Mohawk Industries Becomes Worldwide Leader In Ceramic Tile

Read the whole article at Seeking Alpha: 

>>Last week, Mohawk Industries (MHK) finally announced the acquisition of Marazzi Group, the fifth largest producer, in volume, in the ceramic tile industry. The combination of Mohawk's existing ceramic tile division, Dal Tile, and Marazzi Group creates the largest ceramic tile company in the world as far as revenues.

The first rumors about the deal spread out about one month ago, when the Italian financial magazine "Il Mondo" reported that advanced negotiations were in the works (link, in Italian). Seeking Alpha was the first English speaking source to talk about the deal, also supplying added information about the acquisition target, soon followed by Reuters and other news feeds.

The market reacted positively to the acquisition, and the stock gained 4.88% on Friday, on a down day for most securities.

Rumor Has It: Is Mohawk Industries Eyeing Marazzi Group?

Read the whole article at Seeking Alpha: 

>>According to an article published over the weekend by the Italian financial magazine "Il Mondo", Mohawk Industries (MHK) is in advanced talks to acquire the Italian based Marazzi Group, one of the world leaders in the design, manufacture and sales of ceramic tiles.

Some background for Marazzi Group and the Italian Ceramic Tile District

Marazzi Ceramiche was established in 1935 in Sassuolo, in the province of Modena, an area that later developed into the Italian ceramic tile district, where roughly 80% of all Italian tiles are produced in a relatively small region including nearby cities of Maranello, Fiorano (more famous as Ferrari is headquartered and has its testing circuit there), Castellarano and Casalgrande.

The Transition From Legacy IT And Its Potential Consequences On Microsoft

Read the whole post at Seeking Alpha: 

>The transition from Legacy IT (PC-based) to Hybrid IT (PCs + Smartphones + Tablets) is on the way, and, according to some experts, it will soon lead to a new future called Next Gen IT (Smartphones + Tablets mainly).
PC companies have adopted several strategies to deal with this new landscape, including creating new categories like "ultrabooks" and other ultra-thin notebooks to drive sales, or reducing prices to lure more customers. Unfortunately for them, PC shipments are set to decline in 2012 for the first time in 11 years, according to iSuppli, and smartphone sales beat those of PCs for the first time ever in 2011, while recent tweets from Asymco's Horace Dediu seem to paint an even darker picture for PC producers - and Microsoft (MSFT), the absolute leader in PC software sales.
Microsoft and the Gang of Four

Focus Media LBO Offer: Betting On The Timing Rather Than The Outcome Of The Proposed Deal

Read the whole article at Seeking Alpha: 

>>Focus Media (FMCN) is the dominant advertising-display agency in China, operating approximately 170,000 flat-panel displays in about 90,000 buildings all over 90 Chinese cities.
The company recently received a $3.1 billion buyout offer backed by the company chairman and several key investors like Citic Capital Partners (a company associated with CITIC Group, synonymous of the Chinese sovereign wealth fund), FountainVest Partners (lead by Frank Tang, who used to head China investments for Temasek, the Singapore Sovereign Wealth Fund) and private-equity giant Carlyle. The company's largest shareholder, Fosun International, seems supportive of the deal.

TeleCity Group delivers a solid 1H 2012, acquires Tenue Oy, a Finnish data centre operator

Read the whole post at TR: 

>>Today, TeleCity Group announced its results for the first half of 2012.


In line with expectations, the company delivered solid growth both in revenues and EBITDA.

Here is a quick look at some of the highlights:

Nokia's Better-Than-Expected Cash Performance A Trap For Investors?

Read the whole article at Seeking Alpha: 

>>Nokia (NOK) recently delivered mixed earnings, which surprised investors, on the positive side, thanks to the company's strong net cash balance of €4.2B ($ 5B) at quarter's end, marginally down from €4.9B ($5.9B) in Q1 2012, in spite of a net loss of €1.41B ($ 1.7B) in the quarter.
The stock bounced on the news, to give back most of its gains the following day.

Greece Euro Exit: Free Will Or Fate, The European Way?

Read the whole article at Seeking Alpha: 

>>In Greek mythology the Moirai were the goddesses of fate, who personified the inescapable destiny awaiting each human being.
Zeus, however, was the only god obeyed by the Moirai, as he had the power to change everyone's fortune. In other words, in the world of ancient Greece fate did not just happen, as the chief sky-deity could interfere and engineer a different destiny. For the better or for the worse…

Bond Fair Pricing, YTM, Risk and CDS Calculator

Bond Fair Pricing, YTM, Risk and CDS Calculator

An easy-to-use tool to calculate a bond fair pricing, its YTM or get a risk indicator (CDS spread) for any issuer.

The application is structured into two parts.

The first part of the application calculates the "fair pricing" of a bond given a few basic inputs, like CDS spread (issuer risk), coupon, coupon frequency and maturity value and date.
The "fair pricing" is a relatively complex calculation that combines the perceived risk of the issuer with the assumed (and updated) risk-free asset (AAA government bonds for European issuers or Treasury bonds for US Companies), and resulting in a price indication, that, however, does not take liquidity into consideration.

The second part of the application calculates the CDS spread based on inputs like coupon, coupon frequency, issuer price, market price and maturity date and value.
Knowing the updated CDS spread for a specific issuer may be useful as it allows an immediate comparison with other issuers (both in the same sector or in different sectors), or even sovereign issuers – which can also be calculated with this tool.

KEY FEATURES
- Calculate a specific bond’s fair pricing based on a few simple inputs.
- Estimate the up-to-date market default risk (CDS) associated with a bond issuer, based on simple inputs related to one (or more) of its bonds.
- Accurate YTM available in both calculations.



Available at this link. 

Gramercy Capital Corporation: An Edward De Bono Stock

Read the whole article at Seeking Alpha:

>>Gramercy Capital Corporation (GKK) is an interesting stock that should offer investors a limited downside, due to its strong cash position, while potentially representing, on the upside, a kind of an "option" on the turnaround of commercial real estate property in the USA.Some lateral thinking, however, rather than a more classical investing approach, may be necessary/useful to understand why the company, in spite of its recent near-death experience, can belong to the "value investing" category, although some risks that could derail the happy ending still exist. Patience may also be required, as the story doesn't really seem close to get a catalyst.

There are several interesting articles about this stock on the Internet that we suggest you should read, including Plan Maestro's analysis, available also here on Seeking Alpha (I, II), as well as a recent post by Laminar Capital Management - we'll try to add to this commentary our view and an update to the most recent Q4 2011 results.

Avoid PIIGS Sovereign Bonds

Read the whole article at Seeking Alpha:

>>We live interesting times, here in old Europe.

The recent decision by the ECB to convert the Greek bonds it owns into new securities, issued in 2012 and so excluded from the debt swap offer, created an interesting new category: 'The More Equal Than Others bondholder'.

Happy Halloween

Looking for Turnaround Investments in the Automotive Sector

Read the whole article at Seeking Alpha:

>>The automotive industry crisis of 2008–2010 forced several producers and most sector suppliers to deeply restructure their operations, especially in the USA.

The government bailouts of both General Motors (GM) and Chrysler made the headlines, but several other companies had to go through a severe re-thinking of their activity, which often meant using Chapter 11 as a tool to reduce both their debt and their cost structure. In some cases, these companies also re-emerged under a new management team.

Does it make sense to look for good opportunities in these post-emergence entities?

What Does Amazon Web Services' Price Cutting Means for Investors?

Read the whole article at Seeking Alpha:

>>In our previous article about Amazon (AMZN) Web Services (AWS) we tried to cover a few key reasons why the company is becoming the 800 pound gorilla in cloud computing, which we'll continue to look at here:

• Market share leader, with no competition in sight (Coke without a Pepsi);
• Strong customer demand;
• Infrastructure already deployed in all key world regions (both from a data center and peering point of view);
• Three-digit growth rates year-over-year (Y/Y), judging from some recent data released.

we're back

Due to a short trip abroad, the blog was quiet in the last few days. Back to normal.

Tech Press Reacts to Equinix Acquisition of Switch and Data

Thanks to Web Host Industry Review and David Hamilton for the mention.

You can read the full article at this link.

Google Chrome vs Microsoft Windows

Google Chrome vs Microsoft Windows

by Federico Fieni. HT to Seeking Alpha.

a nice break, indeed... :-)

taking a few days off...

the blog will be back around March 9...

Google "every site might harm your computer" warning

I guess it's time for a few jokes following Google "every site might harm your computer" warning:

http://i39.tinypic.com/ac9qp.jpg

from Nanog:

>>I am cynical; I would guess that there is some for-pay "web site blessed by Google"
certificate coming.

some feed back...

Thanks to Rob and Rich for their mentions...

Telecom Rumblings:

Supply and Demand in the Colo Sector

Data Center Knowledge:

Are Colocation Prices Heading Higher?

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Wishing all my readers a Merry Christmas and a Happy and Proficuous 2009... let's hope this is over...