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Strategies & Market Trends : Value Investing -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: E_K_S who wrote (22708)	12/4/2005 1:01:34 PM
From: Grantcw	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 78753

Hello all, I like the back and forth on Comcast. It does look like an interesting play. I currently have Comcast Cable + Broadband and have been very satisfied with the service. But, the one risk I see in their business plan (and all Cable Broadband companies) is the coming roll-out of free wireless internet across the nation. I realize it's in its infancy, but my county is testing free wireless in several cities (and I'm not in San Francisco, but in the Mid-West) through the end of the year, and I'm betting I'll have free wireless before June of next year. Now, I'm uncertain if Comcast is involved in supplying the 'pipes' for all the free access that will be given, but even if Comcast is involved and is getting some sort of fee for having the pipes, I can't imagine they're able to make as good of profit margins. In the worst case, they're not involved at all and their $49.99/month Cable Modem service is at risk. And even though I love Comcast and On-Demand, once free wireless hits our town, I will seriously shop around for a better rate on cable TV service because the main reason I'm with Comcast is their Cable Modem Broadband service. Comments? Thanks, CW

To: E_K_S who wrote (22708)	1/18/2006 11:44:35 AM
From: E_K_S	Respond to of 78753

Buffet's buying Business Wire for as much as $600 million. Buffett seals the deal Business Wire is latest addition to billionaire investor's portfolio Dan Fost, Chronicle Staff Writer (http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/01/18/BUG2HGOQE91.DTL ) Wednesday, January 18, 2006 From the article:"...Terms of the deal were not disclosed, and Lokey wouldn't give a specific number. He said the company was appraised last year at about $600 million, but wouldn't say if the sale price was above or below that. Business Wire makes its money -- about $127 million in revenue last year -- by disseminating news releases, a service in particular demand by publicly traded companies that are required to meet fair disclosure rules....". ============================================================== I guess this could be considered a media content company. If you assume a 30% profit margin on $127 million revenues, then a $600 million purchase price would yield a 15 PE. Typical of these media companies, they generate large free flow cash flows. I suspect that this was the factor that Buffet liked. There is some talk that Business Wire plans to expand their distribution network to include the "blogging" community content. This is a huge new growth area for them. Warren Buffett likes RSS, too (http://blogs.zdnet.com/Gardner/index.php?p=2248 ) From a value perspective, this is a very inexpensive way for Buffet to participate in the future growth of the Internet. This is especially true when one looks at the current valuations for Yahoo or Google. EKS