Peridot Capitalist

When shares of Palm (PALM) were trading in the mid single digits I was quite bullish on the company’s stock simply because a revamped product line and a private equity capital infusion would likely serve to keep the company afloat and give it a chance to reverse a declining sales trend. We now find ourselves [...]

In recent days I have been paying special attention to shares of Blackberry maker Research in Motion (RIMM). The stock is one that had decent earnings this quarter but some investors wanted more, which prompted a pretty significant sell off in the stock. Despite the market having recently made new yearly highs, RIMM shares have [...]

Many investors often confuse good products for good stocks. Surely the two can go hand in hand, but that is not always the case. Although they make great products, I am wary of standalone GPS hardware companies such as Garmin (GRMN). With smartphones quickly becoming multipurpose devices, including GPS, the market for standalone GPS devices [...]

There are many times, particularly in bear markets like this one, when I look at a company and am quite baffled as to how investors can let a stock drift so low. Then I remind myself that Wall Street is short-term oriented and only cares about today, this week, and maybe this month. What the [...]

When CNBC’s David Faber broke the news that Verizon (VZ) was in discussions to purchase Alltel for north of $27 billion, Verizon shares tumbled to $36 on Wednesday. I was getting ready to write that such a drop looked to be a good entry point for fans of the deal (count me as one). Wall [...]

Last I month I asked the question “Are Motorola Shares a Bargain at Nine Bucks?” To help answer that I decided to do rough valuations for each of the company’s major business segments (mobile devices and networking/mobility). Carl Icahn has been involved with Motorola (in fact he won two board seats from the company this [...]

Following up on my initial Motorola (MOT) post yesterday, here are my numbers on the company’s networking and mobility (non cell phone) segment. With MOT shares languishing near multi-year lows at nine dollars, doing individual valuations on both segments that will be spun off next year can help us figure out if there is much [...]

I haven’t considered Motorola (MOT) a viable investment opportunity for a long time, mainly due to the overly competitive market environment for the company’s core cell phone business. Not too long ago Nokia (NOK) and Motorola dominated the cell phone market and both stocks did well.
In recent years, however, the market landscape has changed. Smart [...]

“Many investors forget that most IPOs utterly fail to live up to their promise after they are issued. A study by Tim Loughran and Jay Ritter followed every operating company (almost 5,000) that went public between 1970 and 1990. Those who bought at the market price on the first day of trading and held the [...]

Now we are hearing that Vonage customers who took the company up on its offer of IPO shares at $17 each are planning on backing out and not paying after the stock cratered upon issuance. Vonage’s response? They’ll reimburse their underwriters for any shares not paid for by their customers. Wait, what?
I don’t care how [...]