If you’ve been keeping up with your HBO original programming schedule, you know that Too Big To Fail, the movie based on Andrew Ross Sorkin’s 2009 book, airs next Monday evening. Last night was the premiere at the Museum of Modern Art and while the trailers looked promising, in order to make sure none of you wasted any of your precious time or DVR space in the event it wasn’t worth it, I attended to see how things turned out and report back. Warren Buffett did the same, though was initially met with some opposition at the door, in an encounter that went like this:

Door girls: Do you have your ticket?
Buffett: Uh…no…
Door girls: You need your tickets.
Buffett: Oh, uh…we were invited..
[One of Buffett's dates]: This is Warren Buffett.
[The group is seated]

Other people in attendance who did have their tickets, included but were not limited to: George Soros (with a entourage of lady friends), Meredith Whitney in a white pinstriped suit, Becky Quick, Rodgin Cohen, Regis Philbin, Michael Douglas and all the actors from the flick (William Hurt, Paul Giamatti, Billy Crudup, James Woods, Bill Pullman, Evan Handler, Tony Shalhoub, Matthew Modine, Ed Asner), though not all the real life people they portray (Jamie Dimon was getting ready for today’s JPM shareholder meeting in Ohio, Fuld was probably busy plotting his comeback).

The movie condenses Sorkin’s 539 page book into about 90 minutes and traces the slightly tense moments that were 2008 just after Bear Stearns was bought to the day Paulson locked the top bank CEO’s in a room and and forced them to accept his capital injections. William Hurt does a pretty badass Hank– who gets the most screen time by far– having spent a few days fishing with him in preparation for the role (during which one would hope HP described what it was like threatening to send Ken Lewis home in a body bag if he backed out of the Merrill Lynch deal). I liked it, you probably will too.** Now let’s get down to the nitty gritty.

Who Will Like TBTF

- Hank Paulson: The former Treasury Secretary is the lead role; the movie shows his sleepless nights, his afternoons spent vomiting, and his attempt to SAVE AMERICA, all without shotgunning just one beer or a single tablespoon of Pepto-Bismol like you know he wanted to but which Christian Science prohibits. The movie even gets into his bird fetish, opening with Paulson observing a majestic red tailed hawk outside his window.

- Tim Geithner: Who producers decided resembles Billy Crudup (who plays “freaked the fuck out” pretty well)

- Ben Bernanke: Paul Giamatti grew a beard and (adorable) jowls to play the Chairman of the Federal Reserve, which he mostly does from the shadows- in a poorly lit room where he and Paulson discuss the fact that the economy might collapse over breakfast or emerging from a corner, where he might as well be holding a flashlight under his chin as he informs Congress or the bank CEOs that they can 1. do what he and Paulson are telling them to do or 2. don’t and be responsible for a Depression worse than the one he studied at Princeton (his pump up speeches are some of the best parts of the movie)

- Jamie Dimon: Every time JD- played by Bill Pullman- appears on screen we’re told in one way or another that he’s the smart banker, the responsible banker, the King of the Bankers (**Dimon’s only gripe may be that Bill Pullman doesn’t entirely pull off the innate coolness, which isn’t his fault- Jamie was born this way and some things can’t be taught; it’d be like asking Pavarotti, “teach me to sing like you.”)

- Lloyd Blankfein: The Goldman CEO is described as “a superstar,” but more importantly, Evan Handler actually nails the various The Lloyd Face(s), which some of us (me) were very skeptical anyone could do

- John Mack: While Tony Shalhoub’s Southern accent is more of a cross between a Southern and Western accent, Mack’s character fares well and gets one of the funnier (fictional?) lines of the movie: “Great, here comes E-Harmony,” when Geithner is calling him about the idea to merge the investment banks with commercial banks.

- Vikram Pandit: If he can get past the “no one knows if he’s running Citi or Citi’s running him” line, and is ready to laugh about all this, the actor who plays him does justice to the scene in which Pandit turns down Lloyd.

- CNBC: The network financial crisis coverage is threaded throughout the movie with Erin Burnett, Maria Bartiromo and Steve Liesman getting the most shout-outs

- Christian Scientists: They ought to appreciate the scene in which Hank Paulson flushes the sleeping pills someone on his staff gave him, as a commitment to his faith.

- Andrew Ross Sorkin: Someone got a cameo

- The (Our) Lehman Coffee Cart Guy: Oh yeah, there’s a nice lingering shot of his setup.

People Who Will Not Like TBTF

- John Thain: If the (unintentionally hilariously) bad toupee on Matthew Modine doesn’t do it, the fact that he’s pointedly made to look like the world’s biggest prick in every scene he appears might do it (Thain is portrayed as “selfish” (Paulson/Hurt’s words), conniving and greedy, and arguably comes off worse than Fuld)

- Charlie Gasparino: Who is not featured in any of the CNBC footage

- People Who Are “Tim Geithner Can Go Fuck Himself” Purists: This group will likely not appreciate the rewrite of the line uttered by John Mack while trying to do a deal with Mitsubishi and being repeatedly called by Tim Geithner. In the movie, he tells his secretary to pass on the message, “Tell Geithner he can blow me”

Wildcard

- Warren Buffett: On the one hand, when discussed by other characters, the point is driven home that he’s The Most Important Banker/Elder Statesman/ What Have You in the world. On the other, Ed Asner is about 40 pounds heavier, looks like a slob throughout the movie and deploys no folksy business wisdom con aberrant sex fetish. On the third, Buffett said at the 4 Seasons party afterwards that he thought the movie/Ed were great (and that “he did an excellent job portraying such a glamorous guy”)

- Alan Greenspan: Probably proud of the mention (Paulson to Bernanke: “Greenspan suggested we buy up all the vacant houses and burn them down”) but miffed at not having the entire movie be about him and his reign as Grand High Poobah

- Chris Cox: Comes off as kind of a pussy/imbecile but perhaps he’ll appreciate the accuracy?

- Barney Frank: Totally at a loss for whether or not he’ll approve of the outside the box casting of Dan Hedaya.

- Dick Fuld: Hear me out on this one. Yes, the movie (accurately) depicts Dick Fuld thinking that everything at Lehman was all good in the hood, that the only problem was “the god damn shorts,” that Lehman, as late as August 2008, would “stand strong and eat Goldman’s lunch,” that he wouldn’t fuck up the potential deal with Korea Development Bank by coming in and making the case that Lehman’s real estate holdings had a lot of value. But Fuld is also portrayed as actually caring about the bank and it’s employees, in his own way (which, if he wanted to show he cared, shouldn’t have blown a hole in their balance sheet and done some other stuff but retrospect, etc). Plus, he gets to watch himself be played by James Woods and who wouldn’t like that?

- Blankfein Humor Scholars: These people will likely be divided in their opinion that LB’s quips are generally more of the more subtle variety than, when discussing Paulson’s failure to get the authority from the FSA to do the Barclays/Lehman deal, “He didn’t drop the ball- he dropped the ball, kicked the coach in the nuts and took a shit in the quarterback’s mouth”

**Although you might not like the closing captions which I think some of you should probably close your eyes for if you’ve got blood pressure/heart problems and which I want to mention so badly but I won’t so see it and then we can discuss.

Article courtesy of Dealbreaker

The rally in IBM’s (IBM) share price in recent weeks has brought the stock to a level where it reflects an appropriate risk reward profile, according to a note released today by Canaccord Genuity.

The firm downgraded shares of IBM to Hold from Buy, arguing that recent events in Japan will make it difficult for the company to beat and raise estimates over the next two or three quarters.

He noted that he does not think the situation in Japan will prevent IBM from achieving its 2015 EPS goal of $20 but that it could have a negative effect on short-term catalysts.

“With that in mind, we are of the opinion that the shares now represent a more balanced risk/reward profile with less than 10% upside to our target price,” wrote Canaccord analyst Eyal Ofir.

Ofir’s price target is $180.

He expects IBM to report first-quarter revenue of $24.0 billion and adjusted EPS of $2.30, in line with consensus.

IBM is scheduled to report earnings on April 19.

IBM shares are down 0.23% at $163.71.

Article courtesy of Tech Trader Daily

Piper Jaffray analyst Michael Olson today reiterates an Overweight rating on shares of Netflix (NFLX), while raising his price target to $280 from $240, writing that the company may find it easier than he’d expected to take its streaming video service overseas.

Olson did a survey of 50 respondents in each of four countries, Mexico, Brazil, the U.K. and Germany. He said 33% of respondents said they’d heard of Netflix, even though the company’s service has only been made available in the U.S. and Canada.

More surprising, 61% of the respondents already had some kind of device/gadget that is capable of supporting Netflix streaming content (e.g., an Xbox 360, etc.), he writes. On the downside, 47% of respondents said they watch pirated movies, suggesting to Olson that pirate video is one of the biggest “competitors” to Netflix overseas.

Olson raised his 2012 EPS estimate to $6.22 from $6, after concluding that the subscriber acquisition costs could be lower than he originally expected given the high brand awareness. Olson estimates that each 1 million of overseas subs could add 21 cents to 25 cents to earnings annually, assuming a gross margin in a range of 35% to 40% on those subs.

Also this morning, Oppenheimer & Co.’s Jason Helfstein had a brief positive note on Netflix, reiterating an Outperform rating and opining that a speed-up in Netflix’s program purchasing and some strong data on video streaming in January suggest the company’s Q1 went well.

Looking out, he expects Netflix will get a higher average revenue per user by partnering with Facebook to make personalized video service. He also thinks cable operators look like they won’t be much competition. The recent spat between Time Warner Cable (TWC) and various cable networks indicates that the “video everywhere” effort of the cable operators is constrained by what networks will allow. That leaves Netflix to be “the leading mobile offering,” in his opinion.

Netflix shares today are down 71 cents, or 0.3%, at $244.01.

Previously: NFLX: Pushing The $7.99 Proposition, April 4th, 2011.

Article courtesy of Tech Trader Daily

Folks, it’s a confluence of positive news flow: Solar stocks such as Trina (TSL), LDK Solar (LDK), Yingli Green Energy (YGE) — well, okay, every stock in the group — are rising today, propelled by at least a couple of large positive factors.

The most immediate spur: Regional elections in Germany over the weekend saw a surge in support for the Green party, including in Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservative heartland of Baden-Wurttemburg. The victory comes amid what seems to be a crescendo in anti-nuclear fervor, with 200,000 people marching in Berlin, Cologne, Hamburg, and Munich, report the Financial Times’s Quentin Peel and Jennifer Thompson, with demands for an immediate shut-down of Germany’s 17 nuclear power plants.

The Associated Press’s Juergen Baetz last week reported that Merkel and other politicians have made “a complete U-turn” in their support for nukes.

Adding fuel, if you will, to solar’s rise, the hand-wringing over Italy seems to be drawing to a close. With some tentative outlines for a reconciliation over solar energy subsidies in that country last week, Italian industry minister Paolo Romani is expected to offer a final ruling perhaps this week or next, bringing the matter to a close.

The “tone and sentiment” of the Italy talks last week was good, says Jeffrey Bencik with Kaufman Brothers. “All the talk was of increasing renewables at the expense of nuclear.”

Jefferies & Co. analyst Jesse Pichel told me late last week by phone that Romani may be realizing that Italy can create more jobs with solar power than with nukes. “it was really the nuke lobby that sought to kill solar,” remarks Pichel.

“We do think the market has over-reacted to Italy,” said Pichel, referring to the worries over subsidy cuts. “Here’s an industry that sold out every year, that grew 30% in 2009. And here we are over-analyzing italy, which was something like less than 20% of the market in 2010.”

Pichel thinks the discussion last week tilts the policy revamp to a volume-based, rather than a dollar-based limit on solar installations in Italy, which is, he argues, what he has been expecting since February.

“2011 is going to be uncapped,” says Pichel, referring to limits on solar installations in Italy, “with a modest cut in the second half [of this year.] On a go-forward basis, the country will set some corridor at two gigawatts per year from 2012 through 2016 to limit to no more than $6 bill euros per year.”

Pichel argues, moreover, “Italy is not crucial to the global growth of solar,” given that the U.S. is still “a pretty small market” for solar, and the Chinese have barely begun to install the stuff, even though they produce most of it. “Look at what Chinese did in the wind industry,” says Pichel. “They became biggest in the world in four years.”

On that score, Wayne Chang with Brean, Murray, Carret & Co. last week offered some detailed thoughts on China’s plans for renewables. The latest five year plan involves a new plan from the department of energy that may be unveiled any day now. Overall, the plan laid out is for China to go from 8.3% of energy coming from renewables last year to 11.4% in 2015. Chang cites data showing China could represent a 60-gigawatt-per-year market for solar installations by 2020.

As for Italy, Chang thinks the country is “still going to be fairly meaningful” beyond 2011, with installations probably not limited to the 2-gigawatt corridor that Pichel talked of, but perhaps 4 gigawatts or more of installations. “it’s everyone’s guess in coming to a conclusion,” says Chang. “You posture according to your thesis.”

Chang thinks North America will be “more positive” going forward than many expect, on a state-by-state basis, with significant opportunities in the power generation industry. He also says average prices for solar modules, worldwide, have rebounded from a recent $1.60 or so, on average, and are not likely to see a drastic decline later this year.

Timothy Arcuri with Citigroup remarks “There will be closure at last” on the matter of Italy, but he does expect more sharp declines in module prices, which will actually be a good thing, in his view.

If there’s going to be a corridor of 2 gigawatts or so in Italy, “that’s a pretty substantial decline from the run-rate last year,” Arcuri told me by phone.

“How is the industry going to find the demand to meet 17 gigawatts or so of production? Probably, the result is that module prices come down to $1.25 or so by year’s end, from $1.65 now.”

Probably, the industry will be “like it was a couple of years ago,” when module prices came down sharply, says Arcuri.

From here, though, things look “pretty good” for the stocks, he thinks. “Once you’ve got module prices trending toward a buck or so, you can see a big opportunity a couple of years out when you’ve got price elasticity.”

And, “In the meantime, you’ve got these other markets, the U.S., China. China will probably be a 4-gigawatt or 5-gigawatt market in a year or two.”

“You will be able to get beyond all this nonsense in Europe.”

Lest you think everyone’s capitulated, Credit Suisse’s Satya Kumar today writes that “Investors are hyper-focused on Italy subsidy trends,” but that in his opinion, “a plain vanilla oversupply is quietly brewing” because there may be more than 500 megawatts’s of “excess inventory in the channel.”

Following a meeting last week with China’s National Development and Reform Commission, he doesn’t believe that “China will be a backstop for demand until much later in the cycle. We think pricing will need to fall sharply in 2H11.”

Nevertheless, Kumar today advises as relatively better placed the shares of JinkoSolar Holdings (JKS), MEMC Electronic Materials (WFR), and ReneSola (SOL), with First Solar (FSLR) having gotten a bid ahead of itself, he thinks.

Article courtesy of Tech Trader Daily

Value investor alert! Goldman Sachs analyst Tim Boddy this morning writes that pessimism on Nokia (NOK) has perhaps hit bottom, creating an “attractive” time to get into the stock, in his opinion. He raised his rating on the shares to Buy from Neutral, with a $12.40 target price on the company’s American Depository Shares.

Nokia’s ADRs are up 40 cents, or 5%, at $8.75.

True, Nokia is set to see its share of cell phone units drop dramatically, but its stock is priced currently as if it were a struggling automobile company, he thinks, which is excessive.

Boddy models Nokia’s handset unit share worldwide being cut in half by the middle of next year, to 17% from 37%. However, he sees that rebounding as the company’s partnership with Microsoft (MSFT) benefits from the latter’s access to corporations and to “cloud services.”

The stock is priced at 6.4 times enterprise value as a multiple of Ebitda, and 0.4 times sales, based on this year’s estimates — multiples that assume the company will see its share of the total “value” of smartphones halved, to 10%, and that assume only a 3% Ebit margin on handsets.

That’s excessive, writes Boddy. Probably, Nokia can maintain “mid-teens” share of cellphone value, on a percentage basis, and a “high single digit” overall handset Ebit.

Also, Nokia’s new CEO, Stephen Elop, who came from Microsoft, has a strong incentive to success: if the ordinary shares trade between €9 and €17 at the end of 2012, Elop’s incentive package would yield him $8 million to $39 million “above his ‘baseline’ cumulative compensation” for 2010 to 2012.

Boddy’s modeling €43.03 billion in revenue this year and 58 cents per share (in USD) in EPS. The Street has been modeling €43.08 and 71 cents per share in EPS.

Article courtesy of Tech Trader Daily

Shares of Research In Motion (RIMM) are down $6.84, or almost 11%, at $57.25, in early trading continuing the after-hours dropped they experienced last night following the company’s announcement of fiscal Q4 revenue that was a tad light and a Q1 view that missed estimates.

This morning the stock gets no less than four downgrades, from Buy to Neutral at Merrill Lynch, from Neutral to Underperform at RW Baird and Deutsche Bank, and from Buy to “Above Average” at Caris & Co.

This is period of “transition,” the company said, and today, there are those who’ll give the company the benefit of the doubt it can transition fine, and some who won’t.

Bullish!

Mike Abramsky, RBC Capital: Reiterates a Buy recommendation and a $90 price target, writing that RIM’s stock is still a top pick. “The Q1 miss likely sustains near-term investor concerns over intensifying competition – but we interpret it transitional,” writes Abramsky. “Valuation may remain volatile near-term, however we foresee additional upside as pending launches and Q1 results/outlook help restore confidence in RIM’s competitive advantages and in achievement of their fiscal 2012. outlook. Execution remains a risk to our view.”

Stephen Patel, Gleacher & Co.: Reiterates a Buy rating, while cutting his price target to $72 from $80, but he’s sticking with the thesis RIM will be a beneficiary of Nokia’s (NOK) stumble in the global smartphone market. Sell-through in Q4 was up 18% from Q3, he notes, way above the sell-in of just 5%, “and we believe May quarter-over-quarter sell-through will also be better than sell-in guidance of units down 6% at the midpoint.” Patel has raised this year’s EPS estimate to $7.52 from $7.40, giving management the benefit of the doubt.

Tavis McCourt, Morgan Keegan: Maintains an Outperform rating, while cutting his price target to $91 from $96, and he also is sticking with his 2012 EPS estimate of $7.09, and initiates an $8-per-share estimate for 2013. He thinks there will, indeed, be a snap-back after the current quarter flushes some BlackBerry inventory from the channel: “May will almost certainly be artificially low, as they expect to ship about 14 million BlackBerries, and sell through will likely far exceed this. Because of this we would expect a strong snap-back in BlackBerry unit sales in the August quarter, on top of sequential tablet growth.” And International is still the key: “The “non-US” portion of revenue grew 77%, year over year, and shows little sign of slowing,” writes McCourt. “Our thesis on RIM is that its network advantages are not easily replicable by other vendors and give it substantial advantages outside of the US, but are not as relevant in the US market. Even if OS 6.1 and PlayBook do not reinvigorate BlackBerry growth in the US, RIM will likely continue to grow for many years to come just based on its advantages outside the US, in our opinion.”

Bearish!

Robert Cihra, Caris & Co.: Cut his rating from Buy to “Above Average,” and cut his price target from $75 to $70, writing that the projection of $7.50 or better per share in earnings throws a lot of risk onto the latter three quarters of the year, which he finds hard to believe: he’s cut his 2012 EPS estimate to $6.71 from a prior $7.01. “RISK is RIMM’s now guiding a big ramp starting FQ2, partially driven by smartphone product roadmap/cycling actually not far off our existing expectation BUT we fear now banking on VERY strong uptake of Playbook tablets. We see key BlackBerry refreshes starting this summer […] but from a platform standpoint, while Playbook will intro the powerful new multitasking QNX OS, RIMM’s not planning to launch QNX-based “super-phones” (e.g., dual-core) until early calendar 2012, which makes us question how excited users/carriers may be for this year’s evolutionary OS 6.1 vs. waiting for the complete (and architecturally overdue) QNX-scaled re-write.”

Brian Modoff, Deutsche Bank: Cut his rating to Hold from Sell, and cut his price target to $50 from $60. He cut his estimate for this year $6.76 per share in earnings from a prior $7.67.  ”We think this quarter was just a taste of what lies in store for the company. The company is feeling the growth of Android shipments which are replacing Blackberries in all of the company’s markets. In the core enterprise base, a growing number of corporates are opening their e-mail systems to iOS and Android. Emerging markets, which have driven RIM’s growth over the last two years, appear to be slowing as well. We think this trend will only get worse as Android smartphones get dramatically cheaper.” He’s lost faith in the PlayBook, too, it would seem: “While RIM has grasped some of the important conceptual elements of a modern OS, it now appears that these lessons have not taken root. Instead of offering a single coherent OS strategy, they are fragmenting their own platform by offering multiple elements.”  And he thinks it’s no longer acceptable for Mike Lazaridis and James Balsillie to be splitting the CEO spot: “In all our years covering stocks, we cannot think of a situation where this ended well.”

Simona Jankowski, Goldman Sachs: Reiterates a Sell rating, while cutting her price target to $57 from $63. Jankowski is sticking with her already low EPS estimate for this year of $5.77. The first part of her RIM thesis, that the company would lose market share, has played out, she writes. The Q1 forecast “supports the second part of our thesis, namely that Street estimates will decline significantly as a result of lower than expected ASPs and margins.” Given a move to emerging markets and to consumers from businesses, the company is destined to see continued margin pressure, Jankowski argues, with an “aging product portfolio” not helping things.

Ittai Kidron: Maintains a “Perform” rating, with no price target. He cut his 2012 EPS estimate to $6.80 from $7.20, even though he actually raised his revenue estimate slightly to $24.81 billion. The company’s aging smartphone portfolio, and the initial pressure from low gross profit margin on the PlayBook make the company’s year forecast a “stretch,” he believes. ” Despite RIM’s optimism, our revised PlayBook estimates remain below consensus. We also don’t think RIM can scale down its strategic growth investments limiting operating leverage. Bottom line, we see a challenging transition and aren’t buying RIM’s aggressive fiscal year 2012 outlook or its shares.”

Jennifer Fritzsche, Wells Fargo: Reiterates a Market Weight rating on the stock and a valuation range of $63 to $66. She cut her EPS estimate this year to $6.77 from a prior $7.14, on $24.7 billion in revenue, down from $25.4 billion before. “The company provided FY2012 EPS guidance of greater than $7.50, but we note that to hit guidance RIMM would have to report sharply improved H2 results. Our estimates are more conservative than guidance.”

Article courtesy of Tech Trader Daily

UBS Securities’s chip analyst Uche Orji just hosted a pretty interesting conference call regarding the battle for mobile chips, starting at 11 am, Eastern. The call featured a presentation by Linley Gwennap, the founder of consulting firm The Linley Group, and also a contributor to Microprocessor Report, which is one of the best chip newsletters around, in my opinion.

Gwennap concludes that Qualcomm (QCOM) has a strong position, based on the fact that it has baseband radio chip capabilities, which will be important for any smartphones, and based on the company having invested in dramatically improving its graphics performance capabilities.

Nvidia (NVDA), on the other hand, is at risk of losing an early lead in tablet chips, while having a weak position in phones. The company has no baseband expertise, and will have to develop such to move from what is essentially “zero” market share in phone processors now.

Nvidia has chips in some brand-new phones, such as Motorola Mobility‘s (MMI) “Atrix” phone, but overall it has won very few deals. Further out, Nvidia, argues Gwennap, will have to have expertise in baseband radios, as Qualcomm does.

Gwennap predicted lots of mergers and acquisitions in coming years as chip makers without baseband radios combine with makers of basebands.

As for tablets, Nvidia’s had a lead over other vendors with dual-core processors, but with other vendors planning to rapidly roll out quad-core parts in the coming year, such as Qualcomm’s “Krait”-based processors, and Texas Instrument’s (TXN) “OMAP5,” Gwennap predicts that Nvidia’s “Kal-El” quad-core chip may not enjoy the same lead in the next round of tablets.

As you can see from the image pasted below from Gwennap’s slide deck, he sees both TI and Qualcomm rapidly catching up with Kal-El.

Gwennap spent no time on Intel (INTC) in his formal presentation. When asked about Intel’s forthcoming “Medfield” processor, Gwennap emphasized the challenges facing the company. ARM Holdings (ARMH), the company that licenses CPU designs to Nvidia, Qualcomm, TI and others, has vastly improved performance while maintaining power savings in chip designs. That has put the onus on Intel to improve price and performance per watt after years of setting the status quo in PCs.

“Now the shoe is on the other foot: if Intel is going to go into the smartphone market, what is it going to take to convince a manufacturer to go over to Intel? Is it going to take performance that’s 50% better? 100% better? That’s a pretty high bar.”

As for TI, and Broadcom, both are seen as being at a disadvantage. TI is set to lose business at Nokia (NOK) as the latter transitions to using Microsoft’s (MSFT) software. And TI got out of baseband radios even though it looks like that capability will be increasingly important in smartphones. Broadcom has effectively “ignored smarphones and tablets,” as far as Gwennap is concerned.

Marvell Technology Group’s (MRVL) announced “some impressive products,” said Gwennap. However, “I’m starting to get worried that I’ve just not seen the design wins coming out of the other end of the pipeline,” said Gwennap. “For whatever reason, they’re not able to get traction.”

Gwennap was also asked about Taiwan’s Mediatek, which primarily serves the lower end of the cell phone and smartphone market. Gwennap observed that this is not a bad place to be, as the low end is currently where much of the unit volume growth is, worldwide.

Article courtesy of Tech Trader Daily

The Foundry makes digital visual effects software which has been used in motion pictures like Tron legacy 3D, Avatar, Harry Potter and many others. Private equity firm The Carlyle Group just acquired a majority stake in the Foundry from Advent Venture Partners and other stakeholders. The details of the transaction have not been made public.

Making a movie involving digital visual effects is a complicated and technically sophisticated business.  In fact, the visual rendering farms used for movies like Happy Feet or Lord of the Rings rank among the top 500 supercomputing centers in the world. Each film sequence combining live action and visual effects involves a huge number of visual elements which must be integrated into a final, polished product. The Foundry’s software creates rough combinations of these elements (a process called compositing) in a visual representation which can then be refined by dozens of artists. The video below shows some work created using Nuke, the Foundry’s core compositing product.

I talked to Mike Chalfen, a partner at Advent Venture Partners, the Foundry’s main investors about the deal. He contends that this deal is a validation of the firm’s growth investment strategy. Growth investment means investing is a business which has a proven business model and technology and is usually already profitable but wants to expand. Venture capital tends to invest in newer products and markets.

Advent only invested in the Foundry 2 years ago. Chalfen told me that the Foundry is a typical growth investment deal. The company makes a complex product which is hard to replicate and there was a pent-up sales demand which was not being satisfied. The company expanded 100 percent in 2009.

I asked Chalfen about the growth investment climate in Europe. He told me that he is feeling bullish about the tech market in Europe. It has become less important where a company is based. According to Chalfen, in the US massive companies created very rapidly but it is often easier to find truly differentiated companies in Europe. However, he is of the opinion that too many European founders here fall in love with their technology at the expense of the business aspect. European technology and American business savvy could be a match waiting to happen.

.

Tags: digital, movies, special effects

Companies: The Foundry

Article courtesy of VentureBeat » deals

Kan Seeks Calm as Japan Tries to Contain Meltdown, Panic Buying (Bloomberg)
Japanese stocks fell after reports of today’s explosion and fire, sending the Topix 9.5 percent lower at the close in Tokyo, the largest one-day slide since October 2008. The gauge has dropped 18 percent since the quake. The central bank injected 8 trillion yen ($98 billion) into the financial system today, on top of a record 15 trillion yen yesterday. “We are in uncharted waters now,” said Kirby Daley, a Hong Kong-based senior strategist with Newedge Group’s prime brokerage business.

Hedge Funds Had Bets Against Japan (WSJ)
In recent years, a chorus of voices has warned that Japan is facing an inevitable crisis to be brought on by a stagnant economy, a shrinking population and the worst debt profile of any major industrialized country. Hedge-fund managers from Kyle Bass of Hayman Advisors LP in Dallas to smaller firms like Commonwealth Opportunity Capital have made money since the earthquake on long-held bets on Japan’s government and corporate bonds.

Marc Faber: If Markets Keep Falling, Fed Will Keep Printing (CNBC)
“We may drop 10 to 15 percent. Then QE 2 will come, (then) QE 4, QE 5, QE 6, QE 7—whatever you want. The money printer will continue to print, that I’m sure,” said the author of the Gloom, Boom and Doom Report. Later in the interview, he added, “Actually I made a mistake. I meant to say QE 18.”

Pandit Picks Emerging Markets as Citigroup Future in New Risk (Bloomberg)
Citigroup now earns more than half its profit from developing countries, Chief Executive Officer Pandit said at a March 9 conference in New York. The bank increased assets in Latin America and Asia by 16 percent to more than $470 billion last year, adding customers in countries such as Brazil, Mexico and India…“If it grows like a weed, maybe it is a weed,” said Mike Mayo, who recommends investors sell Citigroup shares. “They’ve had risk- management mishaps. We’re not convinced the culture has changed enough to prevent similar mishaps from occurring.”

Gaddafi Says European Friends Betrayed Him (Reuters)
“I was really shocked by the attitude of my European friends,” he told the newspaper. “They have damaged and endangered a series of major accords on security that were in their interests and the economic cooperation that we had.”

Fed’s Next Steps Divide Economists as Asset Purchases Slow (Bloomberg)
Of 50 economists surveyed by Bloomberg News last week, 49 said the Fed will buy the full amount of bonds in a bid to boost the economy. Thirty-one said the central bank won’t adjust the pace or duration of the purchases, as it did in the first round of so-called quantitative easing in 2009-10. Respondents were further divided over how long the Fed will keep its bond portfolio stable after the purchases end, with a plurality of 16 betting on a period of four to six months.

Banking’s Scourge On Charm Offensive (WSJ)
A wall map of the U.S. in the Consumer Protection Bureau’s offices tracks Ms. Warren’s methodical campaign with colored push-pins. Each blue pin records an “in-person meeting w/[Elizabeth Warren], while a red pin means a “one-on-one EW call” and a white pin a “group meeting w/EW.” The map has 47 pins so far.

EU Agrees On Economic Overhaul (WSJ)
Mr. Trichet said the changes aren’t ambitious enough. “We continue to think that the improvement in governance that is presently envisioned is, in our opinion, insufficient to draw the lessons from the crisis we had to cope with,” he said.

Roubini: Yen Will Further Weaken In The Long Run (CNBC)
“Japan is going to need significant depreciation of the yen to increase its net exports because domestic demand is going to be anemic for a while. Therefore on a fundamental basis, the yen is going to be much weaker rather than stronger because you need improvement of external balance given the shock to the domestic economy,” he said.

Japanese Nuclear Plan Radiation Recedes As Engineers Restore Water Level (Bloomberg)
Water supply at reactors No. 1 and No. 3 stabilized and radiation readings at the front gate of the plant dropped to a level that isn’t “harmful to the human body,” Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said this afternoon in Tokyo. Separately, Tokyo Electric said it hadn’t decided whether to bring workers after the utility evacuated 750 of its 800 employees following this morning’s blast.

Article courtesy of Dealbreaker

It was nothing. It was “a tempest in a teacup.” Not that many people even showed up and if you want his opinion? It should actually be called Day of Allegiance, to the Saudi King. [CNBC, WSJ]

Article courtesy of Dealbreaker