Analysts and Underwriters

A note about volcom's news from wachovia...

Wachovia is their underwriter , and as the lock out period ends, which is in december for volcom....underwriters often come out with news.

I'm not saying VLCM is hype, but the timing of the news should draw attention.

Water

For a thirsty world:
Mostly large companies make water purification systems (ie GE, DuPont, Seimens)

Clorox makes Brita.
Pur water filters is a private company...

Zenon donates a good deal to Tsunami and others ... It's a Canadian company
ZEN.to

Pall Corp also makes heavy donations of water filters, and is the largest public company I have found so far
PLL
Pall has a solid balance sheet and some growth....

Volcom

(VLCM)

I've been around snowboarding longer than I have been driving. I have seen many companies come and go. Burton has always been there, and as long as I have money in my pocket, Burton will always be there. Ok so that doesn't say too much, except the link on the side panel to transworld biz magazine explains why some sport companies go public and some stay private.

The best companies are still private. Period. I looked up every company that had something in my house and only Billibong was public. I do not own anything volcom? Why? I don't know? Stuff looks pretty hard-core. They have lots of style and products. They are very into the culture and are doing more than many other companies including mountain dew...... The guys started with five grand from their folks in 1991. They have spread the logo and have something for sale in malls and serious skate/surf shops. They have nice looking stuff...I don't know why I don't own any of it....but for the record, I own no O'neil, quicksilver, or PowellPeralta (Dog Town and Z boyz)


Vans was a public company until bought by VF corp (see previous post)

More trash talking

Fuel costs are hurting these guys, but like all utilities, their revenues are fairly constant. Apparently, recycling is not profitable due to the fluctuation in commodity prices. I look for the price of plastic to increase a little, but modestly higher plastic prices will not make recycling more attractive. Here, recycling is done by a not-for-profit company, which is supported by the county.

The Sopranos are in the waste business....but what does that have to do with anything? Anyway, Waste Management Industries (WMI) is one of the largest companies in the industry. It has over $2 billion in revenues after taxes. They also have 17 waste to energy plants , 138 recycling plants, bioreactor landfills and 85 landfill gas projects ( capturing methane from decomposing trash).

Casella Waste systems is a smaller waste company with some recycling facilities. They also have a partnership that makes cellulose insulation. Positive.

Casella Waste

Do you have radioactive waste?
Try The American Ecology Group from Boise Idaho...They have a nice dividend and most of the stock is held by insiders (as opposed to underwriters)
(ECOL)

Clean Harbors Inc. (CLHB) Is the big cleaner in New Orleans for the toxic muck...and their stock has been going up for years.

Oh and, if you are a long term investor, watch out for shows on CNBC. They tend to sell stocks like a broker.
Jim Cramer? I suspect you have two days to get in then out of his stock ideas.
Boo YaMad Money Stats

411 on recycling

OUTDOORS

Nothing like fall weather to get me in the great outdoors....forgettabout cars...It's the gear

Go to smartmoney's (smartmoney.com) value calculator to see how much speculation is in your stock picks.

VF Corporation's value is far below it's price...which is rare theses days... (according to the calculator based on analyst growth estimates)
( vfc )

VF owns Lee, Wrangler, Lily of France, Nautica, JanSport and The North Face, and posted sales of $5.2 billion last year. Also bought up Reef .. you may want to see what the reef girls are in to... or

VF's outdoors companies like North Face are standards, and they set a standard for outdoor protection by giving back..

http://www.globalgiving.com/
http://www.conservationalliance.com/

fed ex also donates and supports the Oudoors through discounts to member businesses of the OIA

a couple other tickers to remember:
billabong
bbg

....oakley oo



Love to LA Miss

Evergreen Solar

Evergreen Solar has been recieving more attention lately. Alternative energy stocks a commonly momentum plays. The cause?Natural gas prices are rising over $11, twice that of last fall.

XsunX

Many large buildings can benifit from solar power. A recent "gamble" or speculative stock is the penny stock XSNX.OB . They are making photovoltaic glass for large buildings. It's like siding a building with solar cells that you can look through.

It is important to remember that investing in solar power companies, that many large corporations have an advantage. BP Solar and Seimens have very large amounts of production capacity and more than enough free cash for R&D. Evergreen Solar's free cash ( - ) and R&D funding ($5 million) add to potential financing problems unless more stock is sold. ESLR looses nearly $16 MILLION A YEAR ON INCOME OF $30 MILLION and has a market cap of nearly $500 million. This suggests an over valued price. As I mentioned growth may not come if large corporations take advantage of their size and distribution resources ( other competitors include GE and Kyocera )

Capstone turbines and Beacon energy are both far below their recent price levels....I feel Evergreen may have a price below the current one in the near future. I hope that Solar power improves and permeates the market, but I don not expect small companies like evergreen to fully capitalize on the market potential. On that note, Hoku os still bafflingly high at $11 per share. I suspect Kramer coverage had a lot to do with the spec on this.

WAVES

Big waves for fuel cell stocks are like the hurricane that just went through my area. Ophelia just took its time meanding around, sometimes big, sometimes small, and scrubbed the coast. Many fuelcell stocks do just that. They linger, change in size, have some affect, the drift out to sea. Recently Jim Cramer hyped the new fuelcell stock on the block Hoku Scientific (hoku) and the stock price exploded. I feel it jumped an unreasonable amount just on the news that it had a deal with nissan and is profitable. The company has only fourteen employees and several other car makers have fuel cell makers with fuel cell technology lined up.....I'll have to see what the big deal is later.....

I certainly hope someone makes a fuel cell car a reality before 2090, but after the dismantling of Ballard and others by large companies like GE...any patents that these guys hold will not last until the fuel cells hit the market.
Hoku is an IPO, so beware...


Toshiba is making a mini fuel cell to MP# players last up to 60 hours.....finally....

Dew It

Mountain Dew is a staple of snowboarders....I know. I haven't made the change to super charged drinks like Red Bull with taurine and vitamin's....Mostly because of the price and the unwanted jitters from being supercaffinated.


Mountain Dew sponsors many a boarder and the physically adventurous... Their latest marketing effort is producing films. MD Films , a unit of Mountain Dew, made "First Descent" to create buzz for the drink.... Which will probably happen.

PepsiCo owns Mountain Dew and is involved in several snack products, and no longer in the restaurant business. Some products include: Tropicana, Aquafina, Quaker, Lays, Sunchips, Cracker Jacks, Rice a Roni, and Life cereal. They have about the same annual income available for common shares as debt. Also their main competitor ( KO )is more globally recognized.

Key Stats: Growth is over 12% per quarter(8% for KO) and the divedend is around 1.05.....$2.60 earnings per share, 1.7 billion shares out...and 14% profit margin. Also very similar to KO.

Taking Out

the Trash

Environmental remediation and water quality are super important these days.

CNN highlights the problems of waste in the water in Louisianna.

The biggest players in the remediation business are Tyco and DuPont.

But in Baton Rouge, there is the Shaw Group (sgr) who has recently seen a spike in stock valuation.

ps..
Beacon Power and Capstone among others have started to return to lower valuations
More later....

Plastic

A friend and I were drinking beer ( see previous post) and wagered to see who could give up plastic the longest. That didn't last long. It was maybe twenty minutes before we gave up (I lost). Plastic is in everything... including the ice cube trays my friend caught me using.

The reason for the naive wager? Plastic can be recylcled,but it often isn't ...and it comes from petroleum.

Toyota ( TM )is about to make bio plastic. Hopefully my car will have less plastic from pertroleum in the future.

Also bio plastic resins are getting better and more useful. Sanyo claims to have made opticle hard disks from bioplastic.

Another difficulty in the wager were the potatochips. Food may come in bioplastic wrappers in the future.

Other bio plastic links:

DuPont:
positive
negative


General BP Site

naturalfoodsmerchandiser

sustainablebusiness

Green Mountain Coffee and the Global Reporting Initiative

Hope help is on the way to the Gulf States

Prayers....anyway...
Stock traders pumping alternative energy stocks in this crisis are bound to capitalize on some good hearts. However, there has been a growing movement for alternative energy and sustainable reporting (from "Fast Company" article) .

I have been drinking too much coffee latley, and although Starbucks has their plan ....Green Mountain Coffee Roasters are leading the way...plus there stock price is interesting GMCR

Many companies put tremendous effort to hide things on their books so why would they add another item?
Here are some links on corporate environmental reporting.....

environment on the books Corporate Sunshine



world business council for sustainable development

corporate responsibility newswire