Stupidity is contagious. It gets us all from time to time. Even respectable companies can catch it. As I do every week, let's take a look at five dumb financial events this week that may make your head spin.
1. Dell's leaving on an Aero plane
Dell
Strategically speaking, this makes more sense than the Streak tweener it put out last month. That gadget with its 5-inch screen is too cumbersome to be a phone, yet too small to be a workable tablet.
However, Dell's unfashionably late arrival into the smartphone space also deserves a fair deal of razzing. It's shipping with a dated version of the "me too" Android operating system software, packing a pedestrian spec sheet. Sans buzz, where's the demand going to come from?
Dell does have a large enough customer base to target the device to, but I'm guessing that even folks and corporations that lean on Dell for their tech hardware needs can spot smartphone obsolescence and skirt the pitch accordingly.
2. Click the "thumbs down" button twice
A bad earnings report is a bad earnings report, no matter what a company's executives may say.
"TiVo remains on solid financial footing, exceeding our revenue and earnings guidance and with a strong balance sheet," CEO Tom Rogers notes in the earnings release. He also points to "several strategic relationships in place that further demonstrate our growth plans" -- but there's the rub.
Mr. Market isn't always bright, but he can see through that quickly. TiVo
Revenue and subscribers fell -- both sequentially and year over year. TiVo posted its sixth consecutive quarterly loss. TiVo is now down to less than 2.4 million subscribers, and that's 2 million fewer families of couch potatoes than it watched over when its popularity peaked four years ago.
If TiVo is as cool as it seems to be and brand-defining licensing deals continue to be inked, why isn't this showing up in the financials?
3. Losing the Halo effect
Value hunters buying GameStop
Best Buy
The move and related gift card bonus prove that Best Buy is taking this venture seriously. This would be bad news for GameStop, since the small box retailer scores its thickest margins on trade-in resales.
A hungry giant in Best Buy will likely force GameStop to pay more to diehard gamers for used titles than it used to, especially if it doesn't want to run out of pre-played inventory.
4. Bad Jazz
Jazz Pharmaceuticals
It wasn't even close, as 20 of the 22 voting members of the Food and Drug Administration advisory committee struck down Jazz's treatment for fibromyalgia. This isn't the end of the line for drug, but approval will likely be harder and any shot at an eventual launch gets pushed out.
Jazz remains a profitable company, regardless of the nearly unanimous FDA head shaking. It's the only silver lining as the stock gets pounded.
5. Hey! You! Get off of my cloud-computing cloud
Until last night, Hewlett-Packard
After all, HP seemed brilliant earlier this week in making a competitive bid on Dell-target 3Par
Perfect! HP gets Dell to overpay for a cloud-based data storage specialist by raising a phantom bidding card. Dell needs 3Par more than HP does, since HP has already diversified from its hardware stronghold through its EDS and Palm acquisitions. The pressure is on Dell to stretch out into higher margin areas.
So what does HP do last night? Yikes! It comes back with the fourth bid in this battle, offering to buy 3Par for $27 a share. HP can afford the $1.8 billion, but paying 100 times next year's projected profitability for 3Par is as dilutive as it is unnecessary.
Unless this is a plot to get the more desperate Dell to drum up an even higher offer, HP is looking lost without Mark Hurd. Dell agreed to match HP's offer this morning, but I'll keep HP here until it finally pulls down its bidding card.
Which of these five moves do you think is the dumbest? Share your thoughts in the comment box below.