It was a pretty sweet deal for Disney, as they fronted some cash for the first movie. Disney distributed and promoted them and in exchange they got their outlay (any intial investment plus distribution and marketing costs) and then the two companies split the remainder. Not that Pixar is suffering. The talks broke down because Pixar has made all the recent hits, and tried to use that strength to get a better deal, counting Toy Story 2 as one of the contractual movies rather than a sequel and eliminating the recoup of costs for Disney. Eisner complained that that would be hundreds of millions of dollars that belonged to Disney. He didn't want to lose the good terms of the current deal in exchange for a better chance of negotiating a favorable longer contract.
Since there will certainly be offers from other distributors on more favorable terms, WarnerBros is the likely candidate after the next two movies (2004 and 2005 relase) the deal is over.
The recent transition to 3d has come because the last few traditional animations have bombed at the box office, and the current conventional wisdom is that audiences prefer 3d animation, somehow I don't think the average moviegoer knows the difference, but that might be just me.
MS point is that developers can work on pretty marginal programs for a very small subset of users because there is a platform will expose those programs to all of their audience. A quick example:
Imagine two worlds one with a dominant OS with 90% market share and the other with three large OS each with 30% share. Both worlds have 100 million users. Let's say a company wants to develop some software that will cost $15 million (plus 3 million porting costs) and only 0.1 million people will want to use (it's engineering software for an auto component or somehting). If they develop it in the first world they spend 10 million on development and nothing on porting. They sell their 0.1 million copies at $200 each and make $5 million. In the second world they spent $21 million ($15 on dev and $6 on porting would lose $1 million, so they choose not to make the software.
While I picked those numbers to make the point, you can see the major benefit of a monoculture (standard platform) is development of very low use software. This is the reason MS makes so much money, they extract a bit of the proceeds for offering the dominant platform, and why the internet scared them so much. Netscape was making noises about becoming the development platform of the future, when software would be run on a server. Look at an internet games site that requires a Java client as an example of that all you need is a compatable client to run the games, your OS no longer matters. Other developers can build game servers that interact with the clients and you have a new standard. They killed netscape to keep control of the applicaion platform, this is all over the DoJ finding of fact.
Of course an alternate (and likely more secure approach) would be an agreed upon standard platform could also be a standard set of APIs that many OSs implement allowing software to be run on all of them, in the manner that JAVA or pdf allow somehting to work on many platforms. This is why linux scares them now. And why they are trying to develop.NET as an alternate applications platform for the future.
Good points, but AMD's revenue mix is just over 50/50 processors (580 million) to flash (560 million) revenue in the last quarter. On the operating profit side, processors turned positive for the first time in several quarters in Sept. While flash has had small operating losses over the past year, they have been more moderate than the huge losses processors racked up from about mid 2002. The joint venture with Fujitsu (or Toshiba) should result in considerable cost savings for both companies.
One other point is that almost all of the cost in semicondutor manufacturing is fixed, AMD's processors begin to break even at about 2 billion/yr (anything over that usually brings between 60%-80% in incremental profit margins).
Re:This is no new thing
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The 70 ft-lb is in a TDI, with a redline of something near 2000 RPM. Those engines are all torque and almost no HP. The relationship is HP=(RPM*Torrque)/5250, in non metric units horsepower and ft-lbs. Honda's take the opposite approach to building an engine, low, hopefully flat, torque curve but very high redline. Both can be fun to drive when mated to the proper transmission, lots of gears required for both. Both will give pretty decent performance and efficiency, too.
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That's why most serious tuners buy a good used car (preferably driven by grandma) or someone who totaled it and build from there after the warrenty doesn't matter much anymore. Then you can change all the parts you want, and build it to extremes. Both of these reduce the initial investment leaving a whole lot more for aftermarket parts. Note, that in anything other than a deisel (which are currently designed for fuel economy not performance) the gains from just a chip are usually smaller (10%-20% more HP and Torque). Although a turbo gas engine, combined with a better flowing intake and exhaust can see a whole lot more. Most of the engine damage is caused by people too much compression on too lean mixture with low octane fuel, causing detonation. Learn a little about how to prevent this and you probably will not burn out an engine.
The main ones would be selling ESPN and Disney channel, as well as other Disney owned channels, to other cable and satellite providers at the same rate they "pay". They plan to rebrand their own regional channels as ESPN Sports Northeast (Comcast exclusive), as an example and would likely promote games not availible on ESPN on one of the regional channels. This would be similar to TimeWarner having to sell HBO to other cable companies, but allowing them to show The Sopranos on TNT or a TimeWarner Cable only channel with ads for the new HBO series or something.
WRT your second question, as long as the content travels over company owned lines not the publicly owned airwaves, they can pretty much show what they want. Although they might want to do it after 10 for public relations purposes.
MS owns about 7% of Comcast the last time they filed a 13-F. The Robert's family still owns about 30% of the Comcast voting stock. That will drop to about half the votes if this deal goes through.
Comcast is mostly interested in the stuff they can show on their cable network thinks like ESPN, ABC, Disney and the affiliated channels. They're buying the company now because the value of the studios/themeparks is not adding much to the total value of the comapny. They can try to get the side businesses back on their feet, and cut their costs for channels which makes this a pretty good deal for them.
Steve and Bill have never recieved any options to buy MS shares (at least since Steve has been in upper management). I don't think they get any restricted stock grants. Both have had a policy to reduce their net worth's tie to Microsoft's stock price.
They bought TCI cable (Malone's cable company) and a whole host of other smaller cable companies through the late 1990s. I don't know if they bouthg any Comcast properties, but they would have been small ones. AT&T realized that selling long distance sucked, and they would need a competing network to the phone network. They chose cable, and bought as much as they could, however, they didn't have a lot of experience managing cable networks and were managing them in an expensive manner. Poor negotiations with the cable channels, too much capital spending (trying to get phone service rolled out quickly) and they took on too much debt in the acquisitions. Long story short AT&T had the right idea, but couldn't execute and tried to make a big change too quickly. They ended up getting pounded and sold the company to Comcast last winter.
Disney would get about 40% of the combined company, the shares issued are only a factor of how many splits have occured. If Microsoft were to buy IBM, they would own the majority of the combined company (about 2/3s) but would have to issue about 4 shares for each IBM share. Eisner doesn't want the deal cause he's out of a job, or at least takes a huge pay cut.
Generally you want to acquire the stuff that sucks, and fix it rather than buying the good stuff, people are already paying too much for it. In this case Comcast especially wants the ESPN and ABC networks, and will likely try to fix and sell the theme parks and studios.
It's unsolicited, which is the first step to a hostile takeover. In a corporation the stockholders have a group known as the Board of Directors who represent them legally. This is doen to save time educating all the stockholders from complex issues, and let a few people specialize in the company. The board makes decisions for the stockholders on upper management, offers to buy or sell major assets, stock issuance and repurchase policies, compenstion plans, and other big issues (some charters require a vote of all the shareholders for these items). Sometimes board members offer other skills or advantages, like a financial/management expert on a startup or Cheney at Haliburton (brought goodwill of many oil rich middle eastern countries).
In the real world the board is ususally quite close to current management, most CEOs are also chairman of the board, and there are usually several former executives on the board. Disney has one of the more management friendly boards (Eisner was able to boot the founder's son off the board). Apple also fits in this boat.
When a company wants to buy another one, they usually go speak with current managment who is sometimes receptive, and negotiations begin, or isn't and an unsolicited offer is made, or the acquirer seeks more receptive management. A hostile takeover requres the rejection of the unsolicited offer, then a proxy fight. Proxy statements are the documents that are sent in preparation for a board meeting since most votes occur by proxy. This is the way new boards are elected. Incidentally, offers are usually at a large premium to the current price, and are one of the few things that almost always result in insider trading convictions if you get caught.
Shareholders get to vote, and management offers a slate of directors who do not want to sell and the acquirer offers a slate of directors who does. Usually the potential acquirer has already pruchased 5% of the company (which votes for the merger), that is the limit at which your ownership must be disclosed. The reason the fight occurs is that in a takeover the current management is sacked and replaced with a management team from the new company. Oracle is currently trying a hostile takeover of Peoplesoft. Although that one has largely been fought in the DOJ halls rather than in a proxy battle (proxy fights are what HP went through prior to the Compaq acquisition).
Chile has appealed to me for several years, how hard is it to get a work visa or similar papers? I'd love to move down there in say a handful of years, and would probably not quite be financially independant.
I keep trying to explain this at work. It's pretty funny or sad how many offices will have the flourescent lights off, and CRT displaying either the screensaver or a shutdown screen. Everyone catches hell about saving power if they leave the lights on, and I got nominated for a governor's award for power saving because I leave the lights off (huge picture window is more than enough) but have two 19" CRTs.
Perhaps I work with too much white (excel not xterm), and Dell might be different, but I've tried at least 5 tube trinitrons and never found one that I prefer to my pair of old D1226Hs. Ether the picture is blurry, or the line is distracting, or the color looks washed out, even after getting the calibration software out.
You could look for form 14As on edgar (the SEC's database of corporate filings) as the offering approaches. This only works for google, but I'm sure there is something similar in Opera's home country. Right now there are only a few filings related to Google. Related to google the early pricing guesses have been between for something like 10-12 billion. I've not seen any estimates for Opera, but figure a value in the range of 30-50x earnings, or about 3x-7x annual sales, perhaps a bit more than that and you can estimate a value. This would be the offering price, not the first day close. In the US offerings are usually done to get offering prices in the teens, although google and other high provfile IPOs are likely to go in the 20s. With the anticipation for this one, expect a nice first day bounce. Each foreign country has it's own customs for share pricing, (British companies keep their share price in the single pound range).
It's a virtual replica of IBM's Fishkil, NY plant. That one is operating at 90 nm now, and will be transitioning to 65 nm sometime next year. I think this one is planned to start at 65, but might run a few test lines at 90 early in 2005, to make sure that everything works well.
It's odd how these have switched, it used to be that requirements were well under what you actually needed so they could sell the software. Only after many complaints were the reccomended systems printed next to the slowest machine that would make the software load.
I think they add a bit in for start up software services, too. Since the average/.er has considerably less start up stuff, we can usually sneak under the estimated requirements.
Alternatly you could use sack of doorknobs. It does not rhyme but, I can't think of something dumber than a sack full of doorknobs, but that could be the lack of sleep more than anything else.
I had this wierd decathalon card game, the cards were different athletes through the ages, one that assured victory in most events was the Bruce Jenner card, I only heard about him through that game.
Oracle's been preaching Linux for the better part of a year, they finally realized that it means you don't have to buy Sun hardware to get everything running. I think their new small business price includes RAC (their clustering softare). If they are telling the truth, Oracle's own company database runs on a Linux cluster.
My favorite presentation story was local, a bigshot from one of the brokerages came to present his ideas from technical analysis. He of course brought his own laptop, but also had his own projector (we have some in our conference rooms, but he was using his own. Anyway he can't get it to display on the screen, so they bring me in because our tech was out. He starts his presentation and asks if I can get the laptop to project after checking the video settings and finding them all correc, I take a look at the projector. On the top of the travel projector there are three buttons (Coax, RF, and VGA) the Coax is pushed, I push the VGA one, and low and behold it appears on the screen. The look from his and I shared from accros the room after telling him it worked was priceless.
I'm sorry, but if you make mid six figures you should be able to consistently operate any piece of computer hardware you bring to a presentation.
There are lots of trades that you can work a lifetime at, but the general contracting jobs that you or I could start doing quickly if we get laid off tommorow are usually not them. Things like frameing, sheetrocking, roofing, and other GC jobs involve a ton of heavy lifting. Electricians and plummers usually can't just start one day framers and sheetrockers can. I think electricians need a year of school before they are allowed to apprentice. There is something satisfying about labor, at the end of the day you can point at something and anyone around you can tell you did something. Think about tring to explain the code you wrote to the tenniebopper at McD's, but they can easily visualize a house. One of my favorite jobs was tractor driving and lugging the bins of cherries at an orchard.
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It was a pretty sweet deal for Disney, as they fronted some cash for the first movie. Disney distributed and promoted them and in exchange they got their outlay (any intial investment plus distribution and marketing costs) and then the two companies split the remainder. Not that Pixar is suffering. The talks broke down because Pixar has made all the recent hits, and tried to use that strength to get a better deal, counting Toy Story 2 as one of the contractual movies rather than a sequel and eliminating the recoup of costs for Disney. Eisner complained that that would be hundreds of millions of dollars that belonged to Disney. He didn't want to lose the good terms of the current deal in exchange for a better chance of negotiating a favorable longer contract.
Since there will certainly be offers from other distributors on more favorable terms, WarnerBros is the likely candidate after the next two movies (2004 and 2005 relase) the deal is over.
The recent transition to 3d has come because the last few traditional animations have bombed at the box office, and the current conventional wisdom is that audiences prefer 3d animation, somehow I don't think the average moviegoer knows the difference, but that might be just me.
MS point is that developers can work on pretty marginal programs for a very small subset of users because there is a platform will expose those programs to all of their audience. A quick example: .NET as an alternate applications platform for the future.
Imagine two worlds one with a dominant OS with 90% market share and the other with three large OS each with 30% share. Both worlds have 100 million users. Let's say a company wants to develop some software that will cost $15 million (plus 3 million porting costs) and only 0.1 million people will want to use (it's engineering software for an auto component or somehting). If they develop it in the first world they spend 10 million on development and nothing on porting. They sell their 0.1 million copies at $200 each and make $5 million. In the second world they spent $21 million ($15 on dev and $6 on porting would lose $1 million, so they choose not to make the software.
While I picked those numbers to make the point, you can see the major benefit of a monoculture (standard platform) is development of very low use software. This is the reason MS makes so much money, they extract a bit of the proceeds for offering the dominant platform, and why the internet scared them so much. Netscape was making noises about becoming the development platform of the future, when software would be run on a server. Look at an internet games site that requires a Java client as an example of that all you need is a compatable client to run the games, your OS no longer matters. Other developers can build game servers that interact with the clients and you have a new standard. They killed netscape to keep control of the applicaion platform, this is all over the DoJ finding of fact.
Of course an alternate (and likely more secure approach) would be an agreed upon standard platform could also be a standard set of APIs that many OSs implement allowing software to be run on all of them, in the manner that JAVA or pdf allow somehting to work on many platforms. This is why linux scares them now. And why they are trying to develop
Good points, but AMD's revenue mix is just over 50/50 processors (580 million) to flash (560 million) revenue in the last quarter. On the operating profit side, processors turned positive for the first time in several quarters in Sept. While flash has had small operating losses over the past year, they have been more moderate than the huge losses processors racked up from about mid 2002. The joint venture with Fujitsu (or Toshiba) should result in considerable cost savings for both companies.
One other point is that almost all of the cost in semicondutor manufacturing is fixed, AMD's processors begin to break even at about 2 billion/yr (anything over that usually brings between 60%-80% in incremental profit margins).
The 70 ft-lb is in a TDI, with a redline of something near 2000 RPM. Those engines are all torque and almost no HP. The relationship is HP=(RPM*Torrque)/5250, in non metric units horsepower and ft-lbs. Honda's take the opposite approach to building an engine, low, hopefully flat, torque curve but very high redline. Both can be fun to drive when mated to the proper transmission, lots of gears required for both. Both will give pretty decent performance and efficiency, too.
That's why most serious tuners buy a good used car (preferably driven by grandma) or someone who totaled it and build from there after the warrenty doesn't matter much anymore. Then you can change all the parts you want, and build it to extremes. Both of these reduce the initial investment leaving a whole lot more for aftermarket parts. Note, that in anything other than a deisel (which are currently designed for fuel economy not performance) the gains from just a chip are usually smaller (10%-20% more HP and Torque). Although a turbo gas engine, combined with a better flowing intake and exhaust can see a whole lot more. Most of the engine damage is caused by people too much compression on too lean mixture with low octane fuel, causing detonation. Learn a little about how to prevent this and you probably will not burn out an engine.
The main ones would be selling ESPN and Disney channel, as well as other Disney owned channels, to other cable and satellite providers at the same rate they "pay". They plan to rebrand their own regional channels as ESPN Sports Northeast (Comcast exclusive), as an example and would likely promote games not availible on ESPN on one of the regional channels. This would be similar to TimeWarner having to sell HBO to other cable companies, but allowing them to show The Sopranos on TNT or a TimeWarner Cable only channel with ads for the new HBO series or something.
WRT your second question, as long as the content travels over company owned lines not the publicly owned airwaves, they can pretty much show what they want. Although they might want to do it after 10 for public relations purposes.
MS owns about 7% of Comcast the last time they filed a 13-F. The Robert's family still owns about 30% of the Comcast voting stock. That will drop to about half the votes if this deal goes through.
Comcast is mostly interested in the stuff they can show on their cable network thinks like ESPN, ABC, Disney and the affiliated channels. They're buying the company now because the value of the studios/themeparks is not adding much to the total value of the comapny. They can try to get the side businesses back on their feet, and cut their costs for channels which makes this a pretty good deal for them.
Steve and Bill have never recieved any options to buy MS shares (at least since Steve has been in upper management). I don't think they get any restricted stock grants. Both have had a policy to reduce their net worth's tie to Microsoft's stock price.
They bought TCI cable (Malone's cable company) and a whole host of other smaller cable companies through the late 1990s. I don't know if they bouthg any Comcast properties, but they would have been small ones. AT&T realized that selling long distance sucked, and they would need a competing network to the phone network. They chose cable, and bought as much as they could, however, they didn't have a lot of experience managing cable networks and were managing them in an expensive manner. Poor negotiations with the cable channels, too much capital spending (trying to get phone service rolled out quickly) and they took on too much debt in the acquisitions. Long story short AT&T had the right idea, but couldn't execute and tried to make a big change too quickly. They ended up getting pounded and sold the company to Comcast last winter.
Disney would get about 40% of the combined company, the shares issued are only a factor of how many splits have occured. If Microsoft were to buy IBM, they would own the majority of the combined company (about 2/3s) but would have to issue about 4 shares for each IBM share. Eisner doesn't want the deal cause he's out of a job, or at least takes a huge pay cut.
Generally you want to acquire the stuff that sucks, and fix it rather than buying the good stuff, people are already paying too much for it. In this case Comcast especially wants the ESPN and ABC networks, and will likely try to fix and sell the theme parks and studios.
It's unsolicited, which is the first step to a hostile takeover. In a corporation the stockholders have a group known as the Board of Directors who represent them legally. This is doen to save time educating all the stockholders from complex issues, and let a few people specialize in the company. The board makes decisions for the stockholders on upper management, offers to buy or sell major assets, stock issuance and repurchase policies, compenstion plans, and other big issues (some charters require a vote of all the shareholders for these items). Sometimes board members offer other skills or advantages, like a financial/management expert on a startup or Cheney at Haliburton (brought goodwill of many oil rich middle eastern countries).
In the real world the board is ususally quite close to current management, most CEOs are also chairman of the board, and there are usually several former executives on the board. Disney has one of the more management friendly boards (Eisner was able to boot the founder's son off the board). Apple also fits in this boat.
When a company wants to buy another one, they usually go speak with current managment who is sometimes receptive, and negotiations begin, or isn't and an unsolicited offer is made, or the acquirer seeks more receptive management. A hostile takeover requres the rejection of the unsolicited offer, then a proxy fight. Proxy statements are the documents that are sent in preparation for a board meeting since most votes occur by proxy. This is the way new boards are elected. Incidentally, offers are usually at a large premium to the current price, and are one of the few things that almost always result in insider trading convictions if you get caught.
Shareholders get to vote, and management offers a slate of directors who do not want to sell and the acquirer offers a slate of directors who does. Usually the potential acquirer has already pruchased 5% of the company (which votes for the merger), that is the limit at which your ownership must be disclosed.
The reason the fight occurs is that in a takeover the current management is sacked and replaced with a management team from the new company. Oracle is currently trying a hostile takeover of Peoplesoft. Although that one has largely been fought in the DOJ halls rather than in a proxy battle (proxy fights are what HP went through prior to the Compaq acquisition).
Chile has appealed to me for several years, how hard is it to get a work visa or similar papers? I'd love to move down there in say a handful of years, and would probably not quite be financially independant.
I keep trying to explain this at work. It's pretty funny or sad how many offices will have the flourescent lights off, and CRT displaying either the screensaver or a shutdown screen. Everyone catches hell about saving power if they leave the lights on, and I got nominated for a governor's award for power saving because I leave the lights off (huge picture window is more than enough) but have two 19" CRTs.
Perhaps I work with too much white (excel not xterm), and Dell might be different, but I've tried at least 5 tube trinitrons and never found one that I prefer to my pair of old D1226Hs. Ether the picture is blurry, or the line is distracting, or the color looks washed out, even after getting the calibration software out.
You could look for form 14As on edgar (the SEC's database of corporate filings) as the offering approaches. This only works for google, but I'm sure there is something similar in Opera's home country. Right now there are only a few filings related to Google. Related to google the early pricing guesses have been between for something like 10-12 billion. I've not seen any estimates for Opera, but figure a value in the range of 30-50x earnings, or about 3x-7x annual sales, perhaps a bit more than that and you can estimate a value. This would be the offering price, not the first day close.
In the US offerings are usually done to get offering prices in the teens, although google and other high provfile IPOs are likely to go in the 20s. With the anticipation for this one, expect a nice first day bounce. Each foreign country has it's own customs for share pricing, (British companies keep their share price in the single pound range).
It's a virtual replica of IBM's Fishkil, NY plant. That one is operating at 90 nm now, and will be transitioning to 65 nm sometime next year. I think this one is planned to start at 65, but might run a few test lines at 90 early in 2005, to make sure that everything works well.
It's odd how these have switched, it used to be that requirements were well under what you actually needed so they could sell the software. Only after many complaints were the reccomended systems printed next to the slowest machine that would make the software load.
I think they add a bit in for start up software services, too. Since the average /.er has considerably less start up stuff, we can usually sneak under the estimated requirements.
Alternatly you could use sack of doorknobs. It does not rhyme but, I can't think of something dumber than a sack full of doorknobs, but that could be the lack of sleep more than anything else.
I had this wierd decathalon card game, the cards were different athletes through the ages, one that assured victory in most events was the Bruce Jenner card, I only heard about him through that game.
Oracle's been preaching Linux for the better part of a year, they finally realized that it means you don't have to buy Sun hardware to get everything running. I think their new small business price includes RAC (their clustering softare). If they are telling the truth, Oracle's own company database runs on a Linux cluster.
My favorite presentation story was local, a bigshot from one of the brokerages came to present his ideas from technical analysis. He of course brought his own laptop, but also had his own projector (we have some in our conference rooms, but he was using his own. Anyway he can't get it to display on the screen, so they bring me in because our tech was out. He starts his presentation and asks if I can get the laptop to project after checking the video settings and finding them all correc, I take a look at the projector. On the top of the travel projector there are three buttons (Coax, RF, and VGA) the Coax is pushed, I push the VGA one, and low and behold it appears on the screen. The look from his and I shared from accros the room after telling him it worked was priceless.
I'm sorry, but if you make mid six figures you should be able to consistently operate any piece of computer hardware you bring to a presentation.
There are lots of trades that you can work a lifetime at, but the general contracting jobs that you or I could start doing quickly if we get laid off tommorow are usually not them. Things like frameing, sheetrocking, roofing, and other GC jobs involve a ton of heavy lifting. Electricians and plummers usually can't just start one day framers and sheetrockers can. I think electricians need a year of school before they are allowed to apprentice.
There is something satisfying about labor, at the end of the day you can point at something and anyone around you can tell you did something. Think about tring to explain the code you wrote to the tenniebopper at McD's, but they can easily visualize a house. One of my favorite jobs was tractor driving and lugging the bins of cherries at an orchard.