Fri, $42 again? No volume, hmmmm. Today check the short interest after the close. I noticed last year around this time the short interest was 13m and days-to-cover was 6.7 and share price $55. It was the start of a 3 month squeeze that took the price up from $55 to $103! The shorts were 13, 15, 14 million and days to cover above 6 the entire time. I remember Schwab wanted to borrow my shares. It's a sign. Wow, I noticed last month the short interest was at a record all time high at 18M and days to cover on a steady rise from 1 to over 3. The shorts were burned bad and they've been out for revenge, and they got it, but hey guys - lightning dose strike twice in the same place, actually it's common! Wow, wow, we'll see in one hour the new numbers. If still near 18m and DTC is same or up, We have the start of another squeeze, horay! Here's what to do. Don't sell, and don't loan, and don't buy PUTS and don't sell CALLS, and maybe even buy CALLS, buy shares, and sell PUTS, and make these negative speculators eat it because they caused us a lot of pain lately and it's time for payback. :-)) If we can all hang-in a few months, us longs are going to have a great Christmas! New Garmins for everyone! Instutions hold 60m, shorts borrowed 20m, insiders hold ?m? what's the float?
Tue, yeah baby, rock-n-roll, up to $44. Garmin paid an avg of $62.88 mid Feb buying back 1.4m of the 5m authorized.
Monday, Sinko-de-Mio? GRMN sunk again, ugh. But basically flat for the day. Friday May2, pop & drop then fade down down with the market, oh so sad, buyback where are you? Taking a early start for the weekend? Sitting here all day watching my fortunes fade, I took another look at Amazon best sellers list and pulled this list out of the top 25 for your (and my) entertainment and amazement.
model price reviews rating --------------------------------- nuvi-660 $335(up) 922 4.5 TomTom-1 $139 352 4.0 nuvi-360 $218 738 4.5 nuvi-350 $159 2045 4.5 nuvi-260 $175 196 4.5 nuvi-200 $135 350 4.5Looks like the nuvi-200 competes head to head with TomTom? Price-wize. And the TomTom-1 outsells nuvi-200, 260, 350, and 360, models each individually, but wow, it just barely outsells the 360 and look at the prices! If I was TomTom, I'd be thinking of maybe moving my business out of the GPS market. Oh I know, ... maybe Garmin will buy the TomTom assets from the bankruptcy court.
5/1/8: noon, GRMN looking up, good old normal average 7 million share day except for one thing, the nice smooth up move :-)).... could it be the buyback? Here's a new way to look at Amazons top 100 best sellers in electronics: "A" is for Apple, "G" is for Garmin, "T" is for TomTom, "M" for Magellan, and "I" is for Mio (a GPS competetor).
12345678901234567890 -AGG-TAGG-G---A-G-A- --A--AA-AA--A------- -----GG-GA-MAA--A--- G--GG--------------- ----G--------I-----A Notice: only one T, one M, and one I. That's the competition? A's mostly iPods. G's mostly nuvi's. Took me 12 minutes to get data and make above table.
MAY 1st: ---
Q1 revenue and earnings a little less than estimates, ohhh, so the bears drove it down under $40 selling 6 million shares! So I suspect the shorts are even shorter now and, surprise, Garmin has not yet bought back all the 5 million shares! They have 3.2 million to go! A hush fell over den. "Why haven't you bought back yet? The stock price is so hammered down"; The old fat furry grizzly asked. "We were waiting for the price to settle down, lower, and then we entered a black-out period"; The young thin healthy execuitive said. "So when will you begin buying back the rest?" ---- "In the next few days"!!!
Buyback rules: Cannot buy in the first and last 10 minutes of trading. Cannot place the highest bid - there must be at least 2 independent bids higher. I think that if our furie friends want to cover their shorts, AND Garmin is buying, AND you and I are buying, wow, this could be really fun!
Ben Charny said today (4/28,one day before earnings): "Garmin 1Q Unlikely To Change Navigation Cos' Wrong Direction". Wow, what "wrong direction" are you talking about Ben? He went on to say that even if Q1 was good - Garmin is still a sell. Like it doesn't matter what Garmin does, it's over for them and you should sell your shares at a low price (to the folks that are short 18,000,000 shares - hey it's the right thing to do, you don't really need the shares as bad as they do.)
NEWS: Monday, April 28th, $48! Schwab has no shares to loan to shorts! CALL options are selling like hotcakes, baby maybe this is it! Maybe the Garmin is being squeezed?
1pm, Amazon: nuvi-660 #2 bestseller, $325 up from $314 on the 19th which was up from the $280's! Pricing power!
Friday 25th, I got board watching "them" take the price down again this morning and needed a "pick-me-up" so got into re-reading the 2007 annual report and thought you might like this part here (if you're long:-)) - I like it a lot (i'm long a lot):
"Since our first products were delivered in 1991, we have generated positive income from operations each
year and have funded our growth from these profits. Our sales have increased at a compounded annual growth rate
of 54% since 2003 and our net income has increased at a compounded annual growth rate of 48% since 2003."
This is a very HEAVY simple factual (checkable) statement! If it's a lie then someone will go to jail. It's not a lie, it's true. Rare around here these days. ---- what did they forecast for 2008? $4.80/share? Did Kevin say PND (Portable Nav Device, aka nuvi et all) sales will be off by 50% or was he talking about overall sales? What percentage was PND? Aviation is not seasonal. What about Marine and the other businesses? Estimates are $0.77 for Q1. We'll know in 3 trading days!
Gee, lots more CALLS today. Why? No, I really wonder, I do. I wonder wonder wonder wonder wonder who, who wrote the book of shorts, uhm, duh, deee, -- never mind, I'm 59, give an x-dope-smokin-old man a break. Bill didn't inhale, what an idiot.
Thu 24th: $46!:-)) Checkout the short interest update today! 18million +25% in the last 2 weeks. Avg daily volume very high at 7 million! Notice options today, 7000 CALLS up, 2000 PUTS down, on only 3.6M shares trading -- up $2 to $46. I wonder if some of the shorts are thinking about covering? Maybe they noticed that about every tech stock has reported great Q1 sales and earnings. Maybe they are buying CALLs because they want to cover before earnings (April 30th, next Wednesday, gives them just 4 more trading days to buy) and if all 18 million cover they may have to pay some high prices, so then the CALLs are their insurance policy. If you own $50 CALLS and you must buy shares they start buying here at $46. If you (and others) drive the price over $50, well, no problem, the CALL contract covers you. If the price goes to $100 in one day, no problem, your CALL contract is worth $50 a share. Then as soon as you've bought all the shares you need, sell the CALL's fast and take a look at buying PUTS then do the same game on the down side --- up, down, up, down, wheeeee --- makin moneyeeeee honey. But, in the long run, Garmin will be over $208 I say because of basic things like book value, net worth, earnings, growth, and boring mundane things like that.
Wed 23rd: Hey larry, don't forget, earnings one week from today! It was cool that the TomTom bad NewsNews (profits down 80%) didn't take down GRMN today. Amazon positions: #2, 8tt, 9, 11, 20, 24, 35, 49, 53, 61, 63, 64ma, 78, 83tt, 84, 86. Wow, TT moved up a notch and made the top 100 list twice. Just one Magellan (ma) and that's it for the "killer" competition. Oh boy, AAPL tonight! Go Apple! Whoopee! Great earnings. OK, let the games begin. TomTom is going DownDown the TubeTubes, Apple is doing great, and nuvi's out-sell iPods! -- found a new (to me) web site with a list of the "Top 10 GPS's" (see link at top of this page).
Tue, $43, ouch. My Amazon check this morning: 4, 5, 8tt, 20, 28, 39, 42, 48, 52ma, 57, 59, 73, 78, 88, 96tt. I'll add to list below. Oh, lets try this same thing with Apple (all are iPods!) 3na, 6, 15, 18, 20, 26, 31, 32na, 34, 38, 40, 44, 57na, 60na, 62, 67na, 68, 71, 81, 85na, 87na. (na=not Apple) looks to me the iPod has a lot more competing products than Garmins GPS's and AAPL has a PE=37... if GRMN had 37 the share price would be ($5x37= $185). - go figure.
Mon, 4/21, $44-$45, Amazon top 100 best selling electronic items:
1pm: 3, 4, 7tt, 9, 17, 29, 30, 46ma, 48, 50, 56, 68, 75, 93
Humm, only 2 GPS's not Garmin. BTW, I add each list I make to the table below.
Today I also looked at Amazons best sellers list of 25 GPS's, all are Garmin except these ( 3tt, 12ma, 16ma, 19ma, 20tt, 23ma, 24tt).
Sun, 4/20, wow, which is the best GPS to buy? Checkout RETREVO.COM. wow wow, need to checkout Videoseven for sure. But look at all the Garmin models virtually covering the entire area. Good luck to V7, looks like they're going to need it. I wouldn't be putting my company up against Garmin. Woha, wait, before you buy a V7 GPS check with Amazon.com. Sad. I wonder if a GPS company can actually make a better GPS than a video company or a PDA company or a Telephone company or even a computer company, hmmm, I wonder. What if everyone is wrong and I'm right? Wow. Question: If we buy lots of 2010 CALL options, would that help squeeze the Garmin?
Sat, 4/19, Garmin $45, - Thank you Google! (reported good earnings, Google up $90:-)) IBM up, Intel up, and now Google. Watch out shorts - a bunch of us out here love to squeeze the Garmin and will again like we did last year. I'm not selling or loaning my shares to anyone. Amazon best selling electronics, top 100: Garmin #2, 4, 8tt, 9, 23, 30, 38, 48, 53ma, 55, 57, 81, 84, 85, 93tt.... wow - Garmin knocked out of #1 by the Kindle! Check it out. Oh, and you don't need to sell all your Garmin stock now because TT (TomTom) is in the list twicetwice today knocking Mio out of the top 100! Byebye Mio. MM (Magellan) has been hanging in the 50's for weeks now. Oh, and I noticed nuvi-660 (the top seller) street price moved up from $284 to $314 .... hmmm, pricing power.
Thu, Garmin $43, - here you can see for yourself: Amazons best sellers list that Garmin products are moving baby. Imagine making and selling over 50,000 GPS's average --- EACH DAY! The Dash Express is a really neat idea. Of the people that looked at the Amazon page for it and who actually later bought a GPS, 31% decided to buy a nuvi instead. (that's high). But the data for the Harman Kardon GPS is even worse! 46% decided to buy a nuvi. TomTom One, 14% bought a nuvi, and the nuvi-660 page (#1 best seller day after day), 0% bought a non-Garmin product, 80% bought the nuvi-660 and 20% bought another nuvi model.
Wow, Mio made the list (see growing list below). Oh man! Sell all your Garmin stock!
Wed, Garmin $43, ... noticed short interest increased from 6 million in Nov to 16 million last month and looks like it's on a decline. Maybe they are starting to cover? IBM Q1 EPS $1.65 wow wow wow go go go up up up!!! UP $7.27 in after hours!
Tue 4/15, Garmin $42.
You know, if I raised $130 million last year selling some of my Garmin stock, I'd pay my $30 million in taxes today and then you know maybe buy some shares back at $43 -- that is if I had any faith at all in the future of the company, Min! Hey Min, it would send a message. Com'n Min, help us loyal little guys out a bit here. Oh and you could announce a increased dividend, larger buyback, and up estimates for 2008 too.
Wow, Amazons best sellers list is updated every hour! So today at 9am PTZ most of the top 100 were cameras and music players - mostly iPods. 17 are GPS's and all but 2 were Garmin. AND, Garmin was #1 again, ahead of all the cameras and iPods! Garmin=no suffix, tt=TomTom, ma=Magellan:
- 4/23 1pm: 2, 8tt, 9, 11, 20, 24, 35, 49, 53, 61, 63, 64ma, 78, 83tt, 84, 86.
- 4/22 10am: 4, 5, 8tt, 20, 28, 39, 42, 48, 52ma, 57, 59, 73, 78, 88, 96tt. (two tt's .. no Mio!) We slipped into 4th behind Kindle, a $2 DVD, and a cool MP3 player by SanDisk.
- 4/21 1pm: 3, 4, 7tt, 9, 17, 29, 30, 46ma, 48, 50, 56, 68, 75, 93 (only 1 tt and one ma and no Mio, hmmmm)
- 4/19 1pm: 2, 4, 8tt, 9, 23, 30, 38, 48, 53ma, 55, 57, 81, 84, 85, 93tt
- 4/17 10am: 1, 5, 8tt, 11, 24, 27, 31, 53, 60, 64ma, 70, 77, 78, 84Mio, 90 --- wow Mio made the list!
- 4/16 2pm: 1, 4, 7tt, 11, 22, 28, 31, 37, 46, 55ma, 59, 63, 68, 96, 99
- 4/16 9am: 1, 4, 8tt, 13, 20, 24, 29, 39, 52ma, 53, 66, 70, 73, 79, 88, 90, 100
- 4/16 6am: 1, 4, 7tt, 12, 24, 29, 30, 47, 48, 52ma, 63, 68, 71, 67, 100
- 4/15 4pm: 1, 5, 8tt, 14, 19, 23, 26, 47, 52, 54ma, 83, 84, 87, 95
- 4/14 8pm: 1, 4, 7tt, 11, 23, 25, 31, 48, 56, 59ma, 70, 82, 86, 92, 96
- 4/14 6pm: 1, 4, 8tt, 11, 23, 25, 30, 48, 51, 59ma, 68, 72, 80, 89ma, 94
- -- the other 85 items in the list are cameras (mostly Cannon) and iPods.
Mon 4/14/08, file taxes tomorrow! GRMN=$44.44
- Amazon best selling electronics list (4pm PTZ) (top 100 items) I counted 13 GPS's:
suffixs: none=Garmin, tt=TomTom, ma=Magellan, updated every hour!
- Mon 4pm: 1, 5, 8tt, 14, 19, 23, 47, 52, 54ma, 83, 84, 87, 95.
Sat 4/12, noticed PEG's (PE/LongTermGrowth) the lower the better: GE & IBM = 1.4, AAPL=1.3, Intel & Cisco = 1.1, GOOG = 0.8, and Garmin = 0.5.
Thur 4/10/8, bought some more at $44.77 today. Float 130m shares, short interest 11%, kinda high you guys!. Wow, checkout forbes.com on Garmin -- the most complete set of data in one place I've seen.
BARRONS says: " DUE TO CHANGES WE ARE seeing in the personal navigation device (PND) market, we are lowering estimates for Garmin, though maintaining a Buy rating. We are lowering our target price from $135 to $60. We believe there is a strong possibility Garmin will need to lower its 2008 revenue and earnings per share guidance" --- well we'll see come April 30th. I'm betting they will beat $0.77 and increase guidance! Larry against Cramer and now Larry -vs- Barrons too!
Tuesday, 4/8/8, wow, I bought some Garmin at $48.88 today! TomTom reports sales down 14 million units and margin contraction to 20%. Oh, BummerBummer. TomTom did $468m Q1'07 but only $420m this year! AND what's really bad is the margin, "low single digits", yikes! Could it mean they shot their wad competing with Garmin and lost? Does it mean Garmin sales will be lower too? Any chance Garmin is eating TomTom's lunchLunch? Last week the media headline was: "Garmin reports declining sales!". Oooh, sell sell sell. But wait, the question and answer was about Q1 -vs- Q4 earnings. Duh, Q1 is always way lower than Q4, that is NOT news! The truth is 2008 Q1 sales are UP from $492m last years Q1 and will be from $600m to over $700m this year! And margins of 36%, Go figure. "They" didn't mention that to you, did they? Notice a news/sell pattern here? Last month the anilysts said: "bad news for Garmin" because SIRF (the biggest GPS chip maker) sales were way down. What they didn't say was Garmin (SiRF's largest customer) found other chip suppliers with better chips at lower prices! Wow, when everyone is wrong telling you it's winter for Garmin - maybe it's time to buy straw hats? Garmin under $50! PE = 10, growth=20%, PEG=0.5 (wow), CASH = tons, DEBT = none' s, Growth= hugh, World market share = largest and growing. Dividend 0.25, 0.25, 0.25, 0.50, 0.75, maybe we'll get $1.00 this year? And another (even bigger) stock buyback too. I guess I could be wrong about all this and will have lots of old straw hats around here with no buyers - but if I'm right - it'll be a great summer in Garmin land.
April 7th, Monday, trying to figure out why the stock is down so low, I listened again to the Feb.20th conference call this morning and this time took notes. PDN (Personal Nav Devices aka nuvi, eTrex, etc.) sales for 2007 were 16m (as in sixteen MILLION) units in the Europe and 12m in the USA. They expect this year (2008) to sell 22m and 20m, ... wow, wow. I'm surprised more are going to Europe than the USA, but that may change as our economy picks up. Anyway, I think it says a lot! It tells me that Garmin is a global company, #1, and is growing - fast! At the very end of the call was the word "brand" when he said "we will continue to expand our brand"! Today you can be part of this awesome brand for $55 per share (discounted from $125). A thousand shares will pay $750/year dividend, enough to buy some great Garmin products for Christmas -- every year!
April 4th, Friday, wow what a week for Garmin. You could have bought some at $51 if you placed your order Wednsday when it was $56. Thursday saw 24 million shares trade starting the day off near a low of $50 and up from there. Fools rushed out while and wise men came in, me thinks. I don't know if the wise guys were shorts covering or the Garmin buyback (5 million shares authroized).... or someone big who sees the future of Garmin better, maybe a new business partner, like maybe Google, Microsoft nuvi 880 + MSN direct, Nokia, ... um, who else might be interested in an awesome cool new BRAND! (BTW who spent the last 30 years working on speach recognition? Microsoft! hmmmm)
Ah, Think B R A N D ! ... Garmin is building a brand!, duh!
What's a brand worth? Garmin is also like an engine, an expanding growing engine now with 8000 cylinders (associates). The engine inputs cash+goods and outputs GOODS + CASH + a new BRAND along the way! (see Juggernaute below). (BTW: The news yesterday that was supposedly the reason for a 10% stock price decline was nothing new and absolutely not bad news. So why the shock? Did someone want to trigger stop-loss orders? Why? Maybe they needed shares? How many? 5 million? 10 million? "Only their hairdresser knows for sure" - from a TV ad: Does she or doesn’t she? Only her hairdresser knows for sure (Clairol) If I have only one life to live, let me live it as a blonde (Clairol). The headline: "NEWS! CFO forecasts revenue drop" was NOT "NEWS"! The CFO told everyone many times a month ago! Everyone already knows, AND, it's not bad, it's old news! It's not shocking. Why was it reported the way it was? Us fools will never know. Oh wait, yes we will, ... we'll know when GRMN shoots past $200/share, :-)) What can a little uninformed "investor" do? I know that too! Go to www.fool.com. Always check with them before making any big moves in or out. Somebody help me now, we'll take you there - Garmin TV ad.APRIL 1st, 2008, ... FOOLS DAY? $55/share.
"-- PLEASE SQUEEZE GARMIN ---"
Huh? Oh Mr. Whipple! Ardel thinks I'm wrong and everyone else is right, and said I should not put all my eggs into one basket. I think I'm right and everyone else is wrong - about Garmin stock. DOW up almost 400 but Garmin, um, no, still down at $55, why? Well some idiot (short selling anilyst) is telling people it's a good short. Wait, wait, I take it back, he's not an "idiot" - ha, I looked it up, IDIOT= ("person lacking professional skill," -woha, no way, this man is totally "professional" all the way, and we all know what profession I'm thinking of, - yeah the first and my favorite one, and Elliot Spitzsers too:-)). No, This day (April first) was named for all who act on his advice. Wow, well, that makes it real easy for the rest of us. Who said: "... your head on a platter." ? Numbers don't lie, analysis(professionals) lie -- for money! Another analyst (who I like a lot) said: "Don't squeeze the Garmin" but that was 2006. You need to be old enough to "get it". Charmen toilet paper? BTW, a short seller can lose an infinite amount of money. ... You need to be old enough to get it. I'm long, could I then make an infinate amount of money? Hmmmm. Let's see, I'm the (Latin the Latin word idiota ("ordinary person, layman")) ... idiot.Now if you looked at the numbers and the facts about Garmin you might buy shares at $55, or $65, or $75... but watch out for Mr. Whipple! If everyone started buying Garmin it could trigger a short squeeze and you would be like the people in the commercial, caught squeezing Garmin! - Who is this beautiful actress guest star? You need to be a baby boomer to remember these. Do you remember the Apple Superbowl commercials? Someday you kids will remember the good old Garmin commercials too :-))
24th March, 2008, Juggernaute: [ unstoppable force crushing everything in its path ], AKA GARMIN. 
My goodness people, look around, GPS unit (and $) sales #1 - IN THE WORLD! Growth 100%, Debt= $0! Cash= plenty! Listen to the radio. Nuvi ads. TV, superbowl, NASCAR #19, partners with Navteq, rental car companies and now today KENWOOD! Kenwood has the best in-dash systems. Everything NAVAGATION. Future=LBS (Larry Berg Special - oops I mean Location Based Systems). The only word that comes to mind today when it comes Garmin and LBS is: Juggernaute. ---- you will never see Garmin stock this cheap (under $65) again for as long as you live. If you come over to the light, you'll be able to tell your grandchildren how you survived being short GRMN. [ Update: Over the 2 weeks following my above rant, "they" took the stock down another $15 to $50! Wow. But the good news is, I think the bad guys have shot their wad yesterday 4/3/8 on 30 million shares traded between $50 and $55 ending at $54. ]
11-March- hahaha, hows that song go? About short people? No reason to live?
Well, we're up 6% today and the PE should be 50, or 40, or even 30 ... oh heck 20 will make it a $100 stock!
I'd be selling all my puts, buying more calls, and covering - if I was short, with a reason to live.
10-March, GRMN under $54. I think they can earn $5.40 this year makeing for a P/E = 10. TEN!
Wed, March 5th, Garmin $57, Zacks Equity Research picks Garmin as Bull-of-the-Day and reinterates their BUY!
3/3/8: Why buy Garmin? .... simple, they are THE worlds leader in a new growing high tech segment: (checkout the 2008 SuperBowl commercial, like Nepolian, Garmin is LITTLE but taking on the world BIG time! And you think iPhone is cool? Click here: NuviFone and here: K.I.S.S.!!!
Feb 26, 2008, Cramer said:
The GPS market is finished.
Done. Kaput. Cramer wouldn’t
go near Garmin anymore.
“That game is over, my friend.”
-------------------------------
[GRMN down $59.50 becasue of Jim!]:
(I'm betting it goes over $150 this year!)
Jimmy, remember when IBM was $50
(split adjusted $12.50/share)
because everyone and their dog
said "the mainframe business is dead"?
Remember? Was it 1995?
Were you selling or buying IBM?
Cramer, you're a lost puppy - you need a GPS!
Checkout the Garmin nuvi.
Or better yet, the Astro!
Give the receiver to Aaron,
If she's carein' to find you,
When you're not where you should be,
In your dog house,
When Garmin blasts past $103.:-)
Feb 20th, 2008, Estimates: $1.11 --- actual $1.39 (up 71% over last year 4th quarter). Sales more than doubled year/year. EVERY year the Q1 sales are less than Q4, so they say they expect it to be true this year too --- OH! There's a good reason to drive the stock down 10% FOOLS!!!! AND BTW the buyback is 5 million SHARES, not $5 million dollars.... man-o-man, gee, just a little 70:1 mistake, yeah right. It seems a bad reason to short the stock from $73 to $62 by 11am PTZ on 20 million shares, ... bummer. Garmin has $1 billion cash in the bank so buying 5 million shares is not a big deal, only $350 million at $70. Hey! With a 100% growth rate the PE should be 50! Earnings next year $5. x 50 = $250/share is my target price. Closed at $64, 26million shares, 36K CALL and 26K PUT contracts traded. I hope Garmin times buybacks to cause the maximum pain to the most shorts possible. :-)) Most CALL contracts are $70+ and PUTS $65- so $70 is a nice target to shoot at for the next 30 days. Anyways, seems to me that the sellers have their grey-matter jammed up where the sun don't shine.
Feb 10, 2008, Earnings confrence call 20th Feb 2008, 8am Pacific Time Zone. Earnings release prior to market open.... um, when exactely? After the close on the 19th? Hmmmm, ... maybe buy a bunch of shares and CALLS and play the after-hours crazyness? Dear shorts, the 20th will be a day you'll never forget!:-))
Jan 27th 2008, word is, Garmin bought 30 seconds of SuperBowl ad time and Mapasaurus will not appear (thank goodness). Look for the new commercial to be unvailed Wednsday in New York City.
Jan 24th 2008, you could have bought GRMN for $55 (PE: 14) a couple of days ago! If you're still short - I have three words for you:
R U N --- F O R --- C O V E R !
Run for cover, FOOL! :-))
Last one out please turn on the lights!Jan 19th 2008, happy new year - NOT! Yikes, GRMN stock price has been cut in half from $120 down to $60! I'll bet its due to short selling. Watch for a "melt-up" by mid Feb on earnings. With over $4/share for 2007 it makes the PE = $60/$4 = 15! YES, One Five. No not 50 like it should be. It's Fifteen! With a 80%+ growth rate, tons of cash, and a fantasticly great future, I'm rasing my 2008 target to $240/share! Mr. T says: "Are you short? Fool?, PAIN! PAIN!".
Well, let us all watch together: Shopzilla.com has a GPS page listing them all by popularity. I set products per page to 80. Garmin takes the first 14 spots with a total of 57 of the 80. Magellan 10, TomTom 5, Mio 3, Pioneer 2, Kenwood 2, Lowrance 1. Go figure. Go Garmin. Are you short? Imagin shorting Microsoft in 1987. Think PAIN,.. fool,-- pain. (Mr. T).
NOV 26th 2007, 11:45PTZ, I just heard (on CNBC) the crazy man nut job (yah-gotta-love-Jim-Cramer) tell the stone fox (Erin Burnett) it's time to sell Garmin! Huh? Holy Moly. Today over $100, up from $90 yesterday. Jim thinks GPS's have become a commodity and Nokia will displace Garmin. I say - true but only in a few narrow high volume segments. Nokia and TomTom can beat each other into the ground in that space (where Nokia will win, hehehe). Garmin will be the highend leading innovator. Jim! Jim! I bet you a buck Garmin tops $150 in 2008! What say you Mr. Jim? Is it a bet? In case you missed it (Erin just returned from Dubi): click here
Way-to-go Kao!!!
News: Nov 2007; Doctor Min Kao is a genius! Why pay $4 billion for a second-rate map-making-company that has NEVER made a profit? Let the second-rate-GPS-maker (TomTom) have them! TomTom will be about broke and TeleAtlas will still have just one second-rate customer (TomTom). Instead Min made a deal with the best map maker, Navteq! Navteq makes money and the best maps, and was taken over by Nokia (the best phone maker!) Garmin has been partners with Navteq for many years, growing up together, and now Navteq has vast additional resources via parent Nokia! Sure the fear was that Nokia together with Navteq take over the GPS market leaving Garmin in the cold, but wait, why not be friends? Could Nokia, Navteq, AND Garmin, go forward working together? Woha, and together own this exploding expanding market? Duh - yeah. Nokia paid $8 billion for Navteq, Garmin saved $4 billion not-buying TeleAtlas (and made a quick $40 million on the side from the TeleAtlas stock they own), wow, you think they could make some awesome products with all that? Duh. When winners hangout with winners - how to you spell synergistsymboticism? When losers hangout with losers (TomTom and TeleAtlas), let them compete with this winning team: Nokia+Navteq+Garmin! GRMN is back to $100 from $85! Garmin has built factories in Taiwan that manufacture GPS models for all markets. TomTom outsources it's hardware and is in only one market. If you were Nokia and wanting to take over the GPS market, who would you consider buying? GARMIN!!! But if you just want to grow and owne the mobile phone world (with LBS (Location Based Services/Systems)) then Navteq is a key and being friends with Garmin (a very large cool growing map-using customer) is just good business. Way-to-go Kao!!! (pronounced Kay-Oh)News: October 2007; Garmin reports a great quarter and that they bought TeleAtlas for about $3.3 billion. (strange how they worded it - like it's a done deal already, but ....) You know TomTom has an offer on the table for TeleAtlas at about $2.7B. Nokia is buying Navteq for $8 billion ($78 / share). Garmin shares went from $125 to below $98 in the last week. --- what next? What does it all mean? Is Garmin a buy under $100? Will they get TeleAtlas? TeleAtlas told TomTom they have one week to match Garmin's bid. Will they? Can they? And what happens if they do? Does Garmin have another chance to bid again? Hey TeleAtlas, list yourself on eBay. I'll bid $10 bucks --- NOT!
Friday 8/8/7: (8 is the lucky number in Asia). Navteq $68 up from $28 a year ago, Garmin $107 up from $48 a year ago. Um, GarMin, Gar = Gary a US engineer, Min = Min Kao an Asian engineer, 7's are lucky in the US and 8's are lucky in Asia, .... go figure. Oh and pFor pFuture pFiguring, think about next year, um, that would be 8/8/8 and guess what happens that day? Olympic Opening Ceremonies in Beijing! What does it mean? (update: We offered $thousands and waited 6 months but got no tickets! Argh!)
Monday July 23rd, 2007, wow, well boys and girls I was wrong about Garmin and Navteq - SPFCCMandT's. No not what you think. Not wrong about them going up up up. No. No, I was wrong, way wrong, about WHEN and how much they would go up up up. I thought $65 was UP! I thought $65 was HIGH! Hell, it was under $50 um, seems like yesterday. You know they say "Never try to time the market". Now I know what they mean. It skyrocketed to levels even higher than "high"! And it kept going up for two months finally pausing at $85! And Navteq? Wow, it was up over 20% today almost hitting $60 per share! Who the hell told them I sold a bunch of Navteq last Thursday so I could have the cash to buy the long term CALLs today? Huh? this is totally unfair. SPFCCMandT's. Well, someone made a ton of money today - I hope it was you, maybe because of my page here, wouldn't that be cool. Oh, and I saw the TomTom buying TeleAtlas deal in my crystal ball for years, matter of fact I predicted that Garmin would buy Navteq a few years ago, but I'm not sure it's a good idea. It's very complicated and interesting I think. Garmin wants' to make GPS's and is good at it. Navteq wants to make map data and is good at it. Together they can beat off all the competitors - but is that really the best thing for everyone? And now the big question: IS WHAT'S BEST FOR EVERYONE THE BEST FOR GARMIN AND NAVTEQ? Will the TomTom TeleAtlas merger create a strong (best) competitor to everyone else? Can second-best plus second-best be better than two non-merged bests? TomTom can now slow down the new-comer competitors making them pay more for TeleAtlas data. But will it really? They can just go to Navteq for data. If Garmin bought Navteq - wow, the world would have just two GPS players and Garmin would win the prize for sure. Add SIRF and it would be totally locked up for many years. See,... this stuff can be very interesting - and very profitable if you can manage to NOT sell just before huge up moves like me!!!!SPFCCMandT's!
May-1-2007: MAYDAY! MAYDAY! Garmin reports earnings tomorrow morning before the market opens! Fasten your seatbelts! The solids will ignite at 6:30AM Pacific Time when the market opens. How high can it go? $65? $70? More? Watch Navteq too (NVT) because most every Garmin GPS sold has Navteq maps inside! Wow, Gary (the "Gar" in Garmin) has 29 million shares so he's worth about what? $1.7 billion? Maybe over $2 billion tomorrow! Gary, can I borrow your jet to fetch all the Pfrancs for our world Pfranc meeting in 2017? I'll pay for the fuel.
Note: (4/2007) I just discovered this great article by Jim Gillies posted at motley fool.com: GRMN = Best for 2007!, --- great work JIM!
1/12/2001 - $19 1/8 ... I bought more shares of Garmin because they gave me only 100 in the IPO.
2/5/2001 - $24 ... I bought more shares.
2/14/2001 - Y00Q4$86.7m^27%,np$27m=$0.27/s.Y00:$345.7m^48%,np$105.7m=$1.05/s^63%,PE=23
2/27/2001 - $21 3/4 ... I bought more, could a got 'em at 18 1/2 three days ago! - bummer.
2/27/2001 - My 12 month forcast: $500m^45%,np$150m^43%,PE=30 ---> share price= $45.
3/13/2001 - $18 13/16 ... I bought more. I have not sold or shorted any.
11/01/2001 - $16.89 ... I'm out of cash or I'd buy more. Y01Q3$86.9m,np$0.26/s.
Oops! Wow 4+ years have passed, I forgot about this page! I've been OK and hope you have too. I'll try to backfill the 4 year gap above someday (someday when I retire early thanks to Garmin and Navteq stock!!!!!!!!!!:-)
Checkout this great site and analysis of Mr. Market has no love for Garmin (GRMN) - by Dan
Aug 2006, Murphy Oregon USA: Well I found more money over the last 4 years and I bought more GRMN and more and more and here's todays news: We've made over 500,000 plugs for Garmin GPS's and GRMN went over $100 this year and then split 2:1 and is paying a dividend of $0.50 per share. How about that? Long story - does anyone care? if I had not been influenced by some idiot telling me last year that TomTom has invaded the US and is selling better than Garmin, wow, what a fool, but I was the bigger fool letting his stupid wrong missguided info into my head and influence my trading - well I still have a lot of shares but I could have had 3 times as many if not for that major slip error. I vow never to listen to anyone about a stock ever again but instead do my own r esearch and reach my own conclusions based on my own data! Anytime you think someone "knows" somthing or might or should know more than you, .... stop and go check yourself because it's probably not true.
And on that subject my next big bet is on NVT - Navteq, who I think will be THE winner and THE supplier of digital map data for ALL nav devices! Wow. I started buying it a few months ago in the $40's - more in the $30's and finally more in the $20's until I ran out of money - ugh. I started wondering if someone knew something I did not. Ah ha,... so I worked, and worked, and checked and kept checking everytime it went down - for over a month now, and I've come to beleive that I know a lot more than "they" do. And today proved it... it poped up $3 to $27 on news that TomTom will use Navteq maps in it's higher end version of the new "TomTom One" instead of the maps from TeleAtlas(Navteq's only competetor) . Why would they do that? Duh, ... to sell more units! The value to the end user is directly related to the data in the unit! Anyone selling a simular unit with better data will win! I think going forward that every company wanting to sell a navagational product will want to include the best data and that data will be from Navteq! And the cost of entry to build a database as good as Navteq has is $billions and 15 years work, so over time TeleAtlas will stay in second place and the gap will probably widen as customers will choose the winners and the winners will have chosen wining map data provider, and that's Navteq.
Philips owns a large percentage of Navteq and is entering the GPS market with products that will "kill" TomTom in Europe. Who's data will Phil use? (update: Philips decided to not enter the GPS market and I think they sold most or all of their interest in Navteq --- and really big news, TomTom purchased Teleatlas for $billions! - which I think is a huge mistake that will help boost Garmin and Navteq bang, zoom, straight to the moon, one of these days, Alice. (Honeymooners, 1955)
Look at TomTom's partner page and check the big names web sites to see how much of a partner they really are - and then check that web site to see if they use Navteq or maybe actually switched from TeleAtlas to Navteq. I've only looked at a few so far - sure are a lot, wow, ... me, I'd rather have a few really big "winning" partners - well - having a lot is good but I'd make the big players big in the list so it was not so much work to figure out who will be the winner of this race. Yeah, I think this is like Beta -vs- VHS or 6800 -vs- 8080 in that there will be only one big winner. Not like Coke n Pepsi, nope, the winner/loser will be clear and the winner will take all the business. Though I could be wrong about this. (ugh, yikes, I checked randmcnally.com - as I was talking about above since I've heard of them and they are listed on the TeleAtlas partner page - so there was only one page there about TeleAtlas, and I checked for Tele Atlas too, still only one, yet there were 95,000 pages at the randmcanally.com web with the word Navteq in it, holy moly, some partner, am I doing my research right? You think? Maybe I'm wrong about this?)
I predict NVT will go to $100 (like Garmin did) split 2:1, go to $100 again, and do that a few times, pay an ever increasing dividend, and if I'm right, and if I can resist selling shares, I just might get that company jet after all. Make mine a Global Express - purple with gold trim please. (N8LBS) (4/2007 postscript note: .. why "LBS"? Well because of two things, one, LBS is what my highschool friend Bill called the awesome bacon cheeseburger I used to make, it meant Larry Berg Special. That was 1966. Now 40 years later it's going to be the biggest thing ever. It stands for: Location Based Services/Systems! So if I get that jet, it's N number will have LBS in it, and 8 is a lucky number in Taiwan, Min's home country! )
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BACK TO 11/2001: ----- here is what I was saying 5 years ago! Did anyone listen? ---- I'm just a dumb guy living in the woods of Oregon with strong opinions about things. I have no relationship with Garmin in anyway except a few years ago one of my Pfrancs was retired Garmin employee #11, but we never talked about Garmin, just Pfrancdom and life. I don't know why it would matter anyway, I just tell it the way I see it. All my data here comes from my own personal first hand experience and from Garmin's prospectus 12/8/2000, and other public data, which is available on-line at Garmin.com. I have no inside information I think Garmin is a winner! I think the stock, GRMN, will be a winner. Why?
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