Friday December 8, 10:22 am Eastern Time
TheStreet.com - Silicon Valley
Herb Quick Hits: What Nvidia Analysts Forgot to Tell Investors
Also, hunkering down at Hasbro, more peppering Salton and wondering about the wisdom of liking Apple.
By Herb Greenberg
Senior Columnist
Briefly:
Ways of the world : Prudential co-underwrites the sale of stock for Nvidia (Nasdaq: NVDA - news) in October at $73; Tuesday its analyst, Hans Mosemann, downgrades the video-chip maker's stock, based on a "weak demand" outlook. (Like that should be some surprise? Their main customer is the PC industry!)
So, why didn't Hans say so back when he was doing the deal?! It's not like the PC industry was booming in October! 'Cause the deal wouldn't have been done otherwise, that's why! (Try telling that to anybody who bought the stock on the deal! It's now $41.25. Oh, and by the way, that game is gone -- or it should be gone!) ...
Hasbro (NYSE: HAS - news) blames overly ambitious forecasts on Pokemon for its hugepreannounced miss! Moody's , which has been better than Standard & Poor's on singing the junk jingle, reacted by downgrading Hasbro's debt to junk. Can only wonder what that'll mean for 4Kids Entertainment (NYSE: KDE - news) , which holds the Pokemon license. ...
Scient (Nasdaq: SCNT - news) warns of profit shortfall! When did that stock, long under scrutiny by this column, get to $4.50 anyway? Hadn't looked at it in a while. ...
Getting grilled : JC Investments finally files its 13-D on Salton (NYSE: SFP - news) , the George Foreman grill company. What is JC? It's a partnership that includes Kay Koplovitz, the founder of USA Networks and CEO of Working Woman Network , publisher of Working Woman and Working Mother magazines, and her husband. "The SEC filing indicates that whatever talents they may have, trading stocks is not among them," quips one broker, who is short the stock. "The trading record shows lurches in and out of Salton common and calls with what appears to be a rather consistent pattern of failure." Otherwise known as falling price. The broker for many of the investment group's trades, by the way, is Harmonic Research , which is known for using astrology as part of its stock-picking tools. ...
Financial follies : Talking to Bob Olstein of the Olstein Financial Alert Fund about allowance for doubtful accounts (just an in-general conversation on the topic) and he mentioned that anybody could've seen the Bank of America (NYSE: BAC - news) preannouncement coming by what it reported in its recent 10-Q: Its provision for doubtful accounts fell while the amount of problem loans was rising. Actually, Peter "Do I really have a British accent" Eavis , an Austin Powers non-lookalike, did quite the shagadelic job of covering that very issue in a recent col on BofA! So what if he thinks the Naz is headed to 1,500! Credit where credit's, uh, due...
Getting to the core of the Apple : Money manager Eric Von der Porten notes that Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL - news) is now trading at about one times cash. That's cheap. Would he buy it here? "It might be time to start slowly building a position, recognizing that it will take quite a while for Apple to dig itself out of its latest hole!" he says. "Meantime, as a user, I'm looking forward to some significant discounts!" What's good for consumers ain't necessarily good for shareholders... Or the market. "As we head into the last few weeks of the year," says Eric, "I hope this isn't what Nasdaq meant when they advertised 'the stock market for the next century!' If so, it's going to be an ugly era."
Or, ugly year-a. Purvi S. Desai Editorial Production Associate TheStreet.com 14 Wall Street, 15th floor New York, N.Y. 10005 Purvi Desai (212) 321 - 5292 Voice (732) 598 - 8616 cell **REMINDER** Tiles with company logos available for your stories at: home.thestreet.com
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