Newport. Its cool, menthol flavor has made it the preferred cigarette brand of many Americans, including over 50% of African-American smokers. And despite numerous efforts by the U.S. government to ban or further regulate menthol cigarettes (which are perceived as being even more addictive than traditional non-menthol cigarettes), Newport’s manufacturer, Lorillard (NYSE: LO) continues...
Read more →The makers of Jim Beam, Beam (BEAM), Inc. run a simple business. Their annual report is just 25 pages, only four of which are dedicated to financial data. Compare that with the annual report of American Tower, A telecom, which is roughly 185 pages delineating various agreements and plans. It’s evident that Beam wants...
Read more →With the housing market coming back, I want to talk about some of the organizational challenges contractors face in small communities. When repairing or augmenting a house, a perennial complaint by homeowners is that their contractors never show up, that poor service is performed, and that bad materials are used. Sole proprietor contractors face...
Read more →A few years ago, I made a pitch to a disaster recovery company. Their business model is pretty simple. When there’s a fire, flood or other calamitous event, this company coordinates all the services required to restore and repair the building. They’re a well-respected, regional company, and they do a pretty good job, I’m...
Read more →Lately, journalists and analysts have speculated about whether or not there is a new mortgage bubble in the United States. mREITs are at the focus of this debate, an asset management sector that has increased 20 fold in size since 2008. Traditional REITS are cash pools that speculate on physical real estate by buying...
Read more →It’s “Jobs Week” here at busybusyworld, and we’re blogging about employment in America. It’s one of our favorite topics! We all feel that underemployment has grown prevalent in the United States since the financial crisis of 2007, but the extent and impact are hard to quantify. As of March, The official measure of unemployment...
Read more →It’s “Jobs Week” here at busybusyworld, and we’re blogging about employment in America. It’s one of our favorite topics! One of President Obama’s second-term priorities is to persuade Congress to raise the U.S. minimum wage from $7.25 to $9.00 per hour. The politics of this debate are starkly polarized: 71% of Americans support a...
Read more →Carlos Slim’s America Movil (AMX) has been hit hard this week. the cause is a bill currently in Mexico’s congress that would dismantle the Coftel, Mexico’s current telecom regulator and replace it with an entirely new entity that would have much more power. Coftel’s primary focus would be reducing America Movil’s 70% grip on...
Read more →It may be fun to weigh the pros and cons of a high profile stock like Apple, but what about a more mundane company like Walgreens? Is it still a buy? Walgreens is one of the companies listed in the ETF XLP, which has jumped over 10% since the start of 2012. XLP has...
Read more →Basketball star Dennis Rodman’s 1997 contract with the Chicago Bulls remains one of the most famous sports negotiations in history. The Rodman contract is cited as an example of “the ability of contingency contracts to salvage deals” by authors Deepak Malhotra and Max H. Bazerman in their book Negotiation Genius: How To Overcome Obstacles...
Read more →The US Airways/American Airlines merger announced last month is the latest in a series of mergers among the failing “major carriers” in the United States. Heading into the merger, American Airlines is bankrupt already, and US Airways has been bankrupt two times. The merger is expected to bring cost reductions (i.e. job cuts) and...
Read more →American Tower (AMT) is a telecom company based in Boston, MA, that has demonstrated extraordinary equity growth over the last 5 years. It has risen nearly 100% from pre-financial crisis highs, appreciating 2.1% in the first month of 2013 alone. AMT owns and operates communications towers on an international scale and leases them to...
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