Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Archive for the ‘boic’ Category

IPO filings on the rise, Dollar General and Hyatt Hotels is next!

Posted in Board Of Intellectual Capital, boic, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on August 14, 2009| Leave a Comment »

Here is some upbeat news from BusinessWeek.

“After months of market turmoil, are investors finally ready for a slew of brand-new stocks?

The owners of some private companies think so. In early August, Hyatt Hotels & Resorts announced plans to raise about $1 billion through an initial public offering. There’s speculation that buyout giant Kohlberg Kravis Roberts is preparing retail chain Dollar General (DG) for a stock debut. Last month 12 companies filed with regulators to go public—the most since investment bank Lehman Brothers failed back in September 2008.

The conditions for IPOs have improved dramatically since the desolation of last winter. Stocks have rallied from their lows. And new companies are outperforming blue chips: The FTSE Renaissance Capital IPO Composite Index, which tracks the returns of IPOs, is up roughly 33% this year, vs. 7% for the Dow Jones industrial average. “Nobody’s pushing any dogs here,” says Gregg Slager of Ernst & Young’s private equity consulting group.

To be sure, the glory days aren’t back. The pipeline, though improving, isn’t bursting with new listings: At the peak of the boom, dozens of companies filed to go public each month. And obviously the businesses can’t raise $18 billion at a pop, as credit processor Visa (V) did with its offering in 2007. While the largest IPO of this year, Starwood Property Trust, raised the size of its offering from $500 million, it still raked in just $800 million in early August.

But the increased IPO activity may signal that the recession is easing—or at least that investors think the economy is on the mend. “There’s confidence in the market,” says Harris Smith, managing partner of private equity for Grant Thornton, a consulting firm. And “there’s pent-up demand for new, quality stocks.” After the dot-com bust, new stock offerings picked up just as the economy started to turn.

BUYOUTS RULE

Private equity owners are the most active participants in the IPO markets nowadays. Of the 16 companies that have gone public this year, 8 are backed by buyout firms. And more IPOs are in the works. “There are a couple of companies that are definitely candidates [for going public],” Tony James, chief operations officer of Blackstone (BX), said in a recent earnings call. “If the markets hold up and continue the trend, you will see some IPOs from our portfolio.””

Read the full article here.

Read Full Post »

The Fed Buys 47% of Last Week’s Treasury Notes

Posted in Board Of Intellectual Capital, boic, Economy, Gerbsman Partners, Market research, tagged , , , , on August 7, 2009| Leave a Comment »

Here is an excellent article from Chris Martensson.

“And now it turns out that 47% (!) of the bonds that were taken by the primary dealers in that auction have been quietly bought by the Fed and permanently secreted to its balance sheet.

They didn’t even wait a full week!  A more honest and open approach would have been for the Fed to simply buy them outright at the auction but this way, using “primary dealers” and “POMOs” and all these other extra steps the basic fact that the Fed is openly monetizing US government debt is effectively hidden from a not-too-terribly inquisitive US press and public.

The speed of the shell game is accelerating.

This immediate repurchase of newly auction bonds by the Fed tells us that demand for these bonds is not nearly as high as advertised, and that things are not quite as strong as represented.

And oh, by the way, don’t expect any stock market weakness while so many billions are being shoveled out the Fed and into the pockets of the primary dealers.  They’ll have to do something with all that freshly minted  cash…..”

Read the full article here.

Read Full Post »

Biggest tax revenue drop since 1932

Posted in Board Of Intellectual Capital, boic, tagged , , , , , on August 4, 2009| Leave a Comment »

I have been saying for some time that current deficit projections, even the more realistic Congressional Budget Office projections, are understated owing to overly optimistic forecasts of tax revenue. Now, the data is coming in and it is very bad. California state tax collections will likely be even worse.

Here is an Yahoo article further explaining my point.

“WASHINGTON – The recession is starving the government of tax revenue, just as the president and Congress are piling a major expansion of health care and other programs on the nation’s plate and struggling to find money to pay the tab.

The numbers could hardly be more stark: Tax receipts are on pace to drop 18 percent this year, the biggest single-year decline since the Great Depression, while the federal deficit balloons to a record $1.8 trillion.

Other figures in an Associated Press analysis underscore the recession’s impact: Individual income tax receipts are down 22 percent from a year ago. Corporate income taxes are down 57 percent. Social Security tax receipts could drop for only the second time since 1940, and Medicare taxes are on pace to drop for only the third time ever.

The last time the government’s revenues were this bleak, the year was 1932 in the midst of the Depression.

“Our tax system is already inadequate to support the promises our government has made,” said Eugene Steuerle, a former Treasury Department official in the Reagan administration who is now vice president of the Peter G. Peterson Foundation.

“This just adds to the problem.”

While much of Washington is focused on how to pay for new programs such as overhauling health care — at a cost of $1 trillion over the next decade — existing programs are feeling the pinch, too.

Social Security is in danger of running out of money earlier than the government projected just a few month ago. Highway, mass transit and airport projects are at risk because fuel and industry taxes are declining.

The national debt already exceeds $11 trillion. And bills just completed by the House would boost domestic agencies’ spending by 11 percent in 2010 and military spending by 4 percent.

For this report, the AP analyzed annual tax receipts dating back to the inception of the federal income tax in 1913. Tax receipts for the 2009 budget year were available through June. They were compared to the same period last year. The budget year runs from October to September, meaning there will be three more months of receipts this year.”

Read the full Yahoo article here.


Read Full Post »

Rise In 2Q Cleantech Investment Bodes Well For 3Q

Posted in Board Of Intellectual Capital, boic, Business models, Investments, Market research, Venture Capital, tagged , , , , on July 31, 2009| Leave a Comment »

Here is a good article from The Wall Street Journal Venture Blog.

“After an anemic first quarter, venture capital investments in clean technology rose 73% in the second quarter to a total of $572.1 million, suggesting there is momentum for an industry expected to gain steam from government stimulus funding.

The number of deals in the quarter doubled from the first quarter to 48, according to data from Dow Jones VentureSource, which like VentureWire and The Wall Street Journal is owned by Dow Jones & Co. The latest figures are still below the $1.41 billion spread across 57 deals in last year’s second quarter. (See chart at the bottom.)

But the expected release of stimulus money into the sector through grants and incentives should help get investments back on track, said Joe Muscat, Ernst & Young LLP director of cleantech for the Americas.

“Barring any unforeseen capital markets circumstances, I do think we’re in a period of growth here,” Muscat said. “People are looking both at enacted legislation and at the broader climate change legislation that will be a major enabler for companies” in the sector to grow.

During the second quarter, the largest amount of investors’ money – at $157 million – went into energy and electricity generation, which includes solar, geothermal, wind and hydro power, compared with $56 million in the first quarter.

The lion’s share of the total investment in renewable power generation, or $148.2 million, went into solar deals. One of the largest deals in solar during the second quarter was a $25 million Series A round by Mountain View, Calif.-based Skyline Solar Inc., led by New Enterprise Associates.”

Click here for more.

Read Full Post »

Khosla’s Clean Tech VC Fund Beats the Odds, Raises $1bn

Posted in Board Of Intellectual Capital, boic, Business models, Gerbsman Partners, Intellectual capital, Investments, Market research, Strategy, Venture Capital, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , on July 24, 2009| Leave a Comment »

Here is a possitive article from Green Energy Reporter.

“A widely used catch phrase – or some variation of it – appearing in the media since the official start of the crisis this fall,  goes something like this: “the global economic crisis, has left the [add required sector, in our case clean tech] reeling, unable to tap crucial funding…. ” This generic phrase and its variations have been used over and over to describe a harsh reality, specifically  how the credit crunch has left industries across the board at a standstill, unable tap financing to support their growth.

Then there is Khosla Ventures, the Sand Hill Road clean tech-focused venture fund, which will be announcing sometime this week the closing of two funds totalling $1 billion, all dedicated to supporting early clean tech investments. This is impressive, considering that most don’t expect this sort of capital raising to happen until well into 2010.

But it seems that Khosla Ventures, founded by Silicon Valley veteran Vinod Khosla, can afford shortcuts.  For one,  Khosla is a co-founder of Sun Microsystems and a former partner at Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers, two leading Silicon Valley pioneers. Also, back in 2004, when clean tech was an afterthought and social media  à la MySpace was all the rage,  he launched Khosla Ventures, one of the sector’s first clean-tech focused VC fund.

Forbes.com reports Khosla is on the verge of announcing two new funds: a $250 million vehicle for seed-stage investments and a $750 million fund for larger deals dubbed “KVIII.” One fund has closed already, and the other could close soon, Forbes reports, citing people with knowledge of the funds. Khosla himself is expected to invest $150 million of his own money in the new funds. Other reported investors include CalPERS, the pension giant with $179.2 billion in assets.”

Read the full article here.

Read Full Post »

« Newer Posts - Older Posts »