Fleckenstein makes a good point. It's not enough to be right about the fundamentals when the bulls have so much money and the investment banks' spin doctors get working. I get Goldman Sachs' morning research and was stunned at how Schutte had picked every strand of good news and ignored all the rest. Example: A shortfall of $40 million in the revenue GS had been estimating was turned into the positive that backlog had increased by 40,000 units so it would show up in the fourth quarter. Example: GTW's asp of approx $2,500 showed they could maintain their ASP's instead of making him wonder how big the losses will be at $1,500 when they can't make money at $2,500.
And I don't think any house on the street took a second, at least publicly, to look at the balance sheet. Although a sources and uses of funds was not published, it seems to me that GTW burned about $250,000,000 during the quarter. Cash was way down, inventories were down, and AR's were up. That's probably the only reason we didn't get a big stock buyback announcement to add to the charade. This is the emporer's new clothes if I ever saw it.
Could someone please check my numbers on cash burn and post? |
