3 Cash Rich Small Caps With Takeover Upside

Hawkinvest submits:

All of these companies have very substantial amounts of cash or cash equivalents on their balance sheets. Some of these companies are even trading below their cash values, giving them a negative enterprise value. Enterprise value is basically the total market capitalization plus debt, less cash.

Some of these companies are losing money, or have other problems and that can be why the market seems to be ignoring them. But, due to their extremely high cash balances, some of them might be lower risk investments or potential turnaround stocks. They might even be interesting takeover targets since an acquiring company can buy cash rich companies more easily than debt laden companies. Here are the companies:

Actions Semiconductor Co., (ACTS) shares are trading for $2.09. Actions is a semiconductor company, based in China. The 52 week range for these shares is $1.83 to $2.60. The book value is stated at $3.77.

Complete Story »

Samantha Mathis Samantha Morton Grace Park Jill Wagner Susie Castillo

PC Portal 2 gets new maps through community contest

Valve's Summer Mapping Initiative—a level design contest for Portal 2 that saw over 280 entires—is now complete, and three winners have been named.

Taking the top spot is a half-hour long map called Patent Pending, which is described as a "level of intermediate difficulty with four chambers set in the destroyed Aperture Science facilities. Some puzzle elements include hard light surfaces, discouragement beams, aerial faith plates, and excursion funnels." Taking second spot was a map named Infinifling, while Edifice was given an honorable mention. In addition to the adoration of Portal fans everywhere, the winners also received a big pile of Portal 2 gear from Think Geek.

In addition to the three winners, there's also a giant list of runners-up available to download over at the Portal mapping community site, ThinkingWithPortals. The maps are all free to download, though they will only be available for those playing on the PC. For detailed instructions on how to get the maps up and running, head here.

The first round of DLC for the game, meanwhile, will be coming to all platforms this summer.

Read the comments on this post

Rachael Leigh Cook Elisha Cuthbert Ciara Rachel Hunter Heidi Montag

How to Build a 6 Figure Income Dividend Portfolio With $600 per Month

The Dividend Guy submits:

Last week, I discussed how to build a retirement portfolio with dividend stocks. Since bonds and certificates of deposit offer historically low rates, chances are that retirees and future retirees will invest more money into ?safe? dividend stocks. Following this post, a reader asked me how to build a 6 figure income dividend portfolio. First of all, this is not an easy task; making 100K per year from your investments requires 3 things:

- A lot of time

- A lot of capital

- A bit of luck

But since I like the idea of building a kick-ass dividend portfolio earning 6 figures annually, I thought of running a few scenarios to understand what was required to achieve the ultimate 6 figure income dividend portfolio!

The first thought I had was to begin with the end results in order to start my calculations. So how much investment do I need

Complete Story »

Bianca Kajlich Giulianna Ramirez Ashley Greene April Scott Mia Kirshner

Warren Buffet's Top 5 Holdings: Are They Right for You?

Lalit Sharma submits:

Following is a list of top ten holdings by Warren Buffet:

No.	Company	Ticker	Shares	Value ( mn )
1.)	Coca Cola Co	KO	200,000,000	$13,268
2.)	Wells Fargo & Co	WFC	342,623,925	$10,864
3.)	American Express Co	AXP	151,610,700	$6,852
4.)	Procter & Gamble Co	PG	76,766,036	$4,728
5.)	Kraft Foods Inc	KFT	105,214,584	$3,299

Here is my brief analysis and take on Warren Buffet?s top five holdings:

Coca-Cola Company (KO) is a leading global beverage manufacturer. The company sells over 3,000 beverage products in over 200 countries around the world. On a global basis, sparkling beverages make up roughly 80% of Coco-Cola's unit case volume sales. By geography, the company generates roughly 75% of its sales outside of North America.

My Take: Buy

Growth trends in emerging markets, focus on costs savings and strong cash generation, all add up to an attractive long term growth story for investors

Complete Story »

Malin Akerman Melissa Joan Hart Bianca Kajlich Giulianna Ramirez Ashley Greene

Aircraft punch holes in clouds, leave snow in their wake

We've seen recently that air travel can have an oversized impact on the atmosphere, at least relative to emission of things like greenhouse gasses, because they seed clouds that can persist for hours. Now, researchers have taken a detailed look at what happens when aircraft fly through clouds that already exist. Under many circumstances, it turns out that the aircraft have the opposite effect, causing pressure changes that trigger the formation of large holes in the cloud, with the missing water falling out as snow.

Holes in clouds, like the one shown above, have been associated with the passage of aircraft since the 1940s, but it hasn't been clear how significant this process is. By the 1980s, researchers had found that propeller-driven aircraft produce large pressure changes in their wake, which produce a lot of ice crystals if they pass through supercooled clouds. More recent work showed just how large this effect can be: propellers can induce temperature drops of up to 30�C, while the wings of jets can lower the temperature by 20�C. If a cloud is already in the area of -10 to -20�C, that means the airplane should cause ice to crystalize out of clouds.

The new paper shows what happens as a result of these crystals. Modeling indicates that the heat released by ice formation causes an updraft in the immediate vicinity of where an aircraft passes. This carries most of the ice crystals back upward, with the exception of the heaviest, which fall through the updraft as snow. On the periphery of the updraft, a corresponding downdraft causes evaporation of the water in the cloud, which gradually expands the hole. This self-sustaining cycle should cause the hole to expand for up to an hour after the aircraft passes, and vastly expands the area affected by the aircraft's passage.

The researchers looked at satellite and radar imagery to see whether they could spot the equivalent of what their model was showing. Could they ever. Radar near a Denver airport showed lines of snow formation that followed curved paths typical of airliners. Clouds over the continental US showed extended trains of holes and channels that followed flight paths verified on air transportation records. "Some holes reached lengths of >100 km and were detected for four or more hours," the authors note. From the point where they were detected on radar, the holes would double their area within a half hour, and continued to expand out to a full hour.

The authors don't expect that the formation of snow is significant enough to do much more than cause small amounts of localized snow in the immediate vicinity of the airport. But the satellite imagery suggests that heavy air travel can cause a measurable drop in the total area covered by clouds under the right conditions. Along with the earlier results, the new work indicates that, although aircraft only disturb a small area of the atmosphere, the disturbances they cause can persist and propagate long enough to have an unexpectedly large impact on our planet.

Science, 2011. DOI: 10.1126/science.1202851  (About DOIs).

Read the comments on this post

Brittany Daniel Kate Moss Zhang Ziyi Nikki Reed Natasha Bedingfield

'Let's Play' videos may soon make you a felon thanks to Senate Bill S.978

Hold on to your butts, Internet, because this party is going to get a whole lot worse before it gets any better. According to Game Informer, a Senate Bill has been introduced which, if passed, would make streaming unauthorized copyrighted material a felony, resulting in up to 5-years of jail time.

Bill S.978 states that "10 or more public performances by electronic means, during any 180-day period, of 1 or more copyrighted works" will result in "not more than 5 years" of imprisonment, so long as the performance in question is valued at at-least $2,500 USD, or if the value of a license to legally "perform" the content is valued at $5,000 or more.

These are, in essence, the same criteria that allow for DMCA take-down notices to be issued by copyright holders, however jail time and felony status are not currently associated with this particular flavor of copyright infringement. Should this bill jump through all the right hoops, its broadly worded contents could potentially cover everything from homemade gameplay clips (commonly referred to "Let's Play" videos), to fan-made music videos, webcam cover songs, and anything else that involves copyrighted music or video. S.978 could also potentially cover cell-phone videos of concerts and press events, making 13-year-old Beliebers and jaded gaming journalists alike equally in danger of losing their right to vote.

If accepted into law, these addenda will be attached to existing copyright laws and will not only apply to YouTube users, but to the sites that embed YouTube content as well. Internet activism group Demand Progress has set up a web-form for those who disagree with the legislation and wish to communicate their displeasure to their local representatives. We would be concerned about the bill's implications as well, but fear not dear reader: the legislation doesn't cover puppet shows as far as we can tell, so Joystiq Playhouse's shadow-kabuki production of Battle Arena Toshinden should still be on track.

'Let's Play' videos may soon make you a felon thanks to Senate Bill S.978 originally appeared on Joystiq on Sat, 02 Jul 2011 22:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments

Katie Cassidy Estella Warren Cinthia Moura Monica Potter Brittany Snow

Nokia to exit Japan by August

Finnish mobile giant to shut remaining services in Japan.

Nokia stopped supplying mobile phones to Japanese carriers in 2008, but was still operating a phone service and some high-end Vertu mobile phone stores in Tokyo. The Nikkei paper reported that the company close the stores, located in Tokyo's Shibuya and Ginza districts by July's end.

Additionally, Nokia's phone service in Japan will be discontinued at the end of August as a contract with NTT DoCoMo Inc. (from which it leased the network infrastructure) ends. Nokia's Tokyo office will remain upon until the end of the year to handle fee returns and other matters.

Nokia sold Vertu high-end mobile phones in Japan for years. Manufactured by hand in the UK, Vertu handsets use precious metals in their design, such as gold, sapphire (used for screen) and rubies.

The luxury handsets sold for between �600,000 ($7,450) and �20,000,000 ($248,354) each.

Permalink | Comments

---

Ivana Bozilovic Cristina Dumitru Cat Power January Jones Christina DaRe