Why do people spend so much time talking about Research In Motion (RIMM), Nokia (NOK) and Yahoo! (YHOO)? Why?
And why don't they spend MORE time talking about Sprint (S)?
I have no idea how the turn will go at Yahoo. I do know that it will not be a quarter or two turn. Maybe three? Perhaps four. The company has no mobile, social or cloud strategy. Until it does, I think you've got some real flatlined time on your hands.
Research In Motion? That's only about takeover. You have 70 million subscribers and a good keyboard, but it is a closed ecosystem so you are buying a list and some patents and an enterprise services business. That list is way too expensive for almost all companies although the keyboard patents have real value and we have rumors right now that IBM (IBM) wants the enterprise service business. One would have to hope that the enterprise services business, like the patents, are worth so much that this could be a positive situation, like AOL (AOL), and not a negative one, like Kodak.
Still, I would not recommend a stock just on its parts valuation when the fundamentals are horrendous and the spiral down in cash has JUST begun. That's too dangerous.
Nokia's only interesting to people because of its low-dollar price tag. If it were to do a 10-1 one reverse split no one would touch it.
But Sprint? Here's a company that generates a huge amount of cash flow that needs to raise cash and can now do so, which will dramatically lower its interest charges in a way that is certainly profoundly positive. RIMM and NOK are in vicious cycles down, Sprint's in the virtuous cycle up.
Many had doubted whether Sprint could ever recover from the phenomenally terrible Nextel acquisition. The transition out of that technology and into Sprint's was supposed to be too difficult. But CEO Dan Hesse has pulled it off and is keeping far more subscribers than I thought possible.
Of course the stock has run from $2 to almost $5. But that's what is going to happen when you take bankruptcy off the table and you go from horribly unprofitable to cash flow positive.
Can it keep rallying? I think yes. I would like if the stock were to take a breather here. It seems like too quick a run. But I think that it is still worth buying if you recognize that it could trade down to $4 and change on a couple of bad days.
Sprint's for real. Yahoo's wait and see. The others? Nokia may one day turn it around, but it might not ever happen. Research In Motion? You are simply trading around the rumors of a stock that I believe will go lower when it reports.
