United Online

• United Online (UNTD) is the company that now includes NetZero and Juno, and is currently $13.70/share. It has an 11% pre-tax earnings yield and has recently announced that DSL internet service will now be available. It pays a dividend, with a yield of almost 6% currently. It may be worth a look.
  

Two Commodities Plays, and Two Troubled Companies

• Vaalco Energy (EGY) is an oil and natural gas company that has been on an amazing run the past few years. The stock could be worth two times its current price if it keeps growing like this, and looks to be the best prospect on the list.
  
  
  
• Expect Freeport-McMoran to take a hit today on news that it is taking on debt to acquire Phelps-Dodge at a significant premium.
  
  Two Troubled Companies
  
• Merge Technologies (MRGE) is a medical imaging company that has recently announced plans to cut 28% of its American and Canadian workforce and move those jobs to India. Will this be enough to make them profitable again?
  
  
• Optimal Group (OPMR), a payment processing company adversely affected by the recent gambling legislation.
  
  

Value Investing Video

Joel Greenblatt, author of The The Little Book That Beats the Market, teaches a class on Value and Special Situation Investing at Columbia University. A video from November 3rd is available on the class website. This video is just over 2 hours long. The first half is about Moody's, but the second half is about The The Little Book and the studies and principles behind it. He explains why a fund manager would be unable to successfully follow the magic formula, because any lengthy period of underperformance, relative to his benchmark, would get him fired. Investors don't want to underperform the market for a couple of years or more, even if they will soundly beat the market over longer periods of time. The focus on short-term performance gives an opportunity for what he calls "time arbitrage" to those with the patience to stick with their investment strategy (buying great companies at bargain prices) until it pays off.

Two New Companies Make the List

Two new companies have entered the Magic Formula top 25 this week, but they both seem to be weak contenders to me:

1. Nathan's Famous (NATH) - Famous for the hotdog-eating contest held every year on Long Island, this doesn't look like the most compelling investment on the magic formula list, with its 12% earnings yield. If you take out one-time items from selling property last year, earnings are up, at least. The current focus seems to be on licensing and franchise fees. Last week's earnings report dropped the stock about $1.50 a share, down to $13.05.
   
   
2. New Frontier Media Inc (NOOF) is the other new entry. It's an adult entertainment company, that distributes its product via pay-per-view, hotels, cable, video on demand, and wireless. It's announced a "major victory over Playboy (PLA)". It has an earnings yield of 11%, and the management doesn't seem to be the most honest.
   
   

Three Promising Prospects

These three companies showed up on my latest check at the Magic Formula website:

• PW Eagle Industries (PWEI) - This company makes PVC pipe and PE tubing, used in irrigation, plumbing, natural gas pipelines, and telecommunications, throughout North America. It is significantly undervalued at $36.16/share (with an earnings yield of 37%). I'm adding this company to replace PLAY, which is being bought out by NVidia.
  
  These next two are not quite the bargain that PWEI is:
  
• Western Refining (WNR) operates in the Southwest. Its next earnings release is on November 13th, and it has an 18% earnings yield. Current price is $25.04
  
  
• Frontier Oil (FTO) - Another refiner, Frontier has two refineries, in Wyoming and Kansas. It specializes in heavy sour crude (as opposed to light sweet crude). This type of oil is more expensive to refine, and cheaper to buy. The spread between light sweet and heavy sour has been especially pronounced lately, leading to more profits for FTO. It, too, has an 18% earnings yield, and is currently $30.71/share. The company has over $3/share in cash, to help it weather any difficulties.
  
  

NVidia Buys PortalPlayer, Palm Gets Sued

It's a good news, bad news day.


PortalPlayer (PLAY) is being bought out for $13.50/share by NVidia, a 23% gain in less than two weeks.


Meanwhile, Palm is now getting the same treatment from NTP as Research in Motion, who paid out over $600 million in ransom to the patent holding company. The stock dropped, but that's no reason to bail. It's possible that Palm will settle the matter quickly, instead of letting it drag out for years. It's also a possible takeover target.


PLAY will need to be replaced in the lineup, most likely by one of the companies I listed yesterday, like ADDL.

Five Companies that Fit the Formula

Here are 5 companies that fit the magic formula of high earnings yield and return on capital. Being undervalued, relative to earnings, good news has a greater effect than it would with a company that is already priced for perfection.

1. PNCL (Pinnacle Airlines)
   At $8.29/share and with over $2/share of earnings predicted for the year, this regional airline, a subsidiary of Northwest Airlines, has a chance for a good 'pop' when it announces earnings this Tuesday, November 7th.
   
   
2. ADDL (Aduddell Industries)
   At $1/share, this roofing and restoration company barely makes the $50 million market cap criteria. It reported a profit in the quarter ended June 30, as opposed to a loss last year, and on October 24, estimated $75 million in revenues for the year. It is planning growth through acquisitions in this fractious industry with no major players.
   
   
3. ASPV (Aspreva Pharmaceuticals)
   This pharmaceutical company works on marketing and developing new indications for existing drugs, and is currently partnered with Roche on CellCept, an anti-rejection drug for heart, kidney, and liver transplants. The stock has taken a hit with the announcement, last week, that CellCept failed in its Phase III trial for myasthenia gravis treatment. Other trials are ongoing, for research on the treatment of lupus and pemphigus vulgaris. The risk with this company is that they won't be able to partner with another company on any other drugs. CellCept will begin facing generic competition in 2009.
   
   
4. FCX (Freeport-McMoran) This mining company owns a mine in Indonesia, and that's basically it. It's a great mine (the largest gold reserve in the world, and the second-largest copper reserve), but the possibility of political turmoil in this country makes it a risky investment. It has a nice dividend yield of 2% to go along with the possibility of price appreciation.
   
   
5. OVTI (Omnivision)
   Omnivision makes semiconductor image sensors for use in cameras, and has recently introduced a chip designed especially for use in automobiles. It can be used for assisted parking, backing up, driver drowsiness detection, airbag deployment, drifting into another lane, and detection of pedestrians and other vehicles. These applications are expected to become more and more available in new cars in the future. There are also possibilities for OVTI in the medical field. The company has a lot of cash (around$3.44/share), no debt, and a history of innovation, but is in a competitive field. OVTI is heavily shorted, so there is the possibility of a short squeeze down the road.
   
   

Disclosure: I own stock in both Freeport-McMoran and Omnivision.

The Terrible Truth About Investing

The Terrible Truth About Investing: How to Be a Savvy Investor, by Bruce J. Temkin, published in 1999, during the tech bubble, should be in every investor's collection. I turn to it often for insight. It's a short book, and very accessible, full of useful charts and examples.

One thing it covers is inflation ("the silent killer"). Temkin says the only good thing about inflation is that "a kid can't get sick on a nickel's worth of candy anymore". Taxes blazenly rob you of your return, forcing to you write out a check at gunpoint once a year, but inflation does it quietly, while you're sleeping, every night.

The book is filled with charts, showing you that what you think is a great return may not even be keeping up with inflation (historically, T-Bills have been an investment that returns 0.6% after inflation, while there have been 4 20-year periods where investing in stocks returned 2% after inflation, like 1961-1981). Others demonstrate, in dollar terms, what it is like to go through years of losing money, like the 1970's, when people gave up on the stock market entirely.

He points out that, while diversification can reduce volatility and risk (the often pointed out benefits), it can also result in lower returns than if you put it all on a single stock. You should know what to expect.

He talks about temperament in investing. Some people are unwilling to even contemplate some scenarios that are likely to occur (because they have occurred before)--they are just too terrible to contemplate. What people say and what they end up doing are two different things. People tend to buy high and sell low, which is not the preferred method.

For retirement, he recommends examining the assumptions behind your software or calculator (I think they usually underestimate inflation and overestimate rate of return for stocks). You should run "monte carlo" simulations, plugging in different numbers to get a range of results, to determine a set of possible outcomes and see if you're saving enough for retirement.

The book is out of print, but at this time, 7 sellers have it listed at Amazon (I am not one of them, sorry!):