Comments on: Guest Post: Duncan Stewart

By: heidimarie

heidimarie — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 15:31:26 +0000

I am researching the history of the Duncan Stewart & Co in so far as its interests in Cuban sugar refinery, in specific Camaguey (1880-1920) and also in specific to Duncan (1846-1904) and his sister Christina (1841) Stewart born of Peter (1804-1864)and Elisabeth (1811) Stewart. I am wondering if you are related to that branch of the family. There is a John Stewart (b. abt. 1836 Kincardine) born of Peter’s second wife, Janet (1814) while she was married to Peter’s brother. I am trying to discover more about him. I believe he was a close friend of my great grandmother, Emily Blackwell (1854-1937), who, it has been demonstrated or suggested, lived at one time or another in Dorchester, NB; Moncton, NB; Montreal, QC; Roanoke, VA; Lynn, MA; Savannah, GA; La Gloria, Camaguey, Cuba; and Fort Wayne, IN.

Thank you for your time in reading this. I hope you can help me.

Kind regards,
Heidi-Marie Blackwell

Lauzun, France
heidi-marie@blackwellstudios.com

By: heidimarie

heidimarie — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 11:31:26 +0000

By: yes4aapl

yes4aapl — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 06:09:50 +0000

Plus NT has a fair chunk of deferred revenue flowing through the income statement. Those 'revenues' are real...but they cash for them was received some time ago. In other words, as these deferred revenues drop off the QUALITY (from a cash generating perspective) of NT's revenues will increase.
=======
re
In 2008 Nortel_CFO recognized around $1.3 Bill in deferred revenues. Some of them /how much?/ were placed into def. rev section during restatements of 2000-2003
In those restatements Nortel placed $3.5Bill into deferred revenues.
Question is
Where is missing $2.5 bill or more in deferred revenues?
Did deferred revenue recognition misled public_analysts about real business in 2008?
In other words
If 2008 were as good as Mike Z tried to paint it why Nortel is in BK now? Class action law suit is real.
Parliament wants to know about bonuses in 2008 and I guess in 2009.
What was the Word?
Summon
Summon

By: Lonely Ops Guy

Lonely Ops Guy — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 23:19:54 +0000

Mr. Real
“when you give someone a good idea for free, it's never good enough.”
I agree 100%. I too, have sent numerous suggestions via “channels” that would supposedly reach the higher echelons. Never heard back anything.
What a shame………

By: Lonely Ops Guy

Lonely Ops Guy — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 23:14:53 +0000

Mr. Real:
That's an excellent start. Drop the Carrier business, drop 20K staff and focus on Enterprise business where, if NT acts quickly, it might stand a small chance.

By: Lonely Ops Guy

Lonely Ops Guy — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 23:04:08 +0000

Proto:
When Joel “The Womanizer” Hackney got on board, during his very first Vegas Sales Conference, this was the first thing he brought up in that stage. That he was going to simplify supply chain and reduce the 60K PEC codes to something around 20K in the next year or two. This was back in 2005. I have to confess that I believed him for a while. I should have noticed that something was wrong when he start pursuing the 48 hours metrics. From there, it was downhill……..
What a shame……

By: exnt2

exnt2 — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 01:09:44 +0000

you forgot a major expnse - your salary. 40% GM goes to pay R&D, SG&A each at roughly 20% of sales and other expenses. cash flow negative buddy. cash flow negative. find out one statement in the past 5 years where they were cash flow positive. maybe the one where Z got his little bonus.

Revenue has already fallen to below 10 billion and will continue in steep decline. are you one of those who estimate 3% YoY CDMA decline when it is 30%. ooops. ouch hurts does it not.

With capital expenses now at a minimum, MEN sales delayed due to long sale process and CDMA going down faster than a rock, no major LTE deployment for a couple of years, I'd say a really optimistic forecast is 9 billion. more likely 7-8 billion. if the economy is as bad or worse than it is, this could even tank to 6-7 billion. the middle line, interest, taxes etc. still remain the same.

some of nortels largest customers are gone. morgan stanley, bear stearns, lehman. thats a lot of accounts receivable that will get written off. there are more bankruptcies coming and unless there is a way to get payment, there definitely will be a lot more bad debt.

It clearly looks like Pavi is cleaning house with two back to back quarters of heavy losses. So the writing is pretty much on the wall.

Disagree with Duncan. Usually Q3 and Q4 are strongest quarters for Nortel. Q3 really tanked big time. Q4 will be as good or worse around $2 or 2.3 billion.

By: The Psychiatrist

The Psychiatrist — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 22:58:35 +0000

Duncan

I don't agree with your valuation of Nortel's business units

you assume value of the ES unit at about $2B(Avaya-like multiple) but Avaya was actually taken private at about 1.7 x sales or $8.2 B.Nortel's ES revenue is about $2.5B,if we applied an Avaya multiple- Nortel's ES would fetch just over $4B double your figure.Furthermore with MEN being a growing division at least longer term,then it deserves a multiple of at least 1 x sales or about $1.5 .You also said that Nortel's customers would start defecting at an increased pace-if you look at their book to bill for MEN it came in at 1.08 which indicates strong growth,in other words even with the announced intention of wanting to sell MEN,their book to bill would indicate anything but defection.

Nortel's CDMA business,although a dying one is worth more to Nortel than what they could get selling it,after all any interesested buyers could use the -well this is a business on the decline argument to pay next to nothing for it-an good analogy for this would be my older car that I have where I just spent $3k on it and its listed value is not more than $2800,but since I kept this car in good shape from the very beginning I know that the $3k I spent on it will serve me better by driving it to the end than trying to get that back with a sale of the car.

Finally there is the issue with Nortel's deferred tax assets which stood at $6.8B as of Sept 30/08,I believe that with the right buyer some of these deferred tax assets could be of good use and represent value if propperly applied.

The cash burn for me is still an unknown for many obvious reasons and with the latest restructuring,this should help alleviate some of this concern to the tune of $400 million according to Nortel.

You seem to have used a bare bones calculation on valuation and I can't blame you after all you have a sell side point of view,but I beg to differ and feel that if Nortel could manage through this period reasonably well,then I think they could get better value for their units when the credit markets ease up.

By: duncan

duncan — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 22:39:44 +0000

Most analysts are thinking around $800 million cash burn. I am a bit more pessimistic and think it could be closer to $1B…but I have some unusually negative views on the global economy, CDMA and telecom spending.

One reason where exnt2 might be going wrong is annualizing the Q3 numbers. From a CASH perspective they got hit with a couple of things that a (for a change) truly unusual. Plus Q3 is historically a weak quarter in terms of cash cycle, Plus NT has a fair chunk of deferred revenue flowing through the income statement. Those 'revenues' are real…but they cash for them was received some time ago. In other words, as these deferred revenues drop off the QUALITY (from a cash generating perspective) of NT's revenues will increase.

Does that help?

By: duncan

duncan — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 22:26:27 +0000

There is, after all, a long and noble history of UBC Engineers doing things to old Volkswagens!

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2001/02/05/bridg...