Monday, March 28, 2011

L'industrie canadienne du jeu vidéo dans le top 3 mondial

Selon le Entertainment Software Association of Canada l'industrie canadienne du jeu vidéo a eu 1,8 milliard de revenus en 2010 prenant ainsi la troisième position mondiale.

-Il y a 14 000 employés dans cette industrie au Canada.
-Après une croissance de 30% en 2010, la croissance devrait être autour de 29% dans les trois prochaines années.
-Il y a 247 firmes.
-Ils ont en moyenne 57 employés.

Le rapport complet peut être téléchargé au http://www.theesa.ca/documents/essential_facts_2010.pdf

Louis Rhéaume
Infocom Intelligence
louis@infocomintelligence.com

Sunday, March 27, 2011

US group-buying industry (ie. Groupon) should reach around $3 billion in 2011

According to Local Offer Network the US group-buying industry (ie. Groupon and LivingSocial) should reach around $2.7 billion in 2011 from $1.1 billion in 2010. The number of deals being offered were about 63,000 deals in the U.S. through group buying sites. Just in the first quarter of 2011, there will be an estimated 40,000. Groupon accounts for less than half of those published deals.

The main categories of products and services are Food and Drink (27%), Beauty, Spa & Massage (19%), Fitness & nutrition (7%), Sports & Recreation (7%), and Home Products & Services (5%). The biggest cities for daily deals are Chicago (where Groupon is based), New York City, San Francisco, Boston, and LA.

The report by Local Offer Network can be found below.

Group Deals Industry Report

Louis Rhéaume
Infocom Intelligence
louis@infocomintelligence.com

Friday, March 25, 2011

Article on telecom operator Telenor published on Seeking Alpha

Our article on telecom operator Telenor was published on Seeking Alpha.

http://seekingalpha.com/article/260202-telenor-asa-still-has-attractive-valuation

Tuesday, March 15, 2011

Cavium Networks Acquires Quality Assets at Cheap Price in Turbulent Sector

Our article about Cavium Networks and WAVESAT has been published at Seeking Alpha:

http://seekingalpha.com/article/258250-cavium-networks-acquires-quality-assets-at-cheap-price-in-turbulent-sector

Sunday, March 13, 2011

Quebecor: some recent great news

Quebecor (QBR-B.TO or QBCAF.PK) is a company in the Consumer discretionary sector and Publishing industry. It operates media businesses primarily through subsidiary Quebecor Media Inc. with activities in cable distribution, residential and business telecommunications, newspapers, broadcasting, retailing of books, magazines and videos, publishing and distribution, recording and distribution of music, the Internet and new media.

Fundamentals
Market Cap 2.3B Beta 0.19
Revenue (FYR) $3.8B EPS (TTM) $4.05
Shares Out. 64.3M Book Value $18.20
Dividend Yield 0.57% P/E 8.7x
Div/Share $0.20 Price/Sales (FYR) 0.6
Ex-Div Date 11/24/10 P/Cash Flow (TTM) 2.3x
Pay Date 12/21/10 Operating Margin 33.77%
Data delayed at least 15 minutes.

Segmented Data: 12 months ended Dec. 31/09
Revenue by industry
News media: 27.2%
Leisure & entertainment: 8.1%
Interactive technologies: 2.4%
Broadcasting: 11.6%
Telecommunications: 52.9%
Head office & intersegment: -2.3%

Operating income by industry
News media: 15.6%
Leisure & entertainment: 2.0%
Interactive technologies: 0.3%
Broadcasting: 6.3%
Telecommunications: 76.2%
Head office & intersegment: -0.4%

Capital expenditures by industry
News media: 6.8%
Leisure & entertainment: 0.7%
Interactive technologies: 0.6%
Broadcasting: 3.3%
Telecommunications: 87.8%
Head office: 0.8%
Forecasts provided by Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S - Updated weekly

Consensus Recommendation of 13 Analysts Buy
Consensus Target Price of 13 Analysts $43.50

Dvai Ghose of Canaccord Genuity has a buy rating on the stock relying mostly on its medium to long term prospects.



The stock is facing more competitive pressures and some segments are reaching maturity. Thus cable margins are near its peak, but cable telephony still has some potential. The cyclical recovery in the media advertising is also near its peak. Free cash flows are decreasing because of important capital investments in a 3.5G+ wireless network. Cash flows went from $321M in 2009 to $175M in 2010 (forecast). Mr. Ghose expects cash flows per share of $1.30 to $2.25 in 2011, $3.13 in 2012 and $4.11 in 2013.

Per Share Data QBR.B Industry

Earnings (TTM) $4.05 $1.89
Book Value $18.20 $17.97

Valuation

Price/Earnings 8.7x 15.4x
Price/Sales (FYR) 0.6x 1.6x
Price/Book (MRQ) 1.9x 2.6x
Price/Cash Flow (TTM) 2.3x 12.4x



Profitability (TTM)

Gross Margin 18.24% 9.94%
Operating Margin 33.77% 21.65%
Profit Margin 14.18% 8.09%
Mgmt Effectiveness (TTM)
Return on Assets 8.99% 6.77%
Return on Equity 26.87% 12.17%
Return on Investment 14.19% 8.39%
Dividend (TTM)
Annual Dividend Rate 0.20 0.64
Dividend Yield 0.57% 2.26%
Payout Ratio 0.1x 0.7x
Financial Strength (MRQ)
Debt to Capital 61.49% 29.28%
Current Ratio 1.0x 1.5x
Quick Ratio 0.7x 0.8x

Size

Market Cap $2.3B $1.0B
Revenue $3.8B $19.8B
Shares Outstanding 64.3M 631.3M
Employees 15,710 75,377


Mr. Ghose forecasts that Quebecor could increase significantly the dividend (actually $0.20$ per share) in 2012 and suggests a price target of $45. With an actual price of $34.90 it would represents a 29% return. The valuation measures compared to industry are much lower while profitability measures are higher. Furthermore, price the target of Mr. Ghose was made before two important press releases Quebecor this week.

1. Quebecor and its journalist ended a 2 years lock-out at Journal de Montréal, where the employer won important concessions from the employees (i.e. from 260 employees it would now be 62).

2. Since today, it is officially involve in the construction of a new arena in Quebec City where they will be the name sponsor and the manager of the building. They are betting on the acquisition of a NHL franchise and could made important benefits from events at the arena. Evenko, the event company of the Montreal Canadiens’ owners (Molson family) is making a lot of money in the second most used arena in North America (Bell Centre). The investment is $33M for the name without a hockey team and an annual rent of $3.15M or $63.5M with a hockey team and an annual rent of $5M.

With a better product portfolio of smartphones, Videotron (telephony division) will obtain more subscribers in the Canadian market, which is also one of the most expensive markets in the world for wireless packages. Cable telephony is still also in the growth stage. Investments in capital expenditures for the wireless networks is reducing Earnings per Share, but it is temporary.

Louis Rhéaume
Infocom Intelligence
Louis@infocomintelligence.com

Tuesday, March 08, 2011

The mobile computing revolution is a seismic shift

The mobile computing revolution is a seismic shift, according to Nvidia CEO. This chip designer firm is betting heavily on transformation of the infocom industries, whci is PC-centric toward mobile computing. It took PCs around 15 years to fully disrupt the minicomputer and mainframe business. But mobile computing is changing the world faster and will likely disrupt the PC and server markets in a much shorter time, driven by demand for smartphones and tablets. Those tablets and smartphones are much more powerful than 3 years ago and tend to be cheaper, favorising their wide global adoption even in emerging markets.

According to CEO Jen-Hsun Huang, the software makers are moving to smartphones and tablets because that is where the opportunity for bigger sales is. Those software makers are moving very quickly to the best operating systems and hardware, because the shift toward mobile computing is happening faster. Other trends such as cloud computing are accelerating this shift.

Source: VentureBeat

Louis Rhéaume
Infocom Intelligence
louis@infocomintelligence.com

Monday, March 07, 2011

Skype will have a business model with advertising



Skype has just announced that they will provide occasional advertising to their subscribers.
Ads will be targeted only in the U.S., the U.K. and Germany at first. This would bring more revenue in preparation for a IPO (Initial Public Offering).

Skype says it has now 663 million subscribers and 8.8 million paid subscribers. Skype users made 207 billion minutes of voice and video calls during 2010, and in the fourth quarter, video calls accounted for approximately 42 percent of all Skype-to-Skype minutes. Furthermore, users sent more than 176 million text messages via Skype.

Revenues grew to $860 million for the year ended Dec. 31, up from $719 million in 2009 (combining the 2009 results of Skype pre-spinoff from eBay and post-spinoff). The company is still not making profit: it had a net loss of $6.9 million.

According to Skype's management their is a risk: "our users may respond negatively to receiving advertisements through their Skype software client, which could negatively and materially affect user engagement, our Skype brand and our results of operations.”

Skype admits that negative publicity around the temporary shut down of its network for a day (last year), might hurt its ability to launch a product targeting businesses: “As we increasingly introduce products particularly targeted at enterprise customers, for whom system stability is a critical factor, any system failures could have a significant impact on our ability to attract or maintain our relationships with enterprise customers.”

Source: http://newenterprise.allthingsd.com/20110307/skype-updates-its-pre-ipo-numbers-plans-to-sell-display-ads/

Louis Rhéaume
Infocom Intelligence
louis@infocomintelligence.com

What strategy should use print media with their online media?

According to Emily Bell, professor of journalism at Columbia University, print media owners should provide more power to managers of their online media properties. Miss Bell was director at the successful journal The Guardian. This journal launched a digital version and gave a lot of exposure to online citizen journalism, similarly to the Huffington Post. Both digital newspapers allowed anyone to submit opinion or commentary pieces and have their blog posts run just besides the traditional columnists employed by the papers.

Several media players view their online division as risky. According to Miss Bell, it is their print division which is more risky in the medium and long term.

“Its useful to have the digital skills,” she said, “but it is more important to have a digital mindset.”

Source:
http://gigaom.com/2011/03/04/newspapers-need-to-be-of-the-web-not-just-on-the-web/

Louis Rhéaume
Infocom Intelligence
louis@infocomintelligence.com

Saturday, March 05, 2011

Groupe iWeb sera privatisé

Il y a 2 ans, dans un commentaire précédant je recommandais fortement le Groupe iWeb (IWB.TO)
http://infocomanalysis.blogspot.com/2009/01/le-groupe-iweb-le-futur-wal-mart-de.html

Hier, la direction a annoncé que la compagnie serait privatisée à 1.50$ l'action avec une offre d'un fonds d'investissement, qui est supporté par les principaux actionnaires (qui sont aussi les dirigeants). Comme Netgraphe, il y a quelques années, qui a été privatisé par Quebecor, le secteur Internet est en forte croissance et les nouveaux propriétaires vont garder 100% de tous les futurs profits du Groupe iWeb en retirant la compagnie de la bourse. Je suis client et actionnaire du Groupe iWeb depuis 2007 et j'en suis très satisfait des 2 côtés.

Le titre a été recommandé dans ce blogue à 0.70$ et rapportera 114% à ceux qui l'ont acheté à ce prix, il y a 2 ans.

Louis Rhéaume
Infocom Intelligence
louis@infocomintelligence.com

Wednesday, March 02, 2011

Forrester forecast an Apps market of $38 billion by 2015

With the exponential growth in the smartphone and tablet sales, applications should reach $38 billion by 2015. The market exists only since four years, with the launch of the iPhone. They are competing now with Google’s Android Market, Microsoft’s Apps Marketplace, BlackBerry’s App Place and HP’s Palm App Catalog. Apple’s iOS platform, offers apps for the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad, has around 350,000 apps. In 2010, mobile applications accounted for $1.7 billion in revenue globally. Mobile apps downloads jumped from 300 million in 2009 to 5 billion in 2010.


Apps are forecasted to become more ubiquitous like the GPS application on smartphones, or the new Near-field communication technology. By 2015, app sales for tablet devices alone are expected to reach $8.1 billion — way up from the roughly $300 million generated by tablet apps in 2010.

Forrester predict also that apps will push a new era of cloud computing, where content is stored online and accessible across multiple devices at any given time. Apple should lose important market share in apps in future years, but will still experience decent growth in apps revenues.

Louis Rhéaume
Infocom Intelligence
louis@infocomintelligence.com