Value Fail: SuperValu

When I brought up SuperValu (SVU) as a potential value investment a few years ago, many of you warned me against it. I wish I had listened! The grocer got squeezed on all fronts, including but not limited to: food inflation, competition, and perhaps most importantly, debt.

Getting Schooled By Career Education Corp

The for-profit education sector has been hit hard by the market, and for good reason. This industry utilized dishonest marketing practices and drove its enormous growth using massive amounts of federal funding that was rubber stamped by public servants asleep at the wheel. But the party's now over; new rules and additional oversight have pushed many companies in this sector into the red, causing massive losses. But has the market overreacted? Perhaps in some cases. For example, Career Education Corp (NASDAQ: CECO) trades at a 43% discount to its net cash position!

Heidrick & Struggles

I like buying into businesses with variable cost structures. These kinds of companies have somewhat of a protected downside; when things go south, costs can be removed such that the firm may remain profitable, subject to a period of adjustment. Executive search firm Heidrick & Struggles (HSII), which saw its shares fall 20% on Tuesday, appears to have such a model.

Filings Notification (Canada and US)

I'm excited to announce some new features on conferencecalltranscripts.org. The grandest new feature is the ability for users to receive notifications not just when a company has a new transcript, but when it issues a new filing as well. This applies for Canadian and US companies for now. As far as I know, this is the only place where you can get free notifications when Canadian-listed companies make regulatory filings; hopefully you find this feature as useful as I have! Click the "Get Notified" tab on the homepage to create/edit your portfolio (or click here) and select whether you want to receive notifications on filings.

In addition, some functionality was added so that you can opt to receive notifications on transcripts only when the transcript is free. Quite a few event transcripts cost more than $100 to purchase, and if you don't want to be notified when such a transcript exists, you now have that option on your portfolio page.

And finally, you can now fit (hopefully?) your entire portfolio onto the site. Restrictions have been removed such that you can now add up to 50 companies into your portfolio.

So to summarize, conferencecalltranscripts.org is now a site where you can view company filings and earnings call transcripts (no matter where they may be on the web), get notified when a new transcript/filing is issued (for up to 50 companies), and choose to receive notifications only when free content is available.

As always, if you have any more suggestions on how the site could be more useful to you, please let me know!

Why Nations Fail

I recently had the pleasure of reading Why Nations Fail by Daron Acemoglu. It is an excellent book that I recommend to everyone interested in what makes some states wealthy and others poor and battle-torn.

USA Mobility: Cheap, But For How Long?

Though the market has risen considerably over the last few months, not every stock has been lifted by the tide. Shares of cash-cow USA Mobility (USMO) have flat-lined. As cash has continued to accrue, the valuation has become more compelling. USA Mobility now appears on the Magic Formula screener, both because it is cheap (P/E of 6), and because it generates strong returns on capital (2011 ROE of 40%).

Bloopers at Blyth

Herbalife (HLF) has been under the microscope lately as large money managers have taken turns offering their opinions (backed by capital) of where the stock is going. But all multi-level marketing (MLM) firms have been affected, as if you buy into the short thesis of Herbalife, it's not a stretch to envision the same circumstances taking down a company like Blyth (BTH), which sells a similar product (Visalus, for weight loss) in a similar way (MLM) to the same market.

But while Herbalife got a boost from all the longs that jumped in after its price fell, shares of Blyth aren't far from their 52-week lows, despite the market run-up. Shares have been pushed down by short-sellers; in fact, Blyth leads the market in terms of short-interest, with short-interest representing a whopping 63% of its float! But this is a profitable, 35 year-old company that trades at a P/E under 7!