12
Or filter by symbol:
David Tsao's Comments Stream Stats
- 49 Comments, 2
, 0 
- Total Comment Stream rating - = 2
- Free E-Newsletters
- About Seeking Alpha
- About Us
- Contact Us
- What's New
- Readers Feedback
- Advertise With Us
- Contributors
- Contribute an Article
- Feature Your Book
- Our Contributors
- Anonymous Contributions
- Dispute an Article?
- Legal
- Terms of Use
- Privacy
- Copyright
Quick Take: Herman Miller Inc.
The company does have an R&D expense, but it averages at a low 2.4% over the past 10 years. I wouldn't worry so much about their secured notes due in 2011. The company has available to them a $250mm line of credit, and recently announced job cuts to keep operating costs in check. These are tough times for any company, but as long as they can survive with their core talent in check and keep their continued focus on managing operating costs, they will come out ok. Brian Walker has done a good job managing the companies costs through their HMPS initiative (Herman Miller Production System)... basically lean manufacturing. The results show. During 2008 as commodity prices went through the roof, the company managed to fight through to protect operating margins. The effects of the high commodity costs were to show up in the last quarter, but they didn't.
The only misstep they made was jacking up the prices on their products to combat high raw materials cost. I hope that they didn't open up too many hedging contracts for steel back when prices were high.
They fought the commodity cost battle well... their next challenge where I do agree with you, is overall demand for office furniture. It won't pick up any time soon.
This is a well managed company, worth keeping an eye on.
Discloure: I own shares of MLHR.
Will 2009 Bring Ring Three of the Financial Circus?
At the heart of any economic stability is employment. We won't see stabilization until we go through massive layoffs (which have not occured yet).
Amazon Sales Up While Most Retailers Suffer
It's an upward trend. They will have to up their revenues to keep their margins, or face interesting choices:
- Jack up the Amazon Prime membership
- Reduce free shipping coverage on specific product categories
- Drop the program all together (this would hurt them pretty bad, doubt they would do this but you never know)
What would do in Bezos' shoes?
Satyam: A Shameful End
PWC isn't looking good here.
Quick Take: Herman Miller Inc.
Are you doing something similar along those lines? I couldn't jump straight in blindly and use his system. The back testing research he did shows good results, but I'm not sure if he ran his back test across every possible permutation of stock sets over the same period.
E-Commerce Q4: Anything Better Than Armageddon Will Be Good News
Amazon: Was That Its Bottom?
Do you remember Mark Mahaney's call on AMZN back at the start of the year? It was in the 100's. He also predicted increasing operating margins for 2008.
Reaching for the Bottom in the Markets
The recent interventions aren't saying much to tame the market's wild rides... but over time the newly injected capital should drive a wedge into the fundamental economic situation and hopefully bottom out.
As for timing this, that depends on your frame of reference.
Raw Data Report: Harley Davidson, BMW, Daimler
Know How Many Kindles Amazon Has Sold? 240,000
Amazon.com Likely to Remain Range-Bound for Time Being
AMZN sold their European DVD rental business, while at the same time experienced a reduction in gross margins due to price promotions, Amazon Prime, and other factors. Breaking it out, they went from 27.1% in gross margin to 25.8% in North America, and grew 20.8 to 21.5% from their international channel.
Amazon: Transitioning Into a Technology and 'Cloud Services' Company
The one fault that I find with the electric grid analogy, is that what businesses and consumers leave behind during the industrial revolution and what they woud leave now.
Leaving steam for the electric grid, versus leaving my blade server for a fully managed service environment present different incremental gains in terms of business continuity. Even if services like saleforce.com, Amazon's AWS, Google Aps, get to a level 99.999999% up time, there are still several hurdles to cross, some of the biggest challenges being:
- data security/privacy
- the up front systems integration cost to hook up company data/processes into to the "cloud".
- new players need to enter the market to provide sufficient competition to open up my choices so as to not risk placing my company's critical systems/data into one company's platform.
It is rather risky to accumlate Amazon stock solely on their AWS service (or the potential for it). Other market entrants are going to enter this picture, and until the Fortune 500 switch to cloud computing, this is going to be a very long evolution.
I give Amazon kudos for making impressive revenues consdering the economic environment, however they continue to see margin compression with their promos/discounts.
Harley's Beat: Was High Crude the Buffer?
although Europe's auto business is showing weakness, moto's are a way of life over there. Have you ever hit any of the cities in Italy? People willing to shell out premiums for a Harley, will distinguish themselves from the Piaggio loving public over there. The same goes for India, where it's all about dinky Hero Honda bikes. I asked a fellow coworker when I was there last year if he would ride a Harley around the streets of Mumbai... "fantastic" is the word he used. Affording one is a different story, but in time things should look good for Harley in emerging markets.
There is a good story the Chicago Tribune ran about Hog's versus Royal Enfields in India. An interesting read.
www.chicagotribune.com...
Harley's Beat: Was High Crude the Buffer?
I still bought HOG because they will turn around when the economy turns around. It's not often you can buy a classic piece of Americana at this price.
Using the Magic Formula With Dividend Stocks
Now's a good time for these types of screens.