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

To: anializer who wrote (32953)	12/6/2008 12:52:51 AM
From: Paul Senior	Respond to of 78644

FCSX. Looks like there've been known problems with Sentinel for more than a year. FCSX have announced a write-off of $5M this quarter. If significantly more write-offs or write-downs are coming with Sentinel and management knows this, that's material information, and imo, should be disclosed. I see nothing though in my review the website and Google, so I'm guessing there's nothing forthcoming with Sentinel that'll destroy FCSX's balance sheet. One thing I don't like from the latest quarterly is: " * A charge in the fourth quarter of 2008 of $0.8 million, equal to $0.03 per diluted share, net of tax in connection with the company's decision to freeze all benefit accruals under its pension plans. For the upcoming fiscal year 2009, we expect to realize a savings of approximately $0.9 million, net of tax, in pension related expenses related to the freezing of the pension plans..." Things may be worse than I understand if management has to clamp down on employee retirement benefits. (If that's what the above blurb is saying.) And it doesn't seem like that much of a savings to me vs. the ill-will it might be giving employees. One other thing. This is apparently is the successor business to a commodity brokerage firm that's been in business for more than fifty years. The stock's been public only since '07 though. Perhaps the Duke brothers - Randolph and Mortimer may have been significant shareholders/managers at one time.