$QUNR Gets ‘Going Private’ Offer from Ocean Imagination

I have no idea who this Ocean Imagination is. Many news sites are wrongly calling them Ocean Management ltd, a defunct British investment firm, which would make sense, being that the Chinese like to produce counterfeits. Maybe this Ocean Imaginaion firm is one giant fiction, an imaginary firm making imaginary bids? What? It’s possible.

Anyway, they made a bid to buy QUNR. Shares are sharply higher in the pre-market.

According to the proposal letter, the Buyer is an entity related to Ocean Imagination L.P., a private equity fund dedicated to investing in travel-related industries in China. The Buyer intends to seek the support of the Company’s shareholders accounting for a majority in voting power of the Company for this proposal. The Buyer also intends to fund the consideration payable in the Transaction with a combination of debt and equity capital, with the equity financing to be provided from the Buyer in the form of cash and any rollover equity capital in the Company from the Significant Shareholders.

The Board has formed a special committee comprised of three independent, disinterested directors, Mr. Jimmy Lai, Mr. Jianmin Zhu and Ms. Ying Shi, to consider the Buyer’s proposal and the transaction contemplated therein. The special committee expects to retain independent advisors, including independent financial and legal advisors, to assist it in this process.
The Board cautions the Company’s shareholders and others considering trading the Company’s securities that the Board has just received the proposal letter and has not had an opportunity to carefully review and evaluate the proposal or make any decision with respect to the Company’s response to the proposal. There can be no assurance that any definitive offer will be made, that any definitive agreement will be executed relating to the proposed transaction or that this or any other transaction will be approved or consummated. The Company does not undertake any obligation to provide any updates with respect to this or any other transaction, except as required under applicable law.

Can one of you Canadians out there tell me who is buying Blackberry devices? How on earth are they going to post positive free cash flow for 2016, as promised?

Back on earth, revenues fell 39% year over year for the Canadian telephone makers. However, they exceeded estimates, guided higher, and have $2.5 bill in cash.

This company is very stubborn and just won’t go away. They sort of remind me of MySpace.

Reports Q1 (May) net of breakeven, $0.08 better than the Capital IQ Consensus of ($0.08); revenues fell 39.2% year/year to $400 mln ($424 mln Non-GAAP) vs the $470.82 mln Capital IQ Consensus.

Co issues upside guidance for FY17, sees EPS of ($0.15) vs. ($0.34) Capital IQ Consensus Estimate.

BlackBerry had approximately 3,300 enterprise customer wins in the quarter. Approximately 74% of the first quarter software revenue was recurring.

Total cash, cash equivalents, short-term and long-term investments was $2.5 billion as of May 31, 2016. This reflects a use of free cash of $65 million, which includes negative $61 million of cash flow from operations.

Outlook: The Company anticipates maintaining a strong cash position and further reallocating additional resources to go-to-market and product development areas as it continues to execute on its strategy of positive adjusted EBITDA for the full 2017 fiscal year. “Our current plan calls for continued investments to expand our addressable markets and drive sustainable profitability and revenue growth. For the full fiscal year, we are on track to deliver 30 percent revenue growth in software and services. Based on a more efficient operating model, we expect a non-GAAP EPS loss of around 15 cents, compared to the current consensus of a 33 cent loss. We also expect to generate positive free cash flow for the full year.”

European markets are really picking up some steam, as the BREXIT vote gets underway in Britain. The voting just started a few hours ago, so the rally must be predicated around some polling data of people sleeping and/or how many of them walk outside with a cup of coffee in their hands vs tea. Rumor has it, it’s the tea drinkers, those devilish bastards, who want BREXIT.

SPY futures soar.

Germany rejoices.

The yen is plunging vs the dollar. This is porn for Kuroda.

Imagine if the UK voted to leave? Thank heavens the tea drinkers slept in.

Nigel Farage has been at the vanguard of trying to dislodge the people of Britain from the effeminate men in Brussels. If he wins this referendum, it would mean a tremendous political win for Farage and UKIP. If he loses, without question, he might never get a chance to become Prime Minister, which is, unquestionably, his end game motive.

Jim Cramer rants and raves about government interference in oligarch designs for world dominance and monopoly. Aside from that, he then proposes the solution to all of our problems would be to merge all companies, left and right, stupid. He posits that share buybacks aren’t enough and that share supply needs to be removed from this fucking market, permanently, via the execution of mergers and acquisitions on an industrial scale.

Sadly, this doesn’t seem to be happening, as CIO’s horde cash like morons, investing in the ark and things of that nature.

Wishcasting at its best.

A. Left is short both SCTY and TSLA and fucking hates both companies with every fiber of his existence. Like Chanos, Mr. Left believes SCTY is a giant fucking donut, masquerading as a $21 security. He rifles through a litany of reasons to be short the stock, stemming from the possibility that the deal might fall through.

Worst case scenario, SCTY shorts transfer over to become TSLA shorts upon consummation of the deal. Best case scenario, Elon Musk is sent packing on one of his Space X rockets to live out his days on Uranus, as SCTY barrels, headlong, towards $00.00.

Good stuff.

Long term critic and short seller of both TSLA and SCTY, Jim Chanos, called the TSLA-SCTY a ‘brazen bailout’, citing the 20% yielding SCTY bonds as evidence that the company was barreling towards financial distress.

Moreover, he said the price action in both SCTY and TSLA’s shares today indicated that TSLA shareholders believe the par value for SCTY was, essentially and inexorably, zero.

Shortseller Jim Chanos of Kynikos Associates blasted Tesla Motors Inc’s proposed acquisition of SolarCity Corp, describing it as a “brazen” bailout and “shameful example of corporate governance at its worst.”

“SolarCity, whose bonds were yielding 20 percent yesterday, is a company headed toward financial distress,” Chanos said in an emailed statement on Wednesday. “It is burning hundreds of millions in cash every quarter, a burden that now Tesla shareholders will have to bear, at a total cost of over $8 billion.”

Chanos, whose firm has been betting against Tesla and SolarCity shares, said the combined drop in the market value of the two companies was more than the equity value of the deal itself, “which means that Tesla shareholders think SolarCity shares are essentially worthless.

“Finally,” he added, “it is hard for me to believe that this deal was not being contemplated when Tesla, and Mr. Musk himself, sold shares just a few weeks ago.”

The benevolent people from Mexico are killing protesters again. Such a civil society of people should be permitted to arrive inside our Eden, unfettered, without restriction.

In the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca, a deadly police crackdown against teachers has left nine people dead and more than 100 wounded. On Sunday, police descended on teachers in the community of Nochixtlán, where they had set up blockades to protest against neoliberal education reform and the arrests of two teachers’ union leaders last week on what protesters say are trumped-up charges. “As soon as they arrived, they began to attack. And we were few, very few,” said a Oaxacan teacher. “Then we started running. But they began to attack right away, instantly. At no time did they give warning to clear the area.” We go to Oaxaca to speak with Gustavo Esteva, founder of the Universidad de la Tierra in Oaxaca and author of many books, including “New Forms of Revolution.”

Here’s one of many videos circulating on Youtube, demonstrating the civility of the fucking Mexican government.

This is what happens when you staff government with brainless fucking morons, who are unable to use common sense and instead follows ‘the law’ because the state says so. A man broke a windshield, rescuing a family. When the ambulance arrived, he asked one of the assholes for a bottle of water to clean his hands. Because of that, the state of California sent him a bill for $143, for a fucking bottle of water.

Shares of BBBY are lower by more than 4% in the after-hours, extending its precipitous drop of more than 40% over the past year after announcing the horrendous business model they’ve surrounded themselves with, predicated on Green Mountain K-Cup and iRobot thousand dollar robotic mop sales, is retarded. To be honest, I’ve always hated this store. Each time I’ve entered it, my allergies kicked in and I found myself sneezing on merchandise for the next 20 minutes.

Having said that, this company is a cash cow. Valuations haven’t been this low for at least a decade, currently trading at 8.5x earnings and 0.55x sales, more than 66% lower than the gogo days of 2012.

Nevertheless, the trend is lower.

Bed Bath & Beyond misses by $0.06, misses on revs; guides FY17 EPS in-line; same store comps -0.5% (43.18 -0.15)

Reports Q1 (May) earnings of $0.80 per share, $0.06 worse than the Capital IQ Consensus of $0.86; revenues were unchanged from the year-ago period at $2.74 bln, below consensus of $2.78 bln.

Co issues in-line guidance for FY17, sees EPS comfortably in the range it has earned over last several years during a heavy investment phase of $4.50-5.00 vs. $4.98 Capital IQ Consensus Estimate.

Same store sale decline -0.5%. Comparable sales from customer-facing digital channels grew in excess of 20% while comp sales from stores declined in the low single-digit percentage range.