le prossime ruote che si staccano - gz
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By: GZ on Giovedì 16 Agosto 2007 03:40
la crisi di una frazione dei mutui americani ha tagliato in due mesi dal 10 al 15% di capitalizzazione agli indici occidentali (e giappone che è il peggiore, l'Asia meno, il sudamerica sta rompendo negli ultimi due giorni vedi il Brasile ^EWZ#^ da 70$ a 53$ in 20 giorni)
in particolare come settori ha tagliato via un -20% medio ai titoli finanziari americani e quasi altrettanto a quelli euro
Quali sono le prossime ruote che si staccano ora che si sente odore di recessione ?
1) Il consumatore americano, l'indice RTH che lo rispecchia sta sfondando in basso, vedi anche il disastro oggi di tutte le grandi catene di distribuzione, Walmart, ^Home Depot#^, ^Sears#^, ^BBBY#^...
2) l'immobiliare in Spagna e Inghilterra in confronto al quale quello americano sarà un picnic a mio avviso, guarda oggi il crac della nostra ^Northern Rock#^, il mistero è solo come facciano gli spagnoli a fingere così bene, faranno crac tutto in un colpo
3) l'auto, acciaio, trasporti, pneumatici e ciclici pesanti ora che si è visto che l'economia rallenta (se Fiat non torna a 14 euro entro natale mangio un rospo)
4) il settore telecom legato al consumatore occidentale tipo ^Nokia^, ^Rimm#^, ^Apple#^, ^Ericsson#^, leggere qui sotto
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Now's a Great Time to Panic About Telecom
By Tero Kuittinen
8/15/2007 1
It's a week when we're going to see a lot of dignified, calm people telling investors why this is not the time to panic. Let's take a moment to review why this is particularly dumb advice for telecom investors right now.
Know the History
Spring 2004 was a magical time in mobile telecom land. Global phone shipments grew by a titanic 40% year-over-year during the first half of 2004. Mobile network sales growth topped 20%.
Two years later, 2006 was nice, though no longer magical. Phone shipment growth pace had cooled to 21% by the fourth quarter and network sales growth had dipped to the single digits.
The second quarter of 2007 was all Muggles and no magic -- phone unit growth of 11%-12% and network sales growth at around 2-3%.
Yet Ericsson's (ERIC) operating margins still topped 19%, and its share price this week remains at $36, far above the $5 level of the telecom trough of 2002. Nokia's (NOK) margins are also currently at highs, and its share price of nearly $30 is far above the $12 level the stock hit during the margin panic of 2004.
The leading names in both mobile infrastructure and mobile handset sectors are levitating close to their levels of 2001. It is true that weaker names such as Alcatel-Lucent (ALU) and Nortel (NT) have taken their lumps in recent weeks. But overall, the telecom sector is not pricing in further deterioration.
Growth in Weakness
That's true even though growth has clearly been decelerating and U.S. consumer spending, the global engine of growth, shows signs of weakening. Even though the M&A mania that has been buoying telecom land has obviously passed its peak.
In 2001, global mobile phone volumes declined for the first time in industry history. But then, as now, Wall Street refused to believe the early signs of the volume slowdown. Names like Nokia staged major rallies in the second half of the year as investors looked back at 10 years of terrific growth.
The smartphone market is now topping 100 million units a year. It's a rapidly maturing, 10-year-old product sector that's experiencing a relatively rapid slowdown in the growth rate and rapidly increasing competitive pressure. Vendors who observed the 60%-80% annualized smartphone growth rates back in 2004 or 2005 are now bringing out the flood of new models they greenlighted during that era of hypergrowth.
We can all see where this is heading in 2008.
Yet Research In Motion (RIMM) has a market cap of nearly $40 billion on annual sales of $5.5 billion. Apple (AAPL) has a price-to-earnings ratio of 35, a rich level that shows zero concern on the part of its share buyers about the devastating speed with which losses can pile up for a vendor that's ramping up global distribution but is saddled with 0%-5% market share for years to come.
The 2001 downturn in the phone business showed how cruel the market is for niche players when volume growth vanishes. The margin crunch back then forced every single vendor's phone unit into the red, apart from Nokia. This time around, investors refuse to believe that volume growth continues to slow and refuse to believe that the margins of niche players with limited global experience can get hit.
Remember Last Time?
Let me point out two key insights about the last big phone market crunch.
1. Nobody knows how and why the dot-com bubble implosion coincided with the decline in phone market volume. The most likely explanation is that the financial shock made operators pull back on phone orders, network capital expenditures, marketing and phone subsidies at the same time.
Expect this to happen with any financial shock of similar magnitude, whether triggered by a mortgage meltdown or the implosion of Pets.com.
2. The market shares of Motorola (MOT) , Samsung and Siemens (SI) went up from 2001 and 2002. That did not prevent their phone divisions from racking up devastating losses.
When the overall phone volume growth vanishes, this industry goes into margin shock. Phone business lives and breathes volume growth. It can't deal with a rapid slowdown in growth without major trauma.
That trauma is a result of the disconnect between planned ramp-ups in production volume and end-user demand. This disconnect is inevitable when several major vendors plan major volume ramp-ups during a period of slowing growth. That may now be the case with the ambitious expansion plans of Samsung and Sony Ericsson (the partnered units of Sony (SNE) and Ericsson), the rebound attempt of Motorola, the global expansion plots of Apple and RIM and Nokia's aggressive quest for that 40% market share mark.
That is a grave concern for every player with market share below 30%. And it's a moderate concern even for Nokia.
The time to not panic is when we get actual evidence of phone unit growth dipping to 5% or 0%. The time to panic is before Wall Street prices in that level -- and Wall Street always prices it in before concrete evidence is out.
So is this a bad time for telecom investors to panic? What could be better? Leading companies and hottest speculative names are still priced close to perfection.