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business newsRubber Meets the Road for Winnebago
By
Justin Sharon
Oct 14, 2010 4:35 pm
The housing crisis apparently doesn't apply to motor homes. Winnebago Industries announced its revenue doubled to $123.1 million, and earnings per share came in at $0.17.
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I can’t speak for Sesame Street, but on Wall Street it’s not a good day for the letter "W." The Washington Post Company (WPO), while never exactly cheap at almost $400 a share, is certainly worth less than it was after a tumble of almost 10% today. (Katherine Graham will be turning in her grave.) Publishing, notwithstanding the book-a-month Bob Woodward -- a Post alumnus -- and a stack of Pulitzer Prizes for the newspaper, is of course not exactly a route to riches for any firm right now. Today, however, Washington Post is instead imploding due to its ownership of test-preparation king Kaplan. This division, which is actually among its fastest-growing revenue streams, is being hit hard by a warning from for-profit college industry barometer Apollo Group (APOL), which operates the University of Phoenix. Apollo sees a stunning 40% drop in student enrollment next quarter amid a sector facing heightened red tape from Uncle Sam over default rates for student loans. Berkshire Hathaway (BRK) owns a decent chunk of Washington Post shares, and Warren Buffett is no dummy, so intrinsic value exists. However, sentiment on the education sector has been horrific for some time now. Stanley H. Kaplan founded his company in 1938 by tutoring students for the New York State Regents Exam in the basement of his parents’ Brooklyn home. Shares could be stuck in the cellar for some time. Also check out Reporting on Literature Is Still Good For Business and Unemployment Favoring For-Profit Schools.
Spain’s Queen Isabella famously financed Christopher Columbus’ voyage to America by pawning off the crown jewels, so it’s somehow fitting in a Columbus Day week that shares in pawnshop operator and payday lender Cash America International (CSH) are surging this afternoon. The company raised its third-quarter earnings guidance late yesterday, citing strength in its online business -- a bad economy clearly continues to be good news for all sorts of loan sharks. It now expects EPS of $0.90 in the quarter, up from an earlier estimate in the range of $0.82 to $0.88. With TV shows Pawn Stars and Hardcore Pawn having debuted in successive years, this industry is suddenly all the rage. (Or not so suddenly -- see a Charlie Chaplin vehicle from almost a century ago.) Bullion, at another new nominal high as I write, is a particularly hot item to hawk at the moment, so it’s appropriate that the universal symbol of pawnbroking is three gold balls. Although the sector still conjures up images of shifty-eyed snake oil salesmen, is actually going increasingly up market with operations even appearing in Beverley Hills and customers using diamonds as collateral. Pawnshops: Not Just for Deadbeats Anymore and The Other Side: Trading the Middle Class Meltdown provide related content.Looks like that suspected UFO sighting over New York was actually nothing but a bunch of trial balloons floated cross-county by Yahoo (YHOO). Although shares in the Internet giant finished as today’s top S&P 500 stock on a report saying AOL (AOL) and a group of private equity firms may make a bid for it, many analysts are skeptical. Stifel Nicolaus researcher Jordan Rohan, for one, just wrote in a report that it's unlikely sufficient cash can be raised to do a deal when credit markets are still quite tight. Any potential price tag could value the company at almost $30 billion, a steep price, and given that Yahoo rebuffed Microsoft‘s (MSFT) attempts to buy it in 2008, the company does have a fiercely independent streak. The Web pioneer may still have to do something dramatic however to keep pace with trendier upstarts including Twitter and Facebook. Additional analysis can be accessed at Yahoo Stock Has Fallen and Can’t Get Up and Yahoo Fumbles Its Twitter Integration.
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