BIOTA HOLDINGS LIMITED (BTA) are due to report first half results within the next week or two. There has been considerable coverage on the indicative $32.6M quarterly royalty on the $462 million in Relenza sales by GSK. David Symons wrote an excellent preview of the quarterly royalties which is worth a read. It’s good to see some journalists now have an in-depth understanding of Biota.

With earnings due and $56.7 million in anticipated royalties I decided now was a good time to look back at Biota’s revenue over the last five years.

JB Hi-Fi Limited (JBH) announced 29% growth in profits, yet the stock has been taken out to the woodshed and had 5% flayed off its hide.
Why were investors so disappointed in this Roger Montgomery favourite? Sales increased 23%, profit was up 29% and the dividend was raised a whopping 120%, hardly disapointing figures.
Do investors believe the outgoing CEO, Richard Uechtritz, was worth 5% around $100M of the market cap? The stock fell 5% today after the earnings announcement.
Or was it the falling gross margins? Gross margins fell 26bps due to increased competition and lower margin items.
Or …

Option Sellers Beware.

Green Mountain Coffee Roasters Inc. (GMCR) reported excellent 2010 Q1 earnings on January 28th. No doubt followers have read the earnings reports and the conference calls transcript and now have a buzz on even stronger than two cups of Green Mountain Dark Magic could deliver. So is it time for this bear to wash some humble pie down with a cup of joe? Absolutely not!
One quarter does not bring the fat lady out to sing. In my bearish arguments here and here I argued that the main reason to put GMCR on a shorting watch-list is valuation. …

Mark D Wolfinger on the folly of buying options.

I think you should be looking at buying LEAP Calls on some of them! Or bull spreads on a group of them.
Take MMM 2011 Calls. Picking one at random without calculating the best strategy:
50 – 70 call spread will cost around $5.50 with profit of $14.50, that’s almost a 1:3 risk reward for a return of SP to $10 less than the -2 line! MMM 25 Year Chart
Heck sell the $40 2011 Put and you’ll get a small credit and the entire upside for the risk of owning MMM at $39.
me …

While my US tool belt is full, I’m still working on my Australian belt. These sites just made it through the preliminary round. Give it up for Earnings Calendars!
First up M* Corporate Calendar. It’s easy to use. Select your event and other criteria along the top. For example if you want 2010 Interim earnings reports for February , then select those criteria from the drop down lists.
Egoli present their earnings calendar via Google calendar. It’s attractive, but as only three companies are shown on one day it makes searching for a particular …

Biota is down to where the price last intersected with value. There’s strong technical support around $2 tying in nicely with the fundies. Biota’s share price just experienced a pandemic spike sending the price twelve months or more into its future. The rumor/fact of Governments selling flu vaccines has been stretched to fear about orders for the 190 million annual Relenza production GSK has committed to. From afar GSK’s Witty appears to be a sharp operator and all the noise and orders found on the net point to Relenza getting …

Today I linked in with a past colleague, boss, inspiration and guy to whom I at least once undelivered during my SAP days. This is for him, hopefully it’s a starting point for discussion.
Here’s my starting point for funds management (FM) in Australia. There are a few other excellent slides in the presentation. Three of the FM segments are ripe for disruption. Savy asset managers should be aiming to eliminate the middle man and increase their personal stickiness preferably with performance.

Smart consumers should be making this so for themselves right now. Eliminate …

Lynch said buy what you know. There was no company I knew better than SAP.