BOK Financial Corporation Message Board

Aside from pulling the number out of your ... ear - not that I don't do that at least once every day - I think you're being very unfair. SERIOUSLY. He often serves as a corrective for other people's over-enthusiasms..... I'm so nervous about the economy & the mkt that I closed out my position in OVTI, not that anyone cares.

The point is that if you ask 90% of the bulls on OVTI why they're in it, they basically have bought into the notion that Apple is not only the biggest company on earth, but likely the best.

More importantly and significantly, they have (most of them/us) rose colored glasses that is almost as likely as Apple execs to spin whatever is gray into something whiter than white.

I *am* concerned about "supply problems," even if 99% of the details are totally beyond my ability to fathom. But to me that 1% is mumbling, "People will NOT wait until March ... or even January to buy a new phone for themselves or their kids. Those of us who don't loose sleep over the fiscal cliff will want to buy somewhere between Black Friday and 12/24 ... and whether it's a phone or a tablet, Apple is NOT the only game in town - far from it.

Back to Cramer - in recommending (recently) an "avoid" on OVTI, I think he's more savvy than you/I would like to believe that the old adage about when GM sneezes the economy gets a really bad cold (I fear I'm garbling this horridly) applies in spades to Apple and the 27 dwarfs that feed off it like dung beetles. Yes, if Apple gets everything together in a hurry and is good for a 10% rise in ITS stock over the next week or month or so, OVTI should do even better than that.... BUT THAT'S just a factor of beta or something like it. If there's a news item about AT&T NOT getting what it wants (needs?) in the way of Apple product, Apple could shed 10% and OVTI could easily fall to $12 or less.

THINK ABOUT IT!

Sentiment: Hold

C'mon, there was a run to or just past 20 a few months back. The WHY you use really CAN BE explained - in some measure - by all the shorting. Of course, someone looking for the end of the thread MIGHT (but they might be mistaken, too) point to poor management that cannot consistently deliver growth of both the top and bottom lines - and hasn't been able to for years ... and since they seem to do a good-or-better job with product development, this IS troubling.

My point, however, is that even if one doesn't think that Cramer is crooked (and I'm in that basically trusting camp), he DOES hear lots of negative stuff and - face it - he can't really research dozens or hundreds of stocks and have insights on ones that might be in the process of going from ugly duckling to swan.

So, it's easy for him to say "Avoid," while there was a prominent (obviously much less so than Cramer) columnist who said, "With the iPhone and iPad likely to be additional smash hits for Apple, there's plenty of money to be made in the folks providing 'bullets' or 'ammo." "

I agree, but this is like a car that doesn't "run smooth." Either you put up with it for the 2 or 3 obvious reasons (car or stock) ... or you quit on it, because ... it is what it is - and you are apparently well aware of what that is.

Sentiment: Buy

Thanks for a post as well-reasoned as it is/was well-written. There ARE 10-baggers, but they're rarer than rare in companies as large as RIM still is and as "carefully" researched and followed.

In particular, much as I and a few million Canadians would like to see your "best case" pan out, the question of whether RIM can somehow turn the "battleship" of ever lower prices around is pretty darn implausible, and since that's the "top line," getting to $4 EPS looks like a fantasy.

And I'm ever so dubious about what the breakup value is, especially since 6-12 months leading to that outcome would pretty much see a Hurricane Katrina reprise in Waterloo.

But I *am* long at this moment, because the one thing that DIDN'T make the Scotia analysis you reported is a "control change," and I see that as much more likely than $4 EPS 15 months out.

This is - in the painful process of re-inventing RIM - akin to what happens with the so called incubator operations where venture capital firms thrive (those of them that do!)

There's a payday when the best of those companies go public. If we're going to have a payday - and I'm with you, it's a bit IF - it will come when MSFT or AMZN takes us out.

In the roughest terms, maybe they'll see something like the rosy results you sketch out - even something like a $40 value for RIMM shares ... and be willing to spend $20 or $25 for something that would come close to being a "steal." The only reason those numbers make sense, of course, is that - as you point out - should they fail to execute (and now they'd have things like "corporate culture" to deal with), they'll have to write off major bux, and THEIR company's management will have been distracted bigtime.

Last, in this see-saw-like analysis (yours, mine and Scotia's), getting a BB10 model or 2 out before Xmas, even if 2012 sales are minimal, strikes me as "pivotal." Otherwise, there are just going to be so many competitive products almost literally "in folks' stockings" to allow them to launch with anything like a fighting chance to hang on to a non-trivial market share in N. America.

Sentiment: Buy

Really, the only good (and real) "news" in what you posted is that I.R. exists and seems to be doing its job. Tesla? Watch out, OVTI, or you'll have a receivable you get 10 cents on the dollar for.

I agree that Apple may be disinclined to wait a year before "refreshing" this or that part of its line, but OVTI really has only one hope, and it's why the stock sometimes seems to be a bargain - someone has to buy them out. Oh yes, they could really get a big win or 2, but they've been around long enough under leadership that seems way past its sell-by date, and the odds of their knocking 'em dead product-wise AND figuring out how to make and sell the stuff are awfully high.

I agree with you, by the way, that Apple MIGHT have enough huge success with TV, but post-Jobs and post-Google's crack at it, I think one does well to temper one's optimism. And really - HOW would even a lollapalooza of a hit there help OVTI? (Yes, I know you fantasize that they'll revise all the products to have a unified approach, but (a) I'm not sure they want as much pushback within 12 months of their "connector" switch as they'd get; and (b) coming out with a TV thingie in the next 6 months all but consigns, imo, things like iPhones and iPods to a "see you next fall" schedule.

As for buying OVTI, well, yeah, maybe Apple will get SO tired of fielding questions about its cash horde that they consider it. Me? - I hope for an iPad Mini, a run-up for OVTI ... and I'm outahere!

Funny. You'd think that the Kindle would have been torn down and vendors identified, but if the maker of the camera is findable via google, it eluded me. Someone on this board pointed out that OVTI's backlog increase was more likely some "whopper" of an order rather than a decent number of units for X and Y and Z device. Obviously, the iPhone5 and the iTouch line dwarf most other possibles in terms of projected number of units to be sold, but Amazon would appear to be a reasonable competitor - in that sense. And since, as I recall, it was a $ figure, if OVTI happened to cut a "good deal" with someone, the math says it wouldn't have to be as "voluminous" as a deal with Apple, pretty well known for holding vendors' feet to the fire.

Interesting theory but you're missing a few key things. (1) Maybe, Jim (the old leader) was persauded that we can re-use all or most of the "code," so that Playbook could be a trial run for a paradigm shifting phone line. Like most of his decisions (intuitions ?) in his last couple of years in office, bad judgment, bad luck and/or bad execution plagued that "decision."

And the passage of time and the market's non-embrace of Playbook vis a vis you know who and you know what has meant that the phone line probably had to be re-designed somewhere along the way, introducing a great deal of the delay that we've all witnessed.

There's an interesting MarketWatch column today, pointing out that the "great Apple" now finds itself nibbling around the edges of ITS phone line, whatever hype accompanies this or that - in reality - modest innovation. RIM will be releasing into a crowded (mature ?) marketplace, and it knows that it's got to be perfect. Think of how much talent has jumped ship (or been terminated for good reasons and/or bad) over the past few years. There are BOUND to be delays and bugs in such a situation.

"Circling the drain" borders on overused re RIMM, but in this case it applies 100% - RIMM can eke out a respectable quarter by "improving on" the razor-razorblade model by moving their all but obsolete phones at $50-$200 loss per unit, praying that they'll keep enough customers long enough and realize enough revenues from them down the road so that this won't deplete the cash horde.

In the absence of a release, they are truly dead in the water, so any delay of the type you speculate about is nothing short of suicidal. Yes, some people inside and outside the company are taking this latest "narrow trading range" as a time to finally throw in the towel, but it's quite a leap to say that new product is being held back. ESPECIALLY since the market has punished the stock to the tune of $5/share or so for having kissed off 2012.

Yeah. When RIM looked like the only ideas it could come up with were losers, they had (maybe, they still do) a phone co-branded with Porsche.... But I think your last point may be one with some "legs," as we say in the ent. biz..... I know women who are indubitably smart - and not crazy extravagant - who like Coach. (I'm sure others would point to Tiffany's and a host of others.) ... Since iPhones mark you as "with it," but also very much one of a large herd, it could be that an "upscale" differentiator does more than make lawsuits less likely - it could appeal to a million or more users on its own "merits."

But - reality check here - we all do it ... You say that this obviously random (however well-informed) remark did NOT lead you to buy the stock, but DIDN'T IT?!

I'd love to believe that person, but just as Apple has people so much in its thrall that they were probably saying "Apple's maps are way superior," until their fearless leader put an end to that with a formal apology ... RIM/BB has a fair part of Blackberry Nation (dot ca if my meaning isn't clear) just about wacky as to relative strengths and weaknesses.

Let's see if the commercials are anything more than workmanlike - they had better be. (And that's assuming that they are actually using the extra 3-6 months to bring out a bug-free product, rather than working up to whatever deadline exists to squish those bugs.

The time for someone to seduce RIMM is BEFORE BB10 launches. There really is too much that can go wrong, and one has to believe that the team now in place has lots of maybes. In real life, teams like the A's this year happen once in a blue moon. Ditto for companies - Thorsten has no business heading a company RIMM's size and complexity - with the stock at about 1/2 what it was when we started, I think that's clear to anyone with eyes and a brain.

RIMM's principal assets are the customer base and the relationships - frazzled and diminished, to be sure, but not altogether evaporated - with Fortune 500 companies. Change the name, ownership and lots of key staffers, and you STILL might hold onto those assets and exploit them. Pray for a miracle with BB10 and you probably DO get to see Palm II, in terms of how this plays out.

From the perspective of a Microsoft, $10 billion (give or take some billions) is better than either of the 2 likely alternatives. Something like a hit with BB10 raises the price a ton, especially if it draws a competitive bid. If BB10 is an utter fiasco, MSFT wouldn't have the guts to buy the company ... and with good reason, since the rush for the exits would make even the last couple of years look like a picnic.

LAST, don't forget how much stock Prem owns. You don't get to where he is by pushing all your chips on the table and praying for "a heart." You do damage control when you make the kind of boneheaded play he did with RIMM a year or so back. That means selling BEFORE the dealer flips a card your way!

IF there's another Apple release before year-end and if OVTI proves to be in it - as the "main man," not a supporting player, as it were - boy will it pop. In the absence of that, hard to figure.

The bashers have a point about profitable business mattering way more than biz not much better than break-even, but this is ONE time when mgt leveled with everybody and shouldn't be punished multiple times. They said that it would take a quarter or 2 to see margin improvement. While one can think of reasons why it would NOT be the case, generally good volume fosters improving margins, and since that was something of a surprise, I'm almost as baffled as you as to why it's mired near 14.

Let's be honest here - wow, that's a novelty! ... OVTI's mgt is probably NOT held in high regard. Some of it may be their flagrant foreign-ness - I still think that analysts who fear that something will be lost in translation or non-translation are loath to get involved, unless other things are compelling.

OVTI's management has been around long enough and they're a lot like Bobby Valentine, just terminated as the Red Sox manager. They win more than they lose, but barely, and they have way too much "color" for us shareholders' good.

Sentiment: Buy

Boy, you give this horrid board a few months in hopes that maybe there will be less green slime when you come back, as I've done.

No way!

Joel's posts - I know how we used to joke about us getting paid to bash - might be written by a computer; maybe they have been for months. Not a tough algorithm. String together words like "red ink" and POS and there you go.

Thing is, while RIMM may not have turned the all important corner IF it actually had to go toe-to-toe with Apple or Android for a year or more ...

THEY HAVE turned the corner on what has inarguably been their gameplan / exit strategy since Thorsten took over. Show all the potential buyers - and yes, the names haven't changed much, but most of the circumstances work in RIMM's favor - Amazon MUST get into smartphones; MSFT knew that a year or more ago, but now they need a Plan B, since Nokia and the half-hearted Asian mfrs aren't getting it done; Facebook needs to spend some of the IPO money and prove that its best days are NOT behind it.

Et-friggin-cetera!

Now that RIMM has stopped the bleeding - i.e.., it's off life support - all the potential buyers have to recalibrate. No, they are NOT going to buy it in liquidation. Put more positively - and well it should be - there's a REASON to call the investment bankers they probably cold shouldered 3-6 months ago and say, "Let's talk."

Miskek's another Joel - he'll be writing, "10 reasons to short RIMM" right up to the Sunday when a buyout is announced. Meanwhile, the smart analysts - while so badly burned that only a Canadian or 2 will actually put a buy on the stock - admit that with a deal ever so possible (nobody thinks that present management and Prem would NOT take money and run), a stock with that many subscribers (and growing) and that much cash (and growing) should not be selling at 7. More like 11. And that's just, imo, a "fair value" given what we know. We've finally reached the point where darn near all the bad news is priced in, so good BB10 software (now THAT I'm not predicting) or some pre-year-end "here they are"s or rumors or a licensing deal or ... there's more, although it gets thin in a hurry

takes this puppy to 15 or 20. (Gotta think plenty of shorts covered as plenty of others sold on the news, but this stock still has a monster short interest. Lots of things make a perfect storm an honest-to-goodness possibility at this point.

Sentiment: Strong Buy

I wish I knew what the brokerage houses see! ... There are times it looks like they are eager to help some big institution unload when there's rough sees ahead.

And that PE thing sounds better than it is at the moment, since OVTI hasn't quite gotten its margins to a point most would call "respectable." .... I do agree about low float and volatility, so that both good news and bad has an effect on stock price that I'd call "outsized."

And I agree with you - or whoever posted recently - who said that this is NOT (yet) a commodity business. I'd hate to say that photography was anything like the crucial app for smartphones, but it DOES "have to be" in there, and it sure is "photogenic" in terms of commercials.

Hope our optimism (in my case, eagerness for a bounce) turns out to be well-founded.

Sentiment: Buy

Well put. That commercial is definitely top-notch, and I saw an article in the last few days that went into depth as to why Samsung is doing fine re phones while RIMM and Nokia seem to be getting buried.

Your conclusion about moving away from yearly releases seems rock solid - i.e., Apple is just too smart to settle for one very strong quarter, 1+ of good results and then 1+ of doldrums while folks refuse to commit to a device that will certainly lack the "buzz" of whatever is coming out in the fall.

Sentiment: Buy

One hates to buy on rumors and hopes ... ALONE, but as people have observed on several occasions here, that $100MM isn't (better not be) phantasmagorical, and there really aren't too many plausible alternatives. Lots of low-margin off-brands? I think not.

Elsewhere, someone said that Apple has opted for events months and months apart to avoid "fatigue" with their presence. COME ON - whether or not they're heading for a fall, right now they can do almost nothing wrong, and if Cook doesn't have Steve's showmanship, millions and millions of dollars and thousands of man-hours, too, of course, so it just moves some money out of "pure" advertising into a place that gets even more visibility, reporting, etc.

NOW, add in the options play (OVTI, last Friday) that has been well-reported! ... Oh yes, and add in OVTI's stock not cratering. I'd say this about a 50-50 proposition, and the upside has got to be $20+ (stock price.)

Gotta like dem odds.

Sentiment: Strong Buy

Am I the only one who thinks these 2 posts are horribly naive. It's so easy to talk about manipulation, and so tempting to want to get in on this easy (if tainted) money.

And there MAY BE the manipulation you speak of. But thinking you pick the apples off the tree at 3:55 is too good to be true. It's bogus, and the posters ought to know better.

OTOH, other than wincing, maybe this will provide comfort - not a joke, I hasten to add.

I've been "playing" iPhone5 2 ways - OVTI and AVGO. Yesterday, amidst the stupidity that stemmed from SWKS announcing an ambiguous something, AVGO was off $1.30. Today it's up close to $2.

Yes, there are key differences, some which make a repeat performance of this yo-yo (do they call it whipsaw?) more likely, some less, ... but short of OVTI getting skunked and at least 4 W.S. houses basically robbing us, $15 has got to be back-up-the-truck time ... and some of the prints today must be folks fearing margin calls or something like that.

Obviously, cutting one's losses is the recommended approach, but there's also something to be said for hanging tough when the offers (to buy) are pathetic.

To me, the analysts MUST be looking to Apple's TRULY doubling down with a mini-iPad release in time for the holidays and OVTI being in there. I know Gene speculated about that just yesterday.

I, too, hate to buy on a wing and a prayer, but the opening few minutes running this guy up to $16.20 and then clipping it for close to $1 simply makes no sense.

Sentiment: Strong Buy

I too got back in - sometimes the "special of the day" gets ordered ... cuz it's a bargain.

Heaven knows, this is not a "value stock," but 3% or 6% (if you count the recent high) certainly makes it more tempting.

Which IS significant, because there are big fish swimming in this sea. Just as a good deal of selling is because people feel, read, etc. that "the market is toppy," there are BIG TIDES flowing the other way. As Obama's re-el. (could the haters just #$%$ on this point) becomes more likely, I'm pretty sure that people will think "stability" and growth and a few other positives - maybe war in the M.E. a tad less likely, too - and have a fall rally in earnest (call it a resumption of strength, if you prefer!)

And I really go with the herd that says,

A) the teardowns will give OVTI at least some good publicity. (Speaking of which, listen to the Mossberg piece on marketwatch if you have any doubts about the parent product/company - i.e., Apple's iPhone5!)
B) There's a big short interest out there that doesn't want to overstay.
C) Being on a winning streak ought to go more than 3-6 months for OVTI.
D) Apple's mini-pad is a lot "closer in" than Apple TV, imho.
E) Companies like TI and AVGO, not to mention some of our far east "friends" would probably respond favorably to any signs that OVTI's leaders want to take the money and run.

Don't know, of course, whether the next 10% move will be up or down - although I obviously think the former is more likely. But this stock really could double from these levels on a combination of good news and better "expectations."

Sentiment: Buy

Hope you're realizing how #$%$ poor the information quality is on this board. Pumpers have a place in the food chain, of course, as to bashers. Both provide something for catfish to feast on.

Having said that, I remember some well-informed people 'roun' here pointing out that there are really TWO cameras, and whether OVTI wins 0, 1 or 2 is important ... Even more so, maybe, what are/were the expectations? Something moved the stock from 12 to 16, and while it might have been the last conference call or a bounce off a sillily depressed price, it is likely to have something to do with leaks or guesses about the iPhone5.

Given that Apple is feeding news stories about how "great" the reception has been since the release last week - and given OVTI's pretty unimpressive trading week - I'd really be surprised if OVTI scores a perfect TWO. (Yes, it could have all been "baked in" and neither the release party or a teardown would thus have much impact, but I just don't see it. ... There was a spike up during the Apple rollout - I have to think it was a short covering or someone adding to a long position when they literally got excited as the panorama was featured. To me, that's amateurish and a sign that at least some big money is still "undecided," so I see the narrow trading range and softness yesterday as more bearish than it would have been in the absence of that spike.)

Sentiment: Hold

The standard response - but maybe you haven't heard it, don't understand it ... or don't believe it - is

"PRICED IN." ... as in "The win(s), [specifics still not nailed down] were priced in as the stock ran from 12 to 16+."

And remember - the nasty negative guys DO have a point when they say that if OVTI has been trouble bring anything respectable down to the bottom line recently, there's no guarantee that even a very nice "piece of business" will do the shareholders any good. Great to say that they stubbed their toe ... or had to accept TSMC's terms ... earlier in the year, but now they're read for ka-ching night and day, ... but there's considerable skepticism out there that it'll play out like that.

There's a photo of the main board already out there. Names are named, of course. As others have noted, secrecy "was honored in the breach." ... As with everything else, time gets compressed, so what might have taken days or a week 2-4 releases back ... now borders on same day, and I'm sure some can argue that this or that blogsite essentially previewed the teardown - leaks?, espionage? - 1-3 weeks back.

Which do you mean - migraines or margarine?