Earnings Conference Call
July 27, 2010 08:30 am ET
Q2 2010 Earnings Call
July 27, 2010 4:30 p.m. ET
By Robin Wauters
Yahoo just put out a press release calling out comScore for seriously underreporting the site’s U.S. page views and duration metrics in its June report.
While we typically cover investments hedge funds make in public companies, we like to keep an eye on investments made in private companies as well. The reason? A potential lead to secular themes that investment firms are targeting. Case in point: hedge fund Tiger Global and its portfolio of web properties.
According to Russian newspaper Vedomosti, Chase Coleman’s hedge fund has paid $10 million for a 40% stake in Anywayanyday.com, an online ticket booking site in Russia. The site is owned by an affiliate of Valars, a grain trading company also based in Russia. The website currently garners around 3% of the Russian online airline ticket sales market and sees yearly revenue of around $5 million. The company is also planning to ‘revitalize’ its presence in the hotel booking segment as well.
Since the 1990s, internet stocks have been perceived as high growth companies. Outside of the well-known internet stocks like Google (GOOG), Amazon (AMZN) and Yahoo (YHOO), many investors still perceive internet stocks as just high flyers with little to no earnings. However, many companies within the internet space have tremendous earnings power and many are now returning some of that cash back to their investors.
In February, Expedia (EXPE) initiated a quarterly dividend program. TheStreet.com (TSCM) and Marchex (MCHX) also pay investors a quarterly dividend, but the yields are generally quite small.
Time Magazine Editor Josh Quittner and AOL CEO Tim Armstrong took the stage on Friday afternoon at the Fortune Brainstorm Tech conference in Aspen. Most of the interview was centered on AOL’s content strategies.
But what I really wanted to know about was what AOL’s plans were around search. Their long term Google (GOOG) deal expires in December. And from what we hear both Microsoft and Google are gunning for AOL’s search traffic.
I believe Level 3 (LVLT) will have an upside earnings surprise today. Investors could see Level 3 share price rocket to its 200 day moving average of $1.38 after the earnings report. The downside risk is very low in my opinion. Level 3 is trading around $1.10 which I consider to be extremely undervalued. Anything remotely better than expectations and the stock price will take off to the upside.
Earnings estimate and growth analysis:
Local.com Corporation (LOCM)
Q2 2010 Earnings Call Transcript
Bret Jensen has nearly 20 years of experience in financial services, and is responsible for portfolio management and investment selection as chief investment strategist for Miami-based Simplified Asset Management.
If you could only hold one stock position in your portfolio (long or short), what would it be?
By Serkan Toto
The spectactular search deal Microsoft and Yahoo struck last summer doesn’t extend to all country markets. In Japan, Yahoo search will be powered by Google (GOOG) in the future, as announced [JP] on the Google Japan blog and by Yahoo Japan itself [JP, PDF] earlier today (Yahoo Japan‘s current search engine is provided by Yahoo (YHOO) in the US).