Cars Blog's

"Lundin's calling

Despite the runup in prices of various base metals, Lundin Mining's stock has been stuck in park. Then, when it told investors last month that analysts were being way too optimistic about its production levels, the stock price collapsed. Where other miners like BHP Billiton (NYSE: BHP) and Teck Cominco are up 20% to 60%, Lundin's shares sit more than 20% below where they were last March.
There could be reasons to hope for Lundin's future performance. Although zinc prices were soft in the fourth quarter and squeezed Lundin's profit margins, they've jumped 11% in the last week alone. Nickel's up even more at 17%. Yet investors might still want to be cautious. With commodities driven by demand, and a slowdown in the U.S. deepening, metal prices may very well sag again.
More than 700 investors have weighed in on the metals company, and less than a dozen think it's a canary in a coal mine. As many as 98% believe it will outperform the market. Top-rated CAPS All-Star UncommonSense, with a 93.96 player rating, viewed Lundin almost a month ago as not only a valuable long-term play in its own right, but thought its current depressed prices make it an outstanding acquisition target:
Lundin Mining ... mines copper, zinc, lead, and silver. They operate 5 mines, 4 of which regularly increase production levels every quarter (and usually by double digits yoy). Copper prices are firming up. ... They just finalized a deal to buy a major copper mine in the Democratic Republic of Congo and they are in the process of developing a major surface mine in Russia. ... They have virtually no debt and ample room to expand in coming years as commodity prices continue to rapidly outpace inflation. ... Even if LMC is not taken over by an ambitious private equity group or a hungry metal conglomerate, its own individual growth prospects seem to shine.
CAPS investor MUGNUS agreed, writing in late January that growth prospects based on demand for what Lundin is pulling out of the ground suggests up is the only way for the stock to go:
Global buildout should prop this company up along with continued use of metals in more and more 'stuff.' Mines are in shorter and shorter order and the demand for the metals continues to rise annually. "

Google's customers are all linked to consumers, who are losing their purchasing power by the hour in recent recession. ROI on advertising is falling, Google's customers are cutting ADs spending, debt financed prosperity has lifted all boats and Google's ad campaigns looked like justified before, but now results are not so apparent: customers do not have money or maybe Google was never so effective to attract them after all?


"...speaking at the Bear Stearns Media Conference in Florida, Tim Armstrong, Google's president of North America advertising and commerce, said that the recent slowing in paid clicks "was intentional on our part" and will result in "a long-term benefit for our business."
That's because recent quality initiatives at the company have resulted in fewer unintentional clicks and a higher number of "conversions," or revenue generated by intentional clicks, according to Armstrong.
"Conversions actually go up for advertisers, which is positive, but there are less clicks overall," he said."

Multiples compression has brought stock price of Google to the first stop pit at USD435. Now recession fears will make its way in compressing it further to USD326:

"Finally great company has missed even greater expectations, more analyses will come later, but for now it is apparent that all financials have deteriorated further: growth rate sliped at fastest pase ever. FCF in last year was 3.4 bil USD. Multiple at closing at USD564 FCF/MC (176.5 bil) was 51.9, compared to yahoo around 20. Recession will eat hard into Google revenue growth, CAPEX will hurt FCF further in 2008. Multiple of 50 Free Cash Flow to Market Cap is not sustainable any more, expect first stop at 40. It is 40*3.4=136 bil market cap, stock price USD435. With further recession fears multiple of 30 will come into play (50% over Yahoo!). It will reflect in stock price of USD326. On the Technical side stock has broken crucial uptred line on weekly bases. Technical signal SELL which has been reported here 2 weeks ago now confirmed by fundamentals."