Friday, June 02, 2006

Black Box Mystery

Black Box (Nasdaq:BBOX) issued a 14 page press release which rambles on for six pages before the company mentions what line of business they are in. They claim to be "The world's largest technical services company dedicated to designing, building and maintaining today's complicated data and voice infrastructure systems." no independent verification offered. This appears to be the handiwork of technical types who are so close to the project they do not have perspective on the issues.

Thursday, June 01, 2006

Sprint Hurricane Preparation

Sprint (NYSE:S) announces a $100 million hurricane preparedness program suspiciously just in time for the beginning of this years hurricane season. Close reading of the press release indicates that the money will be spent throughout the remainder of 2006 primarily in Florida. Other regions will have to wait until the end of 2008 for completion. That's just three more hurricane seasons. Clearly certain area's will be out of luck. It's almost one year since Katarina. Sprint is slow and grand standing. Hurricanes are not a new problem. The system was under-equipped creating short term profitability. Customers and long term shareholders will just have to suffer.

Wednesday, May 31, 2006

Pork Squeals

Premium Standard Farms, Inc (Nasdaq:PORK) reported poor results ie huge decrease in commodity prices. The press release hides the bad news with good news statements about a plant expansion and a hedging program that seemed to work. (this time). The release concludes with the news that the existing chairman has to step aside because he is too busy with his role as an executive with ContiGroup. He apparently does have time to stay around as a regular director. The new chairman is from the food industry but has only been on the board for about five months. This company seems adrift and does not want to talk about it.

Tuesday, May 30, 2006

Weekend Follies May 27-29, 2006

Weekend Follies attempts to identify companies which issues substantive press releases at odd ball hours over the weekend. In todays case we have a three day memorial weekend. These companies usually require an additional ammount of caveat emptor. This catch has one NYSE firm McDonalds (MCD) and six Nasdaq listings KLA-Tencor (KLAC), ADE Corporation (ADEX), Monarch Casino (MCRI), Vision Sciences (VSCI), Innovex (INVX), and Nara Bancorp (NARA)