Brian White
Oklahoma City, OK - http://
Brian White is a strong advocate of value investing and index funds, but has known to hold an equity or two from time to time. Financially speaking, he's covered the Fortune 500 for six years in various reporting and writing positions and currently owns a business consulting company. Additionally, Mr. White holds BA and MBA degrees.
Posted Sep 8th 2008 10:00AM by Brian White
Filed under: Wal-Mart (WMT), Columns
Welcome to the 75th installment of The Wal-Mart Weekly, a column dedicated to bringing you insight, wit, facts, results, opinions, and just a bit of everything else when it comes to a very hot topic these days: Wal-Mart.
This week, let's examine Wal-Mart Stores Inc.'s (NYSE: WMT) quality control practices with the products it carries. Specifically, those items which could cause bodily injury or death due to the result of an accident. Unfortunately, an infant product was recently blamed for at least two deaths. Yes, I'm referencing the bassinet deaths you may have read about recently. As recently as last Tuesday, this recalled item was still being found on Wal-Mart shelves -- at least four full days after being recalled by the manufacturer, Simplicity.
The story of two infant deaths and the recall occurred in mid-August. So, why was this item still found on Wal-Mart shelves? Is there any excuse? It seems pretty simple: 1) manufacturer has a recall, 2) the recall is communicated to all Wal-Mart stores ASAP, and 3) a manager expeditiously removes all recalled products from the shelves. How hard can that be? If it's more complicated than that, then Wal-Mart has a broken process for recalls. this time, even two days appears to be a simply unacceptable timeframe to implement a recall of this nature. So, what happened?
Continue reading The Wal-Mart Weekly: Taking ownership of quality control and product support
Posted Sep 5th 2008 2:37PM by Brian White
Filed under: Rants and raves, Apple Inc (AAPL), Dell (DELL)
Dell, Inc. (NASDAQ:
DELL) founder and current CEO Michael Dell said this week at the Citigroup technology conference in New York that his company
may make a wireless smartphone.
Sigh. This rhetoric is getting ridiculous. I am sure Dell
hired former Motorola wireless division chieftain Ron Garriques to man the company's technical support lines. Note to Michael Dell: just announce a friggin' phone already and get over it.
In recent years (until about the end of 2007), Dell's formulaic "me too" stance in non-PC electronics like flat-screen televisions, MP3 players and others have fallen flat on their respective faces. When the company saw the market for PDAs dissolving into nothing, it stopped making its Axim line of Windows Mobile PDAs -- which were regarded by some as some of the nicer ones on the market. Yet, it has not replaced that PDA line with a smartphone that is very powerful but features voice calling plus 3G wireless data. In other words, it's way behind the market here. Ask
Apple, Inc. (NASDAQ:
AAPL) about its iPhone sales for more elaboration on this.
Dell himself stated at the Citigroup conference, "I think you will see us with small screen devices ... you'll see us with smaller and smaller devices that have capabilities of the devices you are referring to. Not in the near-term." What does that mean? Sometime in 2010 we'll see Dell with another me-too smartphone that's cookie-cutter and years behind the competition? If that's the plan, Dell's new smartphone had better be game-changing like Apple's iPhone was in 2007. If not, Dell's history of making commodity products will ring up another boring (but sellable and profitable) semi-winner.
Posted Sep 5th 2008 2:04PM by Brian White
Filed under: Products and services, Hewlett-Packard (HPQ)
Hewlett-Packard Corp. (NYSE:
HPQ) will soon be packaging one of its laptop PCs in a fabric bag instead of cardboard boxes after heeding partner
Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.'s (NYSE:
WMT) request to offer a more ecologically sound packing solution for the laptops it sells through the giant retailer. By making this packaging change, materials like foam, cardboard and plastic were reduced by 97%, according to HP.
The Hewlett-Packard Pavilion PC, which sells for $798 on Wal-Mart shelves, will probably see a lot of consumer traction for this move. The company has stated several times that it's really trying to become greener. In addition to partially powering some of its
San Diego-area buildings with solar power and
being green globally, packaging a good laptop seller at the world's largest retailer in ecologically-sound packaging will make an impression to those consumers paying attention.
But that's not the end -- HP can also ship 25% more laptops in each truck as a result of the packaging change, saving transportation costs in addition to landfill or recycling space. Now all the company has to do is make its packaging more of a marketing point than the commodity laptop PC being sold inside of it. If HP can manage that, it really will have a sales winner on its hands.
Posted Sep 4th 2008 12:05PM by Brian White
Filed under: Personal finance
Many individual investor trade on hope, fear, greed and gloom instead of strict self-discipline. How many can sell without having remorse as the share price goes higher? How many have it in them to sell at loss without hoping for a rebound?
Well,
SmartStops.net helps investors do just that. While there are many advice sites for individual investors available today, this one seems sorely needed by many. It helps investors place easy, set-it-and-forget-it stop-loss orders to ensure profits don't fizzle into thin air. If you want to sell at a specific price without sitting around watching share price movement in real-time all day long, this site can help.
But it isn't just some automatic sell trigger.
SmartStops.net has employed proprietary algorithms to make sure investors are advised --
well in advance -- of when to sell a stock or exchange-traded fund to ensure investing remains successful. At the conclusion of each trading day, SmartStops.net sends an email with stop points for both short- and long-term investing strategies on the stocks and ETF it covers.
The good news is that there is a free trial available from the company, and it's also in the process of partnering with online traders like TD Ameritrade to synchronize SmartStop with brokerage accounts.
It's worth checking out if you're into control of your own portfolio, but want the process to be taken care of at least semi-automatically. Besides, we all like a one-year free trial, right?
Posted Sep 4th 2008 10:18AM by Brian White
Filed under: Products and services, Apple Inc (AAPL), AT and T (T)
When
Apple, Inc. (NASDAQ:
AAPL) released the iPhone 3G back in July, little did it know (most likely) that the device would have issues worldwide connecting to 3G networks, causing consumer frustration on a level we've rarely seen with any Apple product. Well, some consumers have apparently given up and they're
moving back to the older, slower, original iPhone, which is causing a cottage industry to spring up around the older device.
NextWorth.com is charging $200 to $300 for a used iPhone (the non-3G kind), which is more than the price of the newer, sleeker and faster iPhone 3G. Why? There's demand -- and lots of it. Some customers don't want to be shackled to
AT&T, Inc. (NYSE:
T), the exclusive carrier for the iPhone and iPhone 3G in the U.S., as the original iPhone can be unlocked very easily using software tools found all over the internet. Once unlocked, the original iPhone can be used at any WiFi hotspot. There are no 3G connectivity issues either.
Does Apple have a problem now that the older, discontinued iPhone is still in hot demand? No. People using iPhones, new or old, reinforces the brand among other things, and Apple still made the original sale after all. If there is any loser here, it's AT&T. The largest wireless carrier in the U.S. still has the smallest nationwide 3G wireless network compared to its competitors. Launching a product with the magnitude of the iPhone 3G was just asking for problems given AT&T's network, and some informed customers don't want AT&T at all.
Posted Sep 3rd 2008 3:55PM by Brian White
Filed under: Deals, Products and services, Apple Inc (AAPL)
Apple, Inc.'s (NASDAQ:
AAPL) iPhone 3G continues to sell like gangbusters even with multiple issues and some furious customers. But, if Apple really is bent on selling
over 10 million of the now-iconic, do-everything handset, it may need to beef up its sales as best it can. Enter China Mobile.
That's right -- the wireless company that
has more subscribers than there are U.S. citizens may be selling the iPhone 3G soon, according to reports. And we're not talking gray market handsets, but an actual partnership between Apple and China Mobile. Talks between the two companies, according to the 21st Century Business Herald, are in "final stages."
China Mobile CEO Wang Jianzhou
stated this week at the ITU Telecom Asia 2008 exhibition in Bangkok that "Steve Jobs and I hope the iPhone will enter China as soon as possible ... we are discussing this issue, but we do not have an agreement." If Apple can get its do-everything handset into China Mobile, we've not seen anything yet in terms of iPhone 3G sales.
IPod sales
may be on the decline in the near future -- but can the iPhone 3G make up for that? We'll see.
Posted Sep 3rd 2008 10:55AM by Brian White
Filed under: Marketing and advertising, Best Buy (BBY), Circuit City Stores (CC)
Circuit City Stores Inc. (NYSE:
CC) is joining competitor
Best Buy Stores, Inc. (NYSE:
BBY) in trying to pump up the slumbering Blu-ray disc format by introducing many titles at up to half off. The latest promo puts many
Blu-ray movie titles at $14.99, a discount figure of up to 40%. The main reason: Blu-ray movie titles aren't exactly flying off the shelves these days, regardless of the high-definition resolution that fanatics claim make movies way more enjoyable.
Last week, I wrote about Best Buy's Blu-ray disc player price drop from $399.99 to $349.99, which was a complete non-event. The hardware manufacturers must
_MUST_ get Blu-ray hardware players down to under $200 or Blu-ray will never become mainstream. Of course, the manufacturers and retailers are trying to milk the early period with profits, which is a standard exercise. Promoting Blu-ray movie titles to $15 (and even $20) is a great way to drum up interest in the format. Circuit City's move here, while great, still won't make up for the fact that the hardware is still too expensive for mass appeal.
Toshiba (OTC:
TOSBF), the company that lost out in the high-definition disc format war to
Sony Corp.'s (NYSE:
SNE) Blu-ray, even rolled out a new upconverting standard DVD player so that consumers could watch existing DVDs in near-HD format if they didn't want to invest in Blu-ray's expensive hardware prices just yet. So far, the retailers championing the Blu-ray format are promoting the format well, but it will need much more before becoming a mass format like DVD has become. Is standard DVD good enough for you? Sound off in comments below and let me know.
Posted Sep 3rd 2008 10:15AM by Brian White
Filed under: Hewlett-Packard (HPQ), Employees
Hewlett-Packard Corp. (NYSE:
HPQ) spared no expense this past Monday when it brought
job cuts to a Boise, Idaho printing and imaging facility. On Labor Day, the world's largest PC manufacturer said, "In some cases, parts of IPG's business will experience reductions while investments will be made in high growth segments of the business. These decisions will be made at the level of the global business unit and are not specific to HP sites." Standard corporate-speak in relation to business unit realignment and reorganization, eh?
HP
announced this reorganization back in June, so it should come as no surprise. Idaho's Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act states that companies laying off 500 or more employees must provide 60 days notice to affected employees or face a fine equal to a cumulative amount reflective of 60 days pay times the number of employees being laid off. Sources inside HP apparently stated that the company is giving affected employees six weeks to find another position within the company before being given a pink slip.
HP continues to lead the pack when it comes to the manufacturing of PCs as well as printing and imaging equipment. This recent reorganization will realign HP's current five business units inside its IPG (Imaging and Printing Group) to three business units to maximize efficiency out of the entire section of HP's business. HP was pretty adamant in June that layoffs
would not be coming to its Boise operations as an effect of something negative in the company's business, but as a result of business unit realignment.
Posted Aug 31st 2008 12:03PM by Brian White
Filed under: Wal-Mart (WMT), Columns
Welcome to the 74th installment of The Wal-Mart Weekly, a column dedicated to bringing you insight, wit, facts, results, opinions, and just a bit of everything else when it comes to a very hot topic these days: Wal-Mart.
This week, I'll be taking a look at whether Wal-Mart Stores Inc.'s (NYSE: WMT) attempts to fend off unions in its stores can continue succeeding. With Labor Day occurring in the U.S. tomorrow, it seemed appropriate to delve a little into Wal-Mart's potential labor union situation in its U.S. stores based on small gains being made in Canadian Wal-Mart locations.
North of the U.S. border, there has been a successful attempt to unionize Wal-Mart workers in the province of Quebec. Although the location is small, the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) union sees it as an entry point into unionizing more Wal-Mart Supercenters in Canada.
With critics saying that the entry of Wal-Mart into many markets (if not all) has caused wages to go down and competition to deteriorate, the heat won't go down on Wal-Mart's fending off collective unions in its Canadian stores. And, when the heat gets hot enough, the UFCW and others will set their sights on U.S. locations -- the holy grail of organized labor potential if there ever was one. Wal-Mart isn't taking those threats lying down, and has even called meetings with U.S. managers to bring the upcoming Presidential election into the fray.
Continue reading The Wal-Mart Weekly: Taking a look at unionization within Wal-Mart
Posted Aug 29th 2008 11:00AM by Brian White
Filed under: Earnings reports, Wal-Mart (WMT), Target Corp. (TGT), Sears Holdings (SHLD)
Just as soon as
Sears Holdings (NYSE:
SHLD)
re-arranged deck chairs on the Titanic, the retailer, headed by hedge-fund guru Eddie Lampert, reported another absolutely
dismal quarter Thursday morning. In 2008, shares in Sears Holdings have sunk 36% as the retailer continued to report quarter after quarter of sluggish sales, declining revenue and underinvestment in its retail locations.
Lampert's idea of cutting investment in stores to boost actual investment returns has failed, and failed miserably. One thing customers respond to is constant change in their shopping environment, and this is where Sears has failed. Its stores look the exact same as they did four years ago. Even the logo has not changed.
Retailers like
Target Corp. (NYSE:
TGT) and
Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. (NYSE:
WMT) apparently know way better how to get seasonal and high-request goods to their stores. They do it in a fashion that turns inventory and makes sales far better than Sears' manages with its current grip on retail. In fact, I am not sure Sears even has a current grip of retail. It's a goldfish (albeit a large one) nearing the top of the fishbowl. With Lampert's track record, one would think he would have made changes a year ago. He has not, and Sears continues to flounder badly.
The Wall Street Journal thinks Lampert should go, and go now. What do you think?
Even Lampert's acumen in taking out pieces of an investment and selling for a profit hasn't worked out. What about selling off a good portion of its real estate holdings under the combined Sears/KMart umbrella to help make a profit? Even that time has passed though. Lampert's original prediction for Sears Holdings has failed, and unfortunately he won't be adding this experiment to his resume that includes the years-ago notion that
he was the next Warren Buffett.
Posted Aug 29th 2008 9:42AM by Brian White
Filed under: Deals, Google (GOOG), Microsoft (MSFT), Yahoo! (YHOO), Marketing and advertising
Sheldon suggested the other day that
Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ:
MSFT) should split off its web search and services arm so that it could fit better with a possible
Yahoo, Inc. (NASDAQ:
YHOO) combination. Instead of entertaining that notion, Microsoft still has some cash to spend to ensure, for now at least, it still has a growing presence in the web search and e-commerce arena.
To that end, the company announced this morning that it will
spend $486 million to purchase Greenfield Online, Inc. (NASDAQ:
SRVY) as it swiped an earlier takeover offer from the Quadrangle Group with its $15.50 per share offer. Microsoft's offer of $17.50 per share is a 10% premium over Greenfield's closing price this past Monday, when the offer was received without Greenfield knowing the origin. That is, until today.
Microsoft wants control of www.ciao.com, one of Europe's leading price comparison shopping search engines. Does Microsoft really think owning a leading consumer review and price shopping search engine will bolster its Microsoft Live platform? Since it couldn't compete in the U.S. against
Google, Inc. (NASDAQ:
GOOG), perhaps Microsoft is turning to international purchases as a second competitive act. Greenfield also has an "internet survey solutions" division that Microsoft will sell to an undisclosed buyer.
Posted Aug 28th 2008 12:24PM by Brian White
Filed under: Analyst reports, Deals, AT and T (T), Sprint Nextel Corp (S)
Sprint Nextel Corp. (NYSE:
S) seems to be on the mend from a perception standpoint. CEO Dan Hesse is still running television advertisements with his direct email address and a personal message to potential Sprint subscribers. The cellular carrier has a refined, electric image and has a decent competitor to
Apple, Inc.'s (NASDAQ:
AAPL) iPhone. Is it still in bad financial shape? That answer would be yes, as it continues to lose customers every single quarter.
While a
Sprint/T-Mobile partnership was rumored this summer, the technology used
between the two companies is incompatible. From a layman's perspective, it's precisely the problem that doomed the Sprint acquisition of Nextel. To this day, the brands still operate independently in many ways. That's been a death knell for the company, while larger competitor
AT&T, Inc. (NYSE:
T) perfectly merged its network with the now-gone Cingular over a few years. Still, would T-Mobile really want to team up with Sprint? Only if Sprint jettisons the Nextel brand and network sometime in 2008.
Analyst Christopher Larsen with Credit Suisse makes a
decent argument for Sprint and Nextel parting ways as soon as possible, citing the recent $3 billion fund raiser Sprint announced. Could an impending corporate divorce be in the works? Sprint has already
written off tens of billions in the bungled Nextel merger, but it could raise over $7.5 billion by selling Nextel.
Still, with the third- and fourth-largest wireless players (Sprint and T-Mobile, respectively) ripe for consolidation, combining two very different networks better work if there's even a hint of a future combination between the two. But right now, that may be the only choice: Verizon Wireless and AT&T are kicking butt in the wireless market in the U.S.
Posted Aug 28th 2008 11:44AM by Brian White
Filed under: Products and services, Ford Motor (F)
Ford Motor Co. (NYSE:
F), which is
reconfiguring plants from producing unpopular trucks and SUVs to fuel-efficient passenger cars, will now be
trimming its nationwide automobile dealerships as sales continue to lose steam. High fuel prices and shifting consumer sentiment towards smaller cars are only some of the reasons for the sales decline.
Ford executives believe that more Ford dealerships (along with Ford brands Mercury and Lincoln) will have to consolidate to survive. Ford is right -- there is no way a huge, overwhelming national network of dealers can exist when sales don't. Expect dealers to start amalgamating as Ford's
Way Forward plan continues taking longer than expected.
2007 stats tell the tale: Four thousand Ford, Lincoln and Mercury dealers sold an average of 590 vehicles in 2007.
Toyota Motor Co.'s (NYSE:
TM) 1,400 dealers in the U.S. sold 1,766 vehicles in 2007. Quite the contrast. Ford has managed to make about 400 weaker dealers combine with stronger ones since initiating a program to do just that in 2005. Looks like incentives to speed up profitable dealer concentrations will have to become much sweeter as sales continue to flop as badly as a corner lemonade stand in winter.
Posted Aug 27th 2008 1:20PM by Brian White
Filed under: Products and services, Ford Motor (F)
Ford Motor Co. (NYSE:
F) will refit an existing truck plant in Michigan to manufacture smaller cars. Cost: $75 million. This comes on the heels of one of the worst years ever for large American automakers, which still can't cope with rapidly changing consumer desires for fuel-efficient transportation instead of gas guzzling SUVs and large trucks.
As
Georges indicated recently, Ford will need massive plant retooling to get its bottom line back in shape as it produces the product mix consumers are looking for. This is a good step for Ford, even though it will be costly. The $75 million price is minor considering the cost of doing nothing.
Ford says the production of newer, fuel-efficient cars at the Michigan plant will begin in a few months, with completion sometime in 2010. It's also moving 1,000 of the employees from that plant to another one in Wayne, Michigan to increase production of the 4-cylinder Ford Focus sedan. Since Ford spent $300 million just three years ago to build the plant to be flexible, this should speed the conversion, according to the automaker.
It's just too bad that Ford can't unveil more small car production in November instead of just starting to convert a plant for a few years down the road.
Posted Aug 27th 2008 12:20PM by Brian White
Filed under: Products and services, Launches, Google (GOOG)
Google, Inc. (NASDAQ:
GOOG) unveiled its Ad Manager advertising management platform this week after a beta release in June. This platform allows website operators to manage advertising inventory, tracking and ROI. And the price is right -- there is none -- which fits into Google's history of giving away some key products for free.
Google's Ad Manager public release is significant because it will allow almost anyone to set up and use both direct and network-based advertising to help eliminate costs and pump up revenue -- even if the ads aren't from Google's massively popular AdSense or AdWords program.
However, Google is making it super easy for website publishers to integrate its AdSense platform directly into its Ad Manager product. This was pretty obvious from day one as Google continues to recruit more ad customers into its universe to grow its own ad revenue. Ad revenue, still, is the biggest single component of Google's income.
Continue reading Google unveils Ad Manager system for use by anyone
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The Wal-Mart Weekly: Taking ownership of quality control and product support
