New Constructs
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Dead Company Walking: Sell Eastman Kodak (EK)

What I bet very few people, outside the company itself, know is that EK’s pension liabilities could torpedo the company into bankruptcy and send the stock to significantly lower levels. In the company’s recently published 10K, we found that EK’s pension obligations are underfunded by $2.6 billion, about 3 times the company’s market value.
by David Trainer, Founder & CEO
4Comments

Red Flag Report: Hidden Expenses/Income: What You Don’t Know Can Cost You

Most investors are not aware that companies hide one-time and unusual charges and income inside normal, operating line items (e.g. “Cost of sales”) on their income statement. These hidden items can mislead investors by artificially decreasing/increasing GAAP earnings. We found 13,000+ one-time items buried in normal line items like “Cost of Sales” by studying the Footnotes of 10-K filings from 1998 thru 2/15/2011. This research revealed that companies have concealed over $41 billion in one-time items.
by David Trainer, Founder & CEO
New Constructs
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The Ride Is Over: Sell Ariba Inc. (ARBA)

Over the past 10 years, ARBA appears as quite a success story and one of the few ‘internet bubble’ companies to survive and reach profitability, on a GAAP accounting basis at least. Looking beyond the reported accounting results, however, reveals that ARBA is not quite as profitable a company as it seems, and its valuation has out-grown its profits by a wide margin – the required combination of factors for making February’s list of most dan­ger­ous stocks.
by David Trainer, Founder & CEO
New Constructs
3Comments

Stock Pick of the Week: Buy Discover Financial Services (DFS)- Very Attractive Rating

HIDDEN GEMS: 1. Our dis­counted cash flow analy­sis shows that DFS’s cur­rent val­u­a­tion (stock price of $21.80) implies that the company’s prof­its will decline by 40% and never grow again. 2. Eco­nomic earn­ings are growing faster that reported accounting earnings. 3. Free cash flow of $2.8bn or 24% of its enterprise value during the last fiscal year.
by David Trainer, Founder & CEO