| To: Cautious_Optimist who wrote (3822) | 10/10/2014 9:21:26 AM | | From: richardred | | | | >Also, inevitable consolidation in the currently virtually-nuked oil patch. If that's your thing. Crude below marginal costs.
This is my main focus. IMO it will also be the focus for those in the patch that are low cost producers. It seems niche acquisitions would be more productive for those companies then buying back stock. ECA just made a move and I suspect others will follow. Maybe Exxon, who's Russian Rosneft project seems stalled? I think the possible coming consolidations will benefit US independents the most.
P.S. IMO Countries like Venezuela are getting desperate. What is OPEC thinking now?
Citgo's U.S. refineries sale takes another bidding round -sources
reuters.com |
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| To: richardred who wrote (3323) | 10/10/2014 1:36:07 PM | | From: richardred | | | | RE-ARTW- FWIW- I can't help, but comment on due to ARTW Scientific Buildings segment. There were some comments at the CC, but little more than they are ready. It could turn out immaterial, but when you see a stock Lakeland Industries Inc. (LAKE) due to ebola fears. I had to give it some weight.
MY YH ARTW comments before the cc.
Military building Ebola treatment centers
However,I saw no news of any AS contract wins due to the Virus. However it does appear the US Military is building some treatment centers . PR-NEWS In recent weeks, The world has vowed to step up its response to the epidemic, which has been spreading for more than six months. The United States has sent a military team to neighboring Liberia with plans to build 18 treatment centers to prop up the broken health system. The British have promised to build field hospitals in four urban areas in Sierra Leone, including this one. The French are setting up a treatment center and a laboratory in Guinea. The Chinese have sent scores of medical personnel to the region and have converted a hospital they built outside Freetown into a holding center for Ebola patients. It also appears some other Arab countries might be preparing for the same. Still no PR news from ARTW if they are even bidding on such contract. Any possible win might be classified, but still might be a possibility more then I previously thought.
P.S. From the company Web site
The Buildings for Science Advantage
Time, cost, flexibility, environmental control, and exceptionally tight production processes are a few of the unique advantages offered by a pre-engineered laboratory solution. A modular research facility moves your research ahead in 180 days compared to the two to four years required for conventional design and construction methods.
Install the lab connected to your existing facility, at a distance for security, expand incrementally within an existing structure, or if space is tight consider installation on top of an existing structure. Installation options add flexibility. Decide to lease for years, or purchase today. The choices are yours from Art’s Way Scientific.
Self-contained pre-engineered laboratories are the clear solution to choice for rapid deployment in the U.S. to meet the core diagnostic capabilities for biological and chemical defense or naturally occurring pathogens. Modular laboratories serve as externally monitored triage and assessment units operating full-time for in-processing and pre-screening of non-routine specimens.
Modular laboratories can be designed with multi-chambered glove box equipment capable of maintaining isolation and separation of specimen contents from laboratory personnel and the surrounding environment. Modular laboratories can provide complete physical isolation of unknown agents or infected people, plants, or animals. The Buildings for Science solution offers the rapid response value critical for federal, state, and local public and private health facilities.
Biocontainment Laboratories
Pre-engineered alternatives provide superior solutions for BSL-2 and BSL-3+ laboratories. Based on pathogen driven requirements, Art’s Way Scientific will design, construct, and install a Biosafety laboratory to meet specific laboratory needs. Our structural insulated panel wall system provides 15 times better air filtration than conventional and steel construction. Expanded polystyrene material
artsway-scientific.com |
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| From: Glenn Petersen | 10/14/2014 5:09:03 PM | | | | | | As Activist Shareholders Gain Strength, Boards Surrender to Demands
By Steven Davidoff Solomon
DealBook
New York Times
October 14, 2014 4:30 pm
Corporate America may try to hide from its shareholders, but two recent board shake-ups — involving the tech giant Hewlett-Packard and Darden Restaurants, the owner of Olive Garden and other chains — show that escape is no longer possible. Shareholder activism has rapidly changed how corporate America thinks.
Hewlett-Packard, which is in Year 3 of a five-year turnaround plan, finally did what some shareholders had been demanding for years. The company said last week that it would split in two: One company will be a printer and personal computer manufacturer named HP Inc. and the other will be an enterprise software company called Hewlett-Packard Enterprise. The Wall Street response was to send the company’s stock up as much as 6.6 percent on the day it was announced. Yet The New York Times business columnist James B. Stewart suggested it might be a desperate maneuver that catered to shareholder whims and the spinoff stampede rather than a well-reasoned strategic plan.
In the case of Darden, the activist investor Starboard Value, after months of pressing for changes, succeeded in unseating all of the company’s directors. Throwing out every single company director is a rare and drastic event, one I called an epic failure. This happened after the Darden board, in a fit of chutzpah, decided to spin off its Red Lobster business just before a shareholder vote on the issue, one that appeared to be heading toward a rejection of such a sale. The Darden board thus sealed its own fate by blatantly ignoring shareholder will.
So what do these two events — one where a company appears to be catering to its shareholders and another where it had been rejecting them — have to do with each other?
Looked at together, the events show that the activist shareholders have triumphed. The two cases symbolize an end to the war of aggression between corporate America and shareholders, with a surrender driven by crusty breadsticks and huge decline in PC sales. Corporate America, previously ruled by chief executives and boards, is racing to do shareholders’ bidding.
The Darden case in particular highlights the seismic shift that can happen if a corporation ignores shareholder demands. Indeed, Darden’s board members voted to sell Red Lobster at a time when the activists were organizing to oppose this move in part because they thought the seafood chain would be too small to survive on its own.
That Darden’s old board would go against the wishes of shareholders so stridently was puzzling. This was particularly true in light of the fact that a similarly hostile battle at the auction house Sotheby’s had also ended in a loss for the company after the hedge fund manager Daniel S. Loeb gained the three board seats he sought.
Wall Street chatter has attributed Darden’s obstreperousness to its advisers (the chatter, of course, is mostly coming from competitors). At both Sotheby’s and Darden, the advisers were Goldman Sachs on the financial side, Wachtell Lipton for legal issues and the firm Joele Frank for public relations advice. These firms are the trinity of anti-activism, the experts that companies hire when they want to oppose the activists. It is hard to blame the advisers for things going against the Sotheby’s and Darden boards because those are the firms to hire in a shareholder fight.
Goldman Sachs, Wachtell Lipton and Joele Frank all declined to comment for this article.
In the wake of Darden’s upheaval, strident opposition by boards is likely to disappear. It simply doesn’t pay. Even the most ardent anti-activist firms know it.
This trend is already taking hold. So far this year, activists had a success rate of 72 percent in proxy fights, up from 60 percent in 2013, according to FactSet SharkRepellent, a research firm.
Activists are gaining ground because institutional investors are increasingly willing to side with them, and even joining the fight (or ganging up, as some companies might say). These shareholder forces are often given an assist by two prominent shareholder proxy firms, Institutional Shareholder Services and Glass Lewis. But this is not a surprise as activists tend to focus on struggling companies in need of change.
It all adds up to pressure-cooking corporate boards. And as hedge funds have proved to be successful in their activism, earning extraordinary returns as a result, billions more in money is following. It is a virtuous circle, or a vicious one, depending on your perspective. At least until the returns go away.
That is why the loss at Darden, coming after Sotheby’s capitulation, is such a milestone. After the Darden fight, companies are not going to want to go the distance. It is too much misspent money on advisers in a fight that results in a loss of face.
If you needed more proof, you need only see what happened at Hertz. Carl C. Icahn popped up with an 8.5 percent stake in Hertz, and within a week, Mr. Icahn was able to appoint three directors, two of whom are sitting on the new chief executive search committee. Hertz quickly realized that the easiest thing to do was give in.
This is where the Hewlett-Packard spinoff comes in. As shareholder activists, backed by institutional shareholders, grow stronger, no company is safe. Apple and Microsoft have already been targets. It was only a matter of time until HP would have again been the target of an activist.
In this respect, what happened at Darden led to what happened at HP. HP’s spinoff can be seen as a precautionary step to keep the shareholder activists happy.
From the perspective of activists, every business that is even the slightest bit different from a company’s core must be broken off. In Darden’s case, the activists argued for a spinoff of Red Lobster and Olive Garden together.
A spinoff can be beneficial, as it allows management to focus better on each separate business. But in other cases, it pushes management to dump its worst-performing assets into the newly formed company. The result though is that corporate America is slowly being broken up, only to rebuild as these smaller companies again get acquired or acquire others.
At HP, it is uncertain whether a spinoff makes sense, but shareholders wanted it. And so the move by its chief executive, Meg Whitman, can be seen as responding to the market trend and the fact that activist shareholders must be obeyed.
This is the way it goes these days in corporate America. Corporations are running to reorganize and trying to prevent the activists from coming. But the activists are on the prowl, and there is nowhere to hide.
This is true even beyond activism and in takeovers themselves. The Botox maker Allergan (represented by the trinity of Goldman, Wachtell Lipton and Joele Frank) is trying to fight off Valeant Pharmaceuticals and the activist hedge fund Pershing Square Capital Management. But barring a court ordering otherwise, shareholders will soon get to vote on whether to unseat Allergan’s directors. Can you guess where the trend is going?
The real winners here are the advisers, who have seemed to figure out which way the wind is blowing. Guess who advised HP on its spinoff? It was again Goldman Sachs and Wachtell Lipton. No matter how contentious things get, the current shareholder atmosphere is driving companies to break up and seek acquisitions. Wall Street will continue to profit from both those trends.
Yet one has to wonder about the corporations themselves. Shareholder activism can be a positive force and certainly companies should listen to shareholders as in the Darden case. But as companies run in fear to reorganize themselves, one has to wonder if fear alone is a good way to run corporate America.
Steven Davidoff Solomon, a professor of law at the University of California, Berkeley, is the author of “ Gods at War: Shotgun Takeovers, Government by Deal and the Private Equity Implosion.” E-mail: dealprof@nytimes.com | Twitter: @StevenDavidoff
dealbook.nytimes.com |
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| To: richardred who wrote (3824) | 10/16/2014 12:07:16 AM | | From: richardred | | | | Joe your a seller again.
Message 28861796
Arts-Way Manufacturing Co. Director Joseph R. Dancy Unloads 24,000 Shares (ARTW) Posted by Shayan Afkhami on Oct 14th, 2014 // No Comments
 Arts-Way Manufacturing Co. (NASDAQ:ARTW) Director Joseph R. Dancy unloaded 24,000 shares of the stock in a transaction dated Wednesday, October 8th. The stock was sold at an average price of $5.00, for a total value of $120,000.00. Following the transaction, the director now directly owns 50,000 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $250,000. The transaction was disclosed in a filing with the SEC, which can be accessed through this link.
Shares of Arts-Way Manufacturing Co. ( NASDAQ:ARTW) opened at 5.74 on Tuesday. Arts-Way Manufacturing Co. has a 52 week low of $4.76 and a 52 week high of $6.92. The stock has a 50-day moving average of $5.08 and a 200-day moving average of $5.66. The company has a market cap of $23.2 million and a price-to-earnings ratio of 31.89.
mideasttime.com
Richard - richardred ?@rreding1 8m8 minutes ago
Arts-Way Manufacturing Co. Director Joseph R. Dancy Unloads 24,000 Shares $ARTW t.co via @RatingsNetwork
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 Penny Stock Secret ?@stocksecret101 6h6 hours ago
Secret That Has Made GREG, And 22 of his friends and family members MILLIONAIRES! FIND HERE t.co .. $SFBS $ARTW $HAYN
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 Craig ?@CraigTrader 8h8 hours ago
$VSR running on ebola containment centers t.co. $ARTW makes them as well. t.co
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 NASDAQ ?@NASDAQODUK 8h8 hours ago
$ARTW - Report of Proposed Sale of Securities (144) t.co
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Silicon Investor follows
 Luke Murray ?@EliteDayTraders 8h8 hours ago
$ARTW out 5.94 avg
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People · View all
     
 Emil ?@cuzmane 11h11 hours ago
$LAKE $APT $VSR $IBIO lately $ARTW are just trading vehicules,have and edge/a set risk and sqeeze the juice from them
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 Liza Friedlander ?@LizaFriedlander 12h12 hours ago
$ARTW and $VSR he really is superman
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Tierra Partners follows
 RichJr ?@NerdElert 12h12 hours ago
$ARTW $7 line... has a history of obscene moves too..
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 TradeAddict ?@TradeAddict 12h12 hours ago
$ARTW I dont like low floats so much. Just put it on radar. Maybe it gets more attention in a few days (more volume)
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Luke Murray ?@EliteDayTraders 12h12 hours ago
$ARTW 2.16M float 4.05M outstanding, will not take much vol to blow the roof off
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THE REAL MC HÖRL follows
 @super_trades ?@super_trades 12h12 hours ago
$ARTW CC - Roger Miller - Frontier Asset Management So where I'm getting at is – can these buildings be used (cont) t.co
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 Nathan Michaud ?@InvestorsLive 12h12 hours ago
$ARTW pop up as sympathy to $VSR -- just wait for shorts to get in there on this thin name and freak when they realize its thin lol
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RichJr ?@NerdElert 12h12 hours ago
long $ARTW 6.59 .... @super_trades found a zinger imo... like he originally found $VSR about $3
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@super_trades ?@super_trades 13h13 hours ago
Low float $ARTW modular labs DO NOT CHASE LOW FLOATS - in low6's t.co
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 DJ ?@mktoperative 13h13 hours ago
$ARTW stealth #ebola play
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 Large Void Bot ?@LargeVoidBot 13h13 hours ago
$ARTW Volatility Trading Pause. Halt time: 11:35:55.
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 WallStreet ?@financialmovers Oct 14
$ENZY, $CLF, $ARTW - Wall Street Update: Enzymotec, Cliffs Natural Resources (CLF), Arts-Way Manufacturing (ARTW) - t.co
twitter.com |
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| To: richardred who wrote (3826) | 10/16/2014 11:02:37 AM | | From: richardred | | | | ARTW-From a 52 week high yesterday back to trading just above a 52 low. The company just reporting .14 cents in the last qtr. and a increased backlog. Traders can manipulate this company all they want. I added shares today because at 5.30. they IMO are trading on fundamentals again. I haven't sold a single share of my re-entry yet, and added shares today. I can outlast day traders. FWIW- I could be wrong, but I now believe AS could be a game changer for the company.
Company PR snip-Our agricultural sales are strong, and we've seen an increase in backlog over last year in every segment. Our products serving the livestock and dairy sectors have been very strong and are providing the counter-cyclical strength and stability we seek during times of weak row-crop commodity prices."
IF this AS contract was announced for Swine Behavioral. IMO any potential orders related for Ebola could have a material impact.
>Art's-Way announces two medical research contracts
Art's Way announces that Art's Way Scientific was awarded a sole source contract for a "High Output Swine Behavioral Unit" for the University of Illinois Department of Agricultural Nutritional Sciences Division. The testing unit, valued at $620,000, will support Dr. Ryan Dilgers work to study the nutritional effects of infant formula in brain development. Art's Way Scientific recently signed contracts for an additional $290,000 in business, including a swine research unit for Recombinetics, a company that develops genetic lines of swine bred to duplicate human diseases like heart disease, diabetes and cancer. |
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| From: richardred | 10/20/2014 1:59:25 PM | | | | | |
Timberland Owner VF Corp. Is 'Looking Hard' for More Acquisitions
BY Brian Sozzi Follow |
10/20/14 - 12:55 PM EDT |
NEW YORK ( TheStreet) -- VF Corp. ( VFC) announced relatively strong third-quarter earnings and full-year guidance on Monday amid of sea of warnings from retailers in recent weeks, headlined by dismal accounts by J.C. Penney ( JCP) and Walmart ( WMT) . To keep the good times rolling, the owner of Timberland and North Face brands may be on the verge of making a splash via a major acquisition.
thestreet.com |
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| To: richardred who wrote (3756) | 10/21/2014 11:53:49 AM | | From: richardred | | | | IMO Today's Coke- Earnings disappoint up the speculative appeal of LNCE. IMO Pepsi needs a strong competitor in salty snacks. They already have their hands on Monster & GMCR. Just maybe the need to swallow a pretzel? I can see Warren Buffett right now having a bowl of pretzels with his Coke at a bridge game.
Warren like these pretzels and a coke.
 
I like this combo. Hey just maybe HSY?
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| To: richardred who wrote (3778) | 10/21/2014 1:07:55 PM | | From: richardred | | | | Would IBM like a shot at TDC?
GlobalFoundries to acquire IBM microelectronics unit in $1.5bn deal.
thenational.ae
>IBM CEO snip
While we did not produce the results we expected to achieve, we again performed well in our strategic growth areas – cloud, data and analytics, security, social and mobile – where we continue to shift our business.”
P.S.
Message 29720507 |
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| To: richardred who wrote (3819) | 10/21/2014 1:23:22 PM | | From: richardred | | | | RE-TECU
Hydrocarbon refrigerant solutions shine at Chillventa 2014
hydrocarbons21.com
>snip
Tecumesh: Celebrating 80 years, Tecumseh presented its new AE2 range of compressors and condensing units, ideally suited for hydrocarbon refrigerant R290. The product line, comprised of 49 models, offers maximum power in a smaller housing as well as the highest performance levels on the market with refrigerating capacities from 140 to 340W in LBP and 300 to 1050 W in HBP. The company also launched its AJ2 platform, also designed for hydrocarbon refrigerants. While the AJ2 compressor range is already available, the AJ2 condensing unit range will be on the market in 2015. |
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