by Jason Wilk on July 13, 2009
- Facebook investors and employees (not executives however), are finally getting a chance to sell some of their stock. Digital Sky Technologies, the Russian investment firm that in May invested $200 million in Facebook, has made an offer to purchase up to $100 million of Facebook common stock from existing stock and option holders. This would be about $14.77 a share, valuing Facebook at about $6.5 billion; less than the $10 billion valuation of its previous investment (althogh for preferred shares).
“While individuals must make their own decisions about participating in this program, I’m pleased that the price D.S.T. is offering is much greater than the price originally considered last fall,” said Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s chief executive, in a statement. “This is recognition of Facebook’s growth and progress towards making the world more open and connected.”
- Employees and outside investors are relieved to liquidate some of their holdings. Facebook previously tried a stock buyback program, but it failed several times due to a lack of agreement on an internal valuation. Zuckerberg said this current offering has no effect on the company’s timeline to go public
![[Post to Twitter]](http://tinycomb.com/wp-content/plugins/tweet-this/icons/tt-twitter-big4.png)
by Jason Wilk on April 3, 2009
- Apple is off to a great first start of the year, sitting atop the 4 most prominent tech stocks. From Jan. 2 when it opened at $85.88 to its $112.71, Apple has gained 31.24%, beating the DJIA that’s dead in the water at -9%. Apple’s enterprise value today is $71 billion and $28.8 billion of that is in cash and negotiable securities. Image: Apple 2.0
by Jason Wilk on January 21, 2009
As Apple (AAPL) rares up for it’s Wednesday Q4 earnings report, many investors are weary. In the past few weeks, the economy has stayed sluggish, Steve Jobss has left on medical leave and the usually exciting product debuts at MacWorld from Apple showed little to get excited about.What to look at against Wall Street expectations.
- Expect 20 million+ iPods shipped during the December quarter for the holiday season, beating the 18.6 million expectation.
- Expect a standard 2.5-2.6 million Macs shipped or even with the Street’s 2.5 million expectation.
- Wall Street is expecting 5 million iPhones to have shipped. Keep in mind September numbers showed Apple shipped 6.9 million phones, and that wasn’t even the holidays.
- Wall Street expects $9.7 billion in revenue and $1.32 in EPS. I couldn’t find an Apple store that wasn’t overcrowded this holiday season. People are excited about the iPhone, the new Mac computers are light years ahead of the competition and margins are consistently solid through the whole family of products. The 6 month old iTunes App store on the iPhone has already surpassed 500 million downloads, on its way to being the billion dollar marketplace it was projected to be when it debuted this summer. I expect Apple to be north of $10 billion in revenue this quarter, adding to that $20 billion in cash flow the company is sitting on. Why so bullish? Investors looking to the wrong reasons why Apple will slow down. Things like the popularity of netbooks this winter compared to the pricing of Mac, as well as lack of attention to the app store’s success will offset earnings predictions.
Official Numbers Are In: The Company posted record revenue of $10.17 billion and record net quarterly profit of $1.61 billion, or $1.78 per diluted share. Apple sold 2,524,000 Macintosh® computers during the quarter, representing nine percent unit growth over the year-ago quarter. The Company sold a record 22,727,000 iPods during the quarter, representing three percent unit growth over the year-ago quarter. Quarterly iPhone units sold were 4,363,000 representing 88 percent unit growth over the year-ago quarter.
by Jason Wilk on January 16, 2009
- Breakdown of Yahoo’s new CEO compensation. A little ridiculous considering her experience running a search/advertising company (which is none)
1. Compensation. Your starting annual base salary will be at the rate of one million dollars ($1,000,000) per annum, less applicable taxes and withholdings, paid in accordance with the Company’s normal payroll practices and subject to annual review for increase (“Base Salary”). You will also be eligible to receive an annual target bonus of two hundred percent (200%) of your annual Base Salary (“Target Bonus”) to be determined by the Compensation Committee of the Board (the “Compensation Committee”) in its discretion based on your performance and the Company’s performance for the relevant year. The bonus program will have a maximum bonus of two (2) times the annual Target Bonus.
2. Inducement Stock Option Grant. As a part of the Company team, we strongly believe that ownership of the Company by our employees is an important factor to our success. Therefore, as part of your compensation, the Compensation Committee will grant you at its next scheduled meeting at which equity grants are to be made (currently scheduled for January 30, 2009) (the “Grant Meeting”) an option to purchase five million (5,000,000) shares of the Company’s common stock (the “Inducement Option”). The per share exercise price for the Inducement Option will be the fair market value of a share of the Company’s common stock on the date of grant as determined by the Compensation Committee… The Inducement Option shall be exercisable for seven (7) years from the date of grant, subject to earlier termination as provided herein, in the Plan and the applicable notice of stock option grant and stock option agreement.
by David Heyerman on January 14, 2009
- Since I wrapped up the Solar Sector in 2008, there’s been a a steady stream of new 2009 announcements coming out of the same companies covered before. The wires have been, for the most part, unfortunately flooded with negative expectations from research analysts pushing to sell, plants shutting down, and workers being laid off.
- First Solar, SunPower, Yingli Green Energy, Suntech Power, JA Solar, and Evergreen Solar all saw quick share price increases early last week. Now, they’re all down to below where they were on the 1st. Some analysts are pushing the sell because of an expected lowering of solar panel and module prices over the next year. In fact, Christopher Blansett, from JP Morgan was unapologetically urging investors to sell solar stocks because of this expectation.
- Evergreen Solar announced the closing of their Marlboro, Mass. plant. Although, they expect “continued progress” at another plant, they’ll be hit pretty hard as shutting down the plant will have cost the company upwards of $30 million from Q4 2008, into 2009.
- Suntech Power had some mixed news with a huge milestone, raising their Wuxi factory production capacity of photovoltaic cells and modules to 1 GW. This is a huge achievement, considering 2007’s output of 540 MW. CEO of Suntech, Zhengrong Shi, is expecting an oversupply of polysilicon this year, which could potentially cut their prices 20-30 percent from 3rd quarter 2008. On the other side of things, Steve Chadima, vice president of external affairs has announced that 800 people or 10% of their workforce were cut in the fourth quarter of 2008.
- Workforce cuts have seemingly been widespread in the solar industry, with layoff announcements from Day4Energy, GT Solar, Emcore, Ausra, and Advanced Energy. Even OptiSolar laid off 300 employees because of a lack of funding.
- On the positive side of things, the Federal Bureau of Land Management has seen a huge jump in the amount of applications they’re receiving for solar energy projects. The number of applications rose from 125 to 223, a 78% increase since July. All the applications were for projects over 10MW in capacity and were located in California, Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, and Colorado.
- So on one hand, we have this industry that is experiencing such incredibly growth as far as technology and necessity goes, but on the other hand we have this pesky little thing called the economy which likes to sway industry at it’s, sometime unjustified, hand. The only thing us investors and cleantech enthusiasts can trust is that we, as a world, need renewable energy and solar is at the forefront of that effort. It is an unfortunate and as I mentioned before, ironic situation, but I’m still confident the future for solar is bright. How bout you guys?
RSS
Email
Twitter
