You may be surprised to hear that our baby bull is now a year old. That's right, it was one year ago today that the Dow, Nasdaq, and S&P 500 all three bottomed with a whimper.
Since that frightful day and against all odds and expectations, the Dow is up 34%, while the Nasdaq and S&P have climbed 72% and 35%, respectively.
What's it all mean? It means that stock markets go up and stock markets go down -- and that you just don't know where they're headed next. That's why the smartest investors dollar-cost average and stay invested for the long haul.
In today's Motley Fool Take:
- Jumpin' Juniper
- Quote of Note
- Martha's Eroding Base
- Discussion Board of the Day: Consumer Credit/Credit Cards
- Napster's Back
- Shameless Plug: Insurance Center
- More Fool News
- Write for the Fool
- And Finally...
Jumpin' Juniper
Continuing this season's positive earnings trend, Juniper
The maker of network gear reported GAAP (generally accepted accounting principles) net income of $7.2 million or $0.02 per share, reversing a loss of $0.24 per share in last year's quarter. Non-GAAP earnings -- excluding one-time charges -- came in at $0.04 per share, beating the analyst estimate of $0.03 per share.
More importantly, investors looked for continued sales growth as an indicator of a possible turnaround in the nightmarish communications industry. Marking the fourth consecutive quarter of growth, net revenues increased 13% to $172.1 million.
And while the company was hesitant in forecasting growth after last quarter's report, this time there are no such qualms.
Yesterday, Juniper forecasted a fifth consecutive quarter of growth, raising its expected Q4 sales estimate to $180 million. Along with $0.05 in non-GAAP earnings, the new expectations trump the analyst estimate of $0.03 in non-GAAP profit on $174 million in sales.
Still, some investors are wary of the stock's triple-digit forward-looking P/E ratio.
Along with the broader rise in the stock market, Juniper shares have quadrupled over the past year in anticipation of a return to growth. The worry is that the stock has gotten ahead of itself, as no substantial recovery has yet been seen in its telecom customer base, such as Verizon
But while some might call Juniper expensive relative to Cisco
While Juniper's modest results are a positive, we'd be cautious before jumping to conclusions about the telecom carriers. That said, four quarters of consecutive sales growth looks like a trend.
Quote of Note
"Of all the things I've lost, I miss my mind the most. " -- Mark Twain
Martha's Eroding Base
The New York Times today reports that Martha Stewart Living magazine is cutting the number of readers it guarantees its advertisers by 22% -- from 2.3 million to 1.8 million. The declining readership, of course, is tied to Martha's legal trouble and all the bad press it has generated.
There's a silver lining behind the news, however. Though the ad base is being cut, the magazine is actually going to jack up the rate it charges advertisers by 6%. While that may seem counterintuitive, it's a sign the company believes advertisers -- such as General Motors
Despite the uniformly bad press Martha has received since her sale of ImClone
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Discussion Board of the Day: Consumer Credit/Credit Cards
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Napster's Back
By Bill Mann (TMF Otter)
With the apparently raucous success of Apple's
Napster went off the air two years ago, the victim of massive lawsuits from record companies TimeWarner
In the end, Napster, which never figured out how to make a single penny off its efforts, couldn't withstand the pressure of mounting legal bills and pulled itself off the air. CD-burning software company Roxio
In some ways, Napster went from being the scourge of the music industry to a potential savior. What filled the void left by Napster were such file-sharing companies as Sharman Networks, owner of Kazaa, which has a distributed corporate structure (based in Vanuatu) that makes it functionally untouchable by the long arm of the law. Instead, record companies have elected to go after end users, dropping hundreds of lawsuits on grandmas and the parents of file-swapping children alike, all in an effort to deter people from theft of intellectual property.
My, how times have changed. When last seen, Napster was lead sled dog in a pack of renegades. Now, the file-sharing companies have their own trade association. Napster's re-entry as a for-pay service has bolstered the music industry's hope that it can take customers from Kazaa, Morpheus, BearShare, and other free-download companies. Mike Bebel, Napster's new CEO, put it this way: "Free means you're downloading headaches." Given the preponderance of spyware now used by these organizations and the recording industry's willingness to fight back, he very well may be right.
The hope for Napster and Roxio is that people will view a buck per song as a small price to pay not to sweat being sued by a deep-pocketed and angry plaintiff.
At any rate, record companies have spent the last two years lamenting the loss of the devil they knew. Now Napster's back, and its rebirth is viewed by many in the music industry as a reason to have a glimmer of hope at regaining control of their intellectual property.
Incidentally, while I'd love to like Roxio as an investment, I can't get around the fact that the company granted nearly 8% of its share count in employee options last year and has an automatic escalator to make the lesser of 6% or 2 million shares available for grant each year (at a current share count of 27 million, it will be some time before 2 million becomes "the lesser"). That is an astoundingly high level of dilution for an established company. Add back the cost of these options and Roxio's operating earnings from years past are a mirage -- and its fiscal 2003 loss of $0.51 gets a heck of a lot worse.
I wish 'em luck, but not with my investment dollars. Yes, this is promising going forward, but for whom?
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More Fool News
- Intel Chief's Concerns
- Applebee's Complaint
- Big Banks, Big Earnings
- Marriott's Good and Bad News
- A Weight Watchers Plan
For a list of all our stories from today, see Today's Headlines.
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And Finally...
Today on Fool.com: Can Merck overcome patent expiration and prosper? That's the $6 Billion Question... Rick Munarriz says Just Take Off! After all, a penny saved on a great vacation is a penny earned.... In our Tax Center, Double-Dipping the Child Tax Credit.
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