Seeking Alpha: Will Vivendi Make The Best Use Of Its Incoming Tsunami Of Cash?

Vivendi (OTCPK:VIVHY) investors are finally getting what they've long said (or most of them, at any rate) they want - management is unwinding the conglomerate, having sold down its stake in Activision Blizzard (ATVI) and reached agreements to sell Maroc Telecom and SFR. The sale of the latter two will bring in close to EUR 17.2 billion, leaving the company's management with a lot of options regarding the future.

The company has already announced significant dividend payouts over the next two years, but between the remaining cash, additional asset sales, and levering up the business, Vivendi has billions to spend. The biggest question for investors now is whether management is likely to identify value-building acquisitions or whether it would be best (and/or likely) to sell even more.

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Will Vivendi Make The Best Use Of Its Incoming Tsunami Of Cash?

Seeking Alpha: Does The OmniVision Roller Coaster Have Another Climb Left In It?

I've followed the ups and downs of OmniVision Technologies (OVTI) for about a decade now, and the company has never managed to break out of an intensely cyclical pattern driven by product launches and competitive pressures. I have no expectation that that will change, as Sony (SNE) has proved a fierce competitor on the high end while a bevy of Chinese rivals compete for the low-end of the CMOS image sensor market.

If investors can accept OmniVision for what it is, there may yet be trading opportunities to consider. As of this writing, the shares lie ever so slightly below tangible book value and this is a company that has generated positive net free cash flow and returns on assets over the past decade. Investors who can stomach the risk of a decline back to the $12 to $13 range may want to take a closer look, as even a discount to past price/book multiples suggests a fair value in the $18 to $20 range.

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Does The OmniVision Roller Coaster Have Another Climb Left In It?

Investopedia: OmniVision Technologies - The Beat(ing) Goes On

I've followed OmniVision Technologies (Nasdaq:OVTI) for quite a while now, but I've never owned the shares. In a nutshell, OmniVision seems to fit into that “it's more trouble than it's worth” category of stocks where severe operational volatility (that I don't believe the company really can or could do much to control) leads to big swings in the price. That may be fine for investors/traders who like active names that produce multiple trading opportunities for buy/sell moves within a year, but it is much less attractive to those of us who pursue an investment path of “enlightened torpor”.

With that, OmniVision's fiscal first quarter (and guidance for the second quarter) was really just more of what I've learned to expect from this company. While I do believe OmniVision has good technology and a solid market position relative to the likes of Sony (NYSE:SNE) and Samsung, it's just such a difficult market to prosper in, particularly with the turbulence in the handset market right now.

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Investopedia: A Little Noise In Disney Earnings Shouldn't Matter Much

Even though Disney (NYSE:DIS) shares were basically flat for the past quarter (while the S&P 500 was up about 5% and some consumer indices were a little stronger), it's hard to overlook the 30%-plus gain over the past year. Along similar lines, while the company's core cable, international park, and movie business may have not done so well this quarter, Disney doesn't run itself on a quarter by quarter basis. With that, and the company's strong sports, movie, park, and IP franchises, it's hard not to like Disney as a company, even though the shares don't look particularly cheap.

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Investopedia: The AMD Story Sounds Very Familiar

There is a group of tech companies out there whose greatest accomplishment is simply staying in business over the span of decades. Advanced Micro Devices (NYSE:AMD) is a good example, as this company has a horrible record when it comes to generating cash flow or building/maintaining market share, but still seems to get investors re-excited about its prospects every so often. With no reason to believe that AMD will regain share in PCs, build share in tablets or microservers, or achieve any meaningful sustained cash flow from consoles, I see no reason to own AMD shares at this point.

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Investopedia: Apple Hopes iRadio Keeps Users Tuned In

While plenty of analysts and writers (including myself) have been assuming that it was a “when, not if” sort of situation, the buzz around Apple (Nasdaq:AAPL) launching a streaming music/internet radio service to compete with Pandora (NYSE:P) has gotten quite a bit louder. This service would not be a huge contributor to Apple all on its own, but it would offer the company yet another way to monetize its large user base and further establish its presence in services and mobile advertising. To that end, anything that develops those potentially lucrative lines is a net positive for the stock.

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Investopedia: OmniVision Showing Much-Needed Signs Of Improvement

The “up again, down again” story at OmniVision Technologies (Nasdaq:OVTI) rolls on, with the latest installment showing a sharp upward turn as the company's revenue and margins continue to show meaningful improvement. While OmniVision remains one of the market share leaders in the CMOS image sensor industry, that leadership has never meant stability or predictability and it probably never will. That makes this a tricky stock to recommend at almost any level – although these shares too look cheap, and may well ride the momentum of this positive quarter for a while, it's hard to believe that the market will ever fully reward the potential of this company.

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Investopedia: Disney Has A Stable Of Horses To Ride

While the quality of global entertainment and media giant Walt Disney (NYSE:DIS) is generally taken as a given, the company has always been a little more erratic in terms of margins, cash flows and returns on capital than most companies of its size and reputation. These variances are largely a byproduct of the nature of the business (particularly hit movies), but they can still create opportunities for investors. Disney seldom gets very cheap, and the company has multiple levers to improve results over the coming years. But investors should keep their eyes open for a chance to pick up shares should the stock stumble on transitory bad news.

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Investopedia: For OmniVision, Weird Is Just Its Version Of Normal

It seems like nothing is ever normal with CMOS image sensor company, OmniVision Technologies (Nasdaq:OVTI). Accept that and it can be an intriguingly volatile trading opportunity. While the stock has often been batted around on rumors, worries and hopes tied to adoption from key customers like Apple (Nasdaq:AAPL), now margins have become another big variable. Consequently, while very strong revenue guidance for the next quarter really jumps, so to does the possibility of ongoing margin pressure. Not surprisingly, that continues to make this a very difficult company to model and a difficult stock to recommend or own.

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http://www.investopedia.com/stock-analysis/2012/For-OmniVision-Weird-Is-Just-Its-Version-Of-Normal-OVTI-AAPL-SNE-TSM1130.aspx

Seeking Alpha: Med-Tech Due For More M&A

Buyouts have long been a staple feature of the med-tech landscape. While giants like Johnson & Johnson (JNJ), Medtronic (MDT), and Abbott Labs (ABT) are often knocked (and often unfairly) for their inability to innovate, they do excel at marketing. That creates a pretty steady conveyor belt where smaller, innovative companies create new devices that move the state of the art forward and large companies gobble them up to goose their own growth and leverage their existing production and sales infrastructures.

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Med-Tech Due For More M&A

Investopedia: OmniVision Looks Fueled Up For Another Run

CMOS sensor company Omnivistion Technologies (Nasdaq:OVTI) has a crazy stock. Pull up a long-term chart, and you're basically looking at a map of the Tetons or some such. That chart also says a lot about the business. While Omnivision has long been at the edge of technology in the space, the company has been unable to establish a steady revenue and profit growth trajectory. While I don't expect that basic pattern of volatility to change much, investors may want to consider this stock for the potential sales and profit growth that could be reported with the next major Apple (Nasdaq:AAPL) phone launch.

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Investopedia: Another "Good Enough" Quarter For Disney

Media giant Disney (NYSE:DIS) did not have a perfect quarter, but it was good enough to get the job done. Media results were a little noisy, but solid revenue growth in parks and resorts coupled with good profitability in the studio made for a good bottom line result. As is often the case, Disney's stock is not especially cheap, but investors have long been willing to pay up for Disney's dominance and perceived full-cycle consistency.

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Seeking Alpha: Disney Winning The Rat Race

Disney (DIS) is one of those remarkable companies that seems to have an uncanny knack for figuring out what its customers want and then giving them even more of it. Sounds simple, I know, but not many companies have wracked up lifetime gains of nearly 47,000%. That said, Disney is a surprisingly volatile stock and brand value alone won't save investors who buy at the wrong times - investors who bought in 14 years ago are sitting on just 19% gains (excluding dividends) and looking up longingly at the S&P 500's returns over that time period.

With that in mind, Disney's solid performance in Q1 and strong stock may be a sign that new investors should cool their heels a bit before taking the plunge with new money.

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Disney Winning The Rat Race

Investopedia: Harman Looks To Carry A Tune

Like many auto components suppliers, Harman (NYSE:HAR) is seeing sales pick up as car sales rebound in the developed world and grow rapidly in emerging markets. The question for Harman investors, though, is whether the company can continue to convince OEMs to stick with their systems in lieu of internal development or partnerships with smart device manufacturers.

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Investopedia: The Wild Ride Continues For OmniVision Technologies

For those investors who bought into the worst of the OmniVision (Nasdaq:OVTI) news in late November, I salute your bravery. I was definitely tempted to take a flier on this stock, but chose not to and missed out on the subsequent 80% jump in the shares. As this most recent quarter demonstrates, though, conditions remain volatile and murky for this imaging sensor company.

A Surprising (Partial) Rebound   

OmniVision warned investors a little while ago that financial performance was going to be down as the company worked through lower demand and higher inventory. That said, the company managed to deliver better performance than it had expected.

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Investopedia: Best Buy Gets Run Over By A Reindeer

For a company that finds itself needing to validate its big-box model and avoid going to the same elephant graveyard as Borders and Circuit City, Best Buy (NYSE:BBY) has certainly stepped in it again, and this time right before Christmas. Several news outlets, including the Wall Street Journal and PCMagazine, are reporting that Best Buy has been unable to fulfill online orders made in the weeks following Black Friday and has instead canceled these orders.

Too Popular for its Own Good?Unfortunately, Best Buy has said almost nothing publicly on this issue apart from an emailed statement to a FOX affiliate in Minneapolis, but from what information is out there, it seems that unexpectedly high demand and supplier shortages have led the company to cancel online orders made in the past few weeks. Looking through message boards and online forums at both Best Buy and shopping websites suggests that it's not a complete disaster and largely limited to items like the Sony (NYSE:SNE) PlayStation and Fujifilm AX-350 camera. Even still, Best Buy was hardly proactive about this and it looks like there are going to be some supremely irritated and newly-former Best Buy shoppers this holiday season. (For related reading, see The 4 Rs Of Investing In Retail.)

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Investopedia: What Comes After "Worse" For OmniVision Technologies?

When a company goes from bad to worse and then another step further, what do you call that? Whatever word investors in OmniVision Technologies (Nasdaq:OVTI) may choose, and most of them would likely be unprintable, it is clear that this specialty chip company is indeed in trouble. Although much will be made of the company's share losses to Apple (Nasdaq:AAPL), this is increasingly looking like a broader sector issue as well.

A Bad Quarter 

OmniVision told investors a little while ago that this fiscal second quarter was going to be bad, and it was. Although revenue actually slightly exceeded the company's most recent guidance range, it still represented around a 9% year-on-year decline and approximately a 21% decline in sales. OmniVision took a one-two punch on the top line, as shipments fell about 11% sequentially and average selling price fell a similar amount. Notably, higher-end products (two megapixels and up) made up a significantly smaller share of total sales in the quarter. (For related reading, see A Primer On Investing In The Tech Industry.)

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Investopedia: Smoke Starting To Billow From The OmniVision Story

For some time now, I have thought that the bears had it wrong on OmniVision (NASDAQ:OVTI) and that even if the company was losing some of its technological lead over Sony (NYSE:SNE), Aptina and STMicroelectronics (NYSE:STM), the stock was still too cheap relative to its prospects and cash on the balance sheet. As it turns out, though, those wisps on the horizon weren't just clouds, but actual smoke, and it seems like OmniVision may have a very real problem on its hands. 


The News Is Getting Worse
OmniVision didn't exactly have investors excited with its last earnings report in August. At that point, the company talked about some product delays and revised revenue guidance lower - due supposedly to problems with tablet customers.

As it turns out, the company did not go nearly far enough. OmniVision announced on November 7, 2011 that it was once again revising guidance lower, taking the numbers for the next quarter down another 20% or so to a range of $212 million to $217 million, a steep fall indeed from the $300-million-plus level of not so long ago. Making matters worse, the company was fairly cryptic about the reason - simply referring to "unexpected cutback in orders for certain key projects."


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Investopedia: Netflix And Creative Destruction

Few things are easier in business than sticking with what has always worked before. Unfortunately, that is often an open invitation to hungry new competitors to come in, eat your lunch, take your customers and leave you with the bill. To that end, while investors (not to mention customers) may be confused, frustrated or angry with Netflix's (Nasdaq:NFLX) latest moves, they may be exactly what the company has to do to remain a leader in the fast-developing media content business.


Old Wine in New Bottles
Netflix's latest move is to separate its traditional DVD-by-mail business from its newer streaming media business. Management is renaming the DVD business "Qwikster," adding video game rental to the service, and operating it as a wholly-owned subsidiary with its own management and customer service infrastructure.

The Netflix name will now be solely for the streaming business, and the two companies will run quite separately. There will be different websites and customers will see two charges on their credit card statement if they sign up for or keep both services.



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Investopedia: Can Barnes & Noble Change One More Time?

One of the most dangerous things investors can do is confuse what they want to happen with what is most likely to happen. Barnes & Noble (NYSE:BKS) is a good example of that Achilles heel for me - I'm a book nerd and very much want this company to succeed. The trouble is, though, that Barnes & Noble's market has changed dramatically, Amazon (Nasdaq:AMZN) and Apple (Nasdaq:AAPL) are formidable competitors, and a sober and unemotional reading of the evidence suggests little more than "maybe" when it comes to the question of whether this company can make it.

Another Tough QuarterUnfortunately, Barnes & Noble's fiscal first quarter results don't offer a lot of encouragement. BKS missed the consensus with its revenue performance, as sales rose a little less than 2% this quarter. Retail revenue was down almost 3% (on a nearly 2% negative comp), while BN.com revenue rose 37% and revenue from the college business fell about 2%.

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http://stocks.investopedia.com/stock-analysis/2011/Can-Barnes--Noble-Change-One-More-Time-BKS-AMZN-AAPL-SNE-NOK-GOOG-MSFT-WMT0906.aspx