First let’s mark Oct 14 2009: Dow 10,000 2.0 (Yahoo Tech-ticker video below)
(did you notice the Yahoo ~~~ in the end, Yahoo became more goofy under Carol)
My topic today is IPO. I have not got much luck from IPO investing (to be more precise, speculating). My lessons are the following:
1) PTC woes: last week Goldman Sachs, the No. 1 broker in the US (and world), upgraded PTC (a PLM software vendor) to “buy”, and raised its target from $22 to $24. On July 5, PTC says it’s going to miss the 3rd revenue estimates. I guess the GS analyst would be pretty upset by PTC now.
2) Samsonite being sold again: you may have seen its bags (laptop bag, luggage bag for air flight) in many palces. According to bloomberg, Samsonite found its 5th owner in 21 years. If you look at its 10 year chart, the stock lost 96.57% of its value in 10 years. For comparison, Coach (COH) was up 1853% in last 7 years. One thing I am aware: Coach’s bag is usually more expensive than Samsonite’s.
3) eLong no longer offer “vacation package”: according to PcPop, eLong (Nasdaq: LONG) pulled out of this market amid competition from Ctrip (Nasdaq: CTRP). I checked out eLong tours page, it appears they still have it for now.
I listened to the conference call of Sohu and Ctrip lately. Not surprisingly, both companies mentioned the positive effect of 2008 Beijing Olympics. Sohu is the Internet content service sponsor, and Ctrip should enjoy the booming of China travel industry before Olympics. But I think this Olympics effect is already priced in the stocks, and to make things worrysome, the effect may not turn out as big as people thought. The SOHU and CTRP stocks got punished partly because of this “irrational exuberance”.
On the other hand, Chinese economy is still in fast growth mode and I am bullish on some of the companies whose growth does not solely depend on Olympics. Or at least their PR person does not mention Olympics all the time 🙂
A thousand words 