Company name Life Partners Holdings, Inc.
Stock ticker LPHI
Live stock price [stckqut]LPHI[/stckqut]
P/E compared to competitors Good
MANAGEMENT EXECUTION
Employee productivity Good
Sales growth Good
EPS growth Good
P/E growth Poor
EBIT growth Good
ANALYSIS
Confident Investor Rating Good
Target stock price (TWCA growth scenario) $10.45
Target stock price (averages with growth) $13.64
Target stock price (averages with no growth) $13.56
Target stock price (manual assumptions) $11.9

The following company description is from Google Finance: http://www.google.com/finance?q=lphi

Life Partners Holdings, Inc. (Life Partners) is a financial services company and the parent company of Life Partners, Inc. (LPI). LPI is engaged in the secondary market for life insurance known generally as life settlements. LPI facilitates the sale of life settlements between sellers and purchasers, but does not take possession or control of the policies. The purchasers acquire the life insurance policies at a discount to their face value for investment purposes. Life settlement transactions involve the sale of an existing life insurance policy to another party. By selling the policy, the policyholder receives an immediate cash payment to use as he or she wishes. The purchaser takes an ownership interest in the policy at a discount to its face value and receives the death benefit under the policy when the insured dies.

Confident Investor comments: At this price and at this time, I think that a Confident Investor can confidently invest in this stock.

Company name JPMorgan Chase & Co.
Stock ticker JPM
Live stock price [stckqut]JPM[/stckqut]
P/E compared to competitors Good
MANAGEMENT EXECUTION
Employee productivity Fair
Sales growth Good
EPS growth Good
P/E growth Good
EBIT growth Good
ANALYSIS
Confident Investor Rating Good
Target stock price (TWCA growth scenario) $215.16
Target stock price (averages with growth) $184.93
Target stock price (averages with no growth) $108.68
Target stock price (manual assumptions) $50.62

The following company description is from Google Finance: http://www.google.com/finance?q=jpm

JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPMorgan Chase) is a financial holding company. JPMorgan Chase’s principal bank subsidiaries are JPMorgan Chase Bank, National Association (JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A.), a national bank with United States branches in 23 states, and Chase Bank USA, National Association (Chase Bank USA, N.A.), a national bank that is the Firm’s credit card-issuing bank. JPMorgan Chase’s principal nonbank subsidiary is J.P. Morgan Securities LLC (JPMorgan Securities), the Firm�s United States investment banking firm. The bank and nonbank subsidiaries of JPMorgan Chase operate nationally, as well as through overseas branches and subsidiaries, representative offices and subsidiary foreign banks. The Company’s activities are organized into six business segments: Investment Bank, Retail Financial Services (RFS), Card Services (CS), Commercial Banking (CB), Treasury & Securities Services (TSS) and Asset Management (AM).

Confident Investor comments: At this price and at this time, I think that a Confident Investor can confidently invest in this stock.

Company name Intuitive Surgical, Inc.
Stock ticker ISRG
Live stock price [stckqut]ISRG[/stckqut]
P/E compared to competitors Good
MANAGEMENT EXECUTION
Employee productivity Good
Sales growth Good
EPS growth Good
P/E growth Poor
EBIT growth Good
ANALYSIS
Confident Investor Rating Good
Target stock price (TWCA growth scenario) $642.31
Target stock price (averages with growth) $874.32
Target stock price (averages with no growth) $614.33
Target stock price (manual assumptions) $644.1

The following company description is from Google Finance: http://www.google.com/finance?q=isrg

Intuitive Surgical, Inc. (Intuitive Surgical) designs, manufactures and market da Vinci Surgical Systems, which are advanced surgical systems.The Company’s principal products include three models of da Vinci Surgical System: da Vinci Si Surgical System, da Vinci S Surgical System and standard da Vinci Surgical System, along with a variety of EndoWrist instruments and accessories. The da Vinci Surgical System is used to perform surgery across multiple surgical specialties, including urology, gynecology, cardiothoracic surgery, transoral surgery, and general surgery. As of December 31, 2010, the Company had an installed base of 1,752 da Vinci Surgical Systems. During the year ended December 31, 2010, the Company introduced da Vinci Si-e systems and da Vinci Si Surgical System. During 2010, it sold nine da Vinci Si-e systems. The da Vinci Surgical System consists of a surgeon�s console, or consoles, a patient-side cart and vision system.

Confident Investor comments: At this price and at this time, I think that a Confident Investor can confidently invest in this stock.

In July, I cautioned readers that Netflix [stckqut]nflx[/stckqut] may be at risk. By the end of the article, I suggested that you should be cautious but NFLX management would have a plan to maintain revenues and earn investor’s confidence. At the time, the stock was well above $250 and now it is well below $100 as I write this article. Hopefully in the time between these two articles you were watching the market indicators and you ended your ownership of the company. At this time on this site, I don’t offer specific instructions on when to buy, sell, or hold – I just suggest companies that are worthwhile for you to consider or not to consider.

But what if you didn’t sell in August and September as the stock was falling like a skier going down a black diamond ski trail only to watch that skier go over a cliff in October? Should you sell now? What if you watched the amazing fall from the sidelines – should you buy now?

NFLX from Google Finance (http://www.google.com//finance?chdnp=1&chdd=1&chds=1&chdv=1&chvs=maximized&chdeh=0&chfdeh=0&chdet=1319716458318&chddm=98923&chls=IntervalBasedLine&q=NASDAQ:NFLX&&fct=big)

Henry Blodget has very well written article over at Business Insider that suggests that NFLX has gone down too far.  The article is titled “Sorry, But This Netflix Collapse Is Overdone” so you won’t be surprised that he is suggesting that at this price NFLX is too cheap. Here are the highlights of his article:

  • Netflix appears to be just going through a product transition. – If so, then it is a really tough product transition. It seems more likely that Netflix was starting to believe that it was as wonderful as the investment rags suggested.
  • It’s not Reed Hastings’ fault all those magazines put him on their covers a couple of years ago. – This doesn’t actually make sense – are we suppose to buy because it wasn’t his fault? Is Mr. Hastings really comparable to Mr. Bezos as the article suggested?
  • Netflix’s streaming business, its future, is already at a ~$2 billion revenue run-rate, with 21 million subscribers paying $8/month. – This is true but it is based on streaming content that appears to be greatly in flux so what if subscribers quit because the quality is not sufficient.
  • At $75 a share, Netflix’s market cap is $4 billion, or 2X the revenue of its product of the future. – This is probably the point that makes the most sense in Blodget’s article. Of course, I am primarily interested in fundamentals so I would gravitate to the portion of the article that required the use of a calculator.
  • Netflix’s streaming business, after all, is similar to HBO’s business in many key ways. – This is a fair point but HBO has easier access to consumers through the various operators and HBO typically doesn’t have a second bill that consumers have to pay where Netflix does.
  • Netflix may well prove to be a much better business than HBO, because it won’t be beholden to the cable operators for distribution.  – Not sure that I buy this argument since those evil operators are a great way to get access to the consumer which Netflix needs to do with its own promotion and billing. I think Netflix’ true competition is Apple’s and Amazon’s streaming service.
  • To believe that Netflix is worth less than 2X the current revenue of its streaming business, you have to believe that content providers will always be able to sock it to Netflix whenever Netflix posts a few dollars of profit. – This is a pretty weak argument since Netflix has not shown that it can hold on to and sufficiently acquire streaming content deals.

I will be putting out an analysis on Netflix very soon. If you are not subscribed to my news feed or newsletter subscription then you are missing out and will just have to come back regularly. In that upcoming article, I will try to give some advice on where I think the price should be.

In the meantime, if you owned the stock at $300 and still own it today at 75% lower, you have already suffered the worst of your injury and you should probably hold for a bit of a rebound. If you do not own the stock today, my upcoming article will tell you if I still think the stock is a Good Company worthy of your trading and investment dollar.

The above stock chart is from Google Finance.

Company name Image Sensing Systems, Inc.
Stock ticker ISNS
Live stock price [stckqut]ISNS[/stckqut]
P/E compared to competitors Good
MANAGEMENT EXECUTION
Employee productivity Poor
Sales growth Good
EPS growth Good
P/E growth Good
EBIT growth Good
ANALYSIS
Confident Investor Rating Good
Target stock price (TWCA growth scenario) $10.48
Target stock price (averages with growth) $13.93
Target stock price (averages with no growth) $9.56
Target stock price (manual assumptions) $10.71

The following company description is from Google Finance: http://www.google.com/finance?q=isns

Image Sensing Systems, Inc. develops and markets video and radar image processing products for use in traffic applications, such as intersection control, highway, bridge and tunnel traffic management and traffic data collection. The Company provides software-based, computer-enabled detection (CED) products and solutions for the intelligent transportation systems (ITS) industry. Its family of products is marketed as Autoscope and RTMS. The Company’s technology analyzes signals from sensors and transmits the information to management systems and controllers or directly to users. In June 2010, the Company acquired CitySync Limited.

Confident Investor comments: At this price and at this time, I think that a Confident Investor can confidently invest in this stock.