, stay in a job where political influence is important and work for a growing company that shares the spoils. Meanwhile Infratil have landed the ex-NZ boss of Lang LaSalle to boss Infratil Property. It looks like Infratil will try their …
Automattic gets some more cash
Automattic, creators of WordPress, raised $29.5m on the 22nd of Jan. The cool thing is that alongside 3 very lucky VC firms is venerable NYTimes, who use WordPress as their blogging platform. Amazingly enough WordPress managed with just $1.1m of raised capital so far – not bad for a company that served 3.2 billion pages …
Opportunity Acquisition Corp – investing with no information
Want to invest in a buy-out company? How about if you don’t know what industry they are going to be looking for acquisitions in? Your chance is now. Opportunity Acquisition Corp is filing an IPO for US$150m, plus warrants potentially for another $112.5m. It’s owned by an outfit called JMP now, and they’ll keep 20% …
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$15 billion upside on housing
There is a guy on Wall street, John ‘JP’ Paulson, that made big bets against the housing market by taking the other side of those dodgy mortgage backed securities – the ones that crashed to worthless recently. (Basically he bought default insurance really cheaply) His relatively small funds were up $15 billion n 2007, and …
What’s in store for Lance in 2008? A manifesto
No new years predictions from me, as I can barely predict what I’ll be doing in a few months time, let alone markets and industries.This year though I am trying to spend more time starting and nurturing businesses, while continuing to consult, in both NZ and Australia. For now I’m still helping out at BHP …
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Feeding the Apple swag addiction
The master speaks, and Lance reaches for his wallet to feed his insatiable addiction for all things Apple. At least it is a better addiction than Methadone/P/ice or other ilicit drugs. Probably just as expensive though. MacBook air: ordered, but not with the tiny solid state drive which costs AU$1400 more. I’ll use this in …
As the housing bubble bursts in Florida
NYTimes has some food for thought from the post bubble impact in Florida. ‘They’ said it wouldn’t hapen there, or in DC, Sydney, or Auckland. ‘They’ say now it won’t happen in Wellington, in Perth or in Nelson. It well – economics always wins in the long run. If you have any, please do consider …
Lance Wiggs 