Re: Brain/Brawn- IFCI, DY, MTZ, etc./Europe, Asia, Russia, Latin America, etc.
"Where is the money made ? Optic fiber hardware - mobile hardware, utility company right-of-way and network services,
the "general utility service company..."
Peter- In browsing through your quite substantial website, I came across the above. A question close to this infrastructure investors heart.<g> Thought it was a good time to bring up one of my semi-boring (certainly not on the Soliton level of excitement) investment ideas for the last mile.
Mark- IMHO your entire post at: siliconinvestor.com is right on track. Apparently the market is starting to understand this also as witnessed by recent moves in two of my favorites, Dycom Industries(sym:DY) and International Fibercom(sym:IFCI). Although quite boring in concept, IFCI has recently down a triple from it's low of around 5 to it's current price of 15. Most of the move, I'm assuming is related to this announcement regarding a contract with Charter Communications. It's at:
biz.yahoo.com
As you may recall, Paul Allen is Charter. Someone we haven't heard from in awhile. I suppose that means it's nitty gritty time and he is putting the bucks in upgrading and maybe laying off the headline grabbing buyouts of cable properties. Along the same lines, seems Bill Gates has slowed down his cableco investing and I imagine those cablecos are also doing the nitty gritty work now to. Both would be great news for the likes of the boring general utility plays.
You can find an online interview with IFCI's CEO at: radiowallstreet.com Type in IFCI in their search window for the interview. It's pretty clear IFCI is positioned perfectly in the last mile space where, IMHO, the real money will be spent in the next 5-10 years. But I really have no investment opinion of IFCI at these levels. As you may recall, I was quite positive on their outlook at the 5-7 range. Who knows, it's so lightly traded it may even pull back. It's a hard one to figure out as even their CEO agrees. But I do like, very much, their move into both the copper and coaxial space. Very similar to Dycom's, can't lose, broadband positioning.
In a related matter, in my recent flying time reading materials, I came across some very interesting articles about how Europe, Russia, Hong Kong, and Taiwan are upgrading their networks in a very similar manner to what has started happening in the US a few years ago.
Even the truly dysfunctional Russia, apparently has a fiber backbone already installed between their major cites and have just awarded some contracts for connecting it to paying customers. Hong Kong and Taiwan apparently have a cable network already built and are in the process of upgrading to HFC. And Europe is on the brink of some major upgrades(as my recent posts infer) to the last mile. I bet there are some great ways to invest in the brain/brawn companies in these countries but I have no idea how to find out who they are.
As I recall, MasTec(sym:MTZ) is quite established in Latin America, and I believe Spain. But I'm not so excited about those countries quite yet(except for the Nortel announcement to build an all IP nationwide network in Spain). MTZ has moved up quite nicely. Probably related to their deal with Lucent as Lucent moves into the cableco HFC space. But I believe Latin America has tripped MTZ up in the past and I'm not so sure it won't happen again.
If anyone can offer up anymore brain/brawn companies, especially non-US revenues based, it would be appreciated. -MikeM(From Florida) |
