On November 29th, 2011 Amvona published the article “Why we’re still buying Skechers stock”. The article indicated that shares in the company had been purchased for investor accounts between $11.86 and $12.77 per share.
Here were a few of the reasons for the purchase outlined at the time:
*May The Lord rest the souls of those who have departed in the destruction caused by Hurricane Sandy, and console their loved ones.
On October 22nd, 2012 Western Digital Corp. released their Q1 2013 financial results. Here are a few key points that are worth noting:
Valuation Ratios: The cheapest Company in America?
"Citigroup‘s Joe Yoo today cut his ratings on hard drive and storage technology developers Seagate Technology (STX) and Western Digital (WDC) to Sell from Buy, writing that there is a chance of 25% downside to current estimates for the companies this quarter given what may be drastically lower volume of drive shipments. Yoo cut his Seagate target to $25 from $37, and cut his Western Digital target to $32 from $53. …For Western, his estimates go to $15.3 billion and $9.99 in EPS from a prior $15.84 billion and $10.68 per share."
STX, WDC Cut to Sell at Citi; Estimates Too High Amidst PC Slowdown (Tech Trader Daily, Oct. 12th, 2012)
Shares of Western Digital (WDC) were sold for investors accounts on August 13th, 2012 at $44. As of close of market on Friday Oct. 19th, the shares were being traded for a mere 34.88. A decline of a full $9.12 or almost 21% in barely 9 weeks. Is the value of the company really less than it was, when the shares recently traded at $44?
On April 25th, 2012 Amvona published the article "Corning from another perspective”. On May 2nd shares of Corning (GLW) were sold for investors accounts at $14.49 per share - a return of about ~13% in just over 4 months, or almost 38% annualized. The shares were not sold because it was thought that they were overvalued, rather it was to free up capital for the growing position in Western Digital (WDC) later discussed in the follow up article "Update: Western Digital Discusses Q4 2012 Results”.
On July 25th, 2012 Western Digital Corp. (WDC) announced their FY2012 results - and beat consensus EPS estimates of $2.47. In after hours trading on July 24th as well as today, the shares moved up slightly, so it seemed like a good time to take a look back at some of the Amvona analysis of the company.
On May 17th around 2 p.m. a call came in from a friend, he said he had just received a call from his broker, who asked him “what he wanted to do about Facebook’s IPO”. The response was intricate and subtle;
“wouldn't touch it with a hundred foot pole”
The advice was to consider buying Western Digital (WDC) instead if he had to buy something. Sensing that the answer may have been a bit curt, the following email was sent shortly after the phone call:
According to a research report published last Friday, Bank of America has downgraded Western Digital from Buy to Neutral, and lowered their target from $54 to $46. In the report, Bank of America said:
"WD reported significantly better than expected F3Q12 EPS at $2.52 vs. our/Street $1.60/1.55, driven by revenue and margin. WD guidance was disappointing (EPS of $2.35-2.55 vs. our/Street prior $2.67/2.30) and commentary pointed to softer demand than expected going forward, at current/elevated ASPs levels, and some pricing concessions (certain HGST customers, pre-acquisition). It appears the HDD industry can't have it both ways for much longer – pricing/margins at high levels, and expected strong demand, with assumed channel inventory refill. We step to the sidelines for now, despite attractive valuation."
On December 19th, 2011 we began purchasing shares of Corning Inc. for investor accounts – these purchases were made at an average price of $12.73 per share. Unfortunately we didn't have time to write an article explaining all of the reasons why we felt Corning represented a good value for investors, we did however mention the purchases in our February 1st, 2012 article The Prime Ministers "One Dollar" bets when we published our correspondence saying:
“haven’t always been able to publish all ideas (but always execute for friends and family) – for e.g. haven’t had time to write an article on it yet, but have also been buying GLW (mostly below 13).”
Probably because of some yet-to-be-diagnosed neurosis our idea of a “good time” is listening to replays of company conference calls - the company’s that we own for investor accounts are a lot of fun, but our real interest is their competitors.
We were waiting for at least a 7% price jump when we published our article Hard Drives, Floods, Monasteries and Investment Returns on Dec. 2nd , 2011 – good thing we weren’t holding our breath. We thought the article looked pretty smart, not only because the WDC investment had already returned 30.2% to investors by the time we were able to publish, but also because we had this really crazy $67 dollar price target on the stock (way higher than any other analyst at the time) – we thought people would listen.
We went on to make impressive sounding arguments about sociology like this artifice:
The following is a copy of email correspondence we recently had with a friend and in the same spirit as our post "Correspondence with a friend on Investing".
Help was offered after learning of tremendous losses he had suffered in a bad investment. We decided to publish the correspondence because it reflects the usual questions and fears often heard from investors as well as the answers provided - and because we think it's more efficient to provide representative correspondence once than continue to provide the same answers on an ongoing basis.
Persons names, the origin of the prime minister, and various and sundry details referenced have been either changed or omitted in order to protect their privacy - despite this, we still could not publish all of the related correspondence without revealing identities.
On December 22nd, 2011 we began purchasing shares of American Greetings Corp. at $12.91 per share for investors. To our surprise we were able to get several more large blocks of the shares in extended hours trade yesterday evening (Jan. 4th, 2012) for the same accounts.
On December 22nd, 2010 we published our article “SKX and the markets strange reaction to Sterne Agee”.