​Are you ready for another biggest offering of stock since last year's China's Alibaba Group? 
According to IFR, a Thomson Reuters publication, messaging app LINE, which is owned by  South Korea's largest web portal operator, Naver Corp, plans an initial public offering of up to $3 billion in New York and Tokyo Exchange at the same time.

There is no doubt that LINE is very popular among Asian countries, includes Japan, Taiwan and Thailand.  But how popular is popular for LINE?  Well, I believe if you shut down LINE service for just one day, the whole country like Taiwan won't function normally at all, and that also includes its local elected officials.  Many local officials have created different groups so they can effectively communicate and work.  Since 2013, LINE has made a big push break the US market, and it has gained substantial momentum in its marketing campaign.

LINE has been monetizing its virtual "stickers" which users can send instead of emoji to each other, and those stickers cannot be copied and pasted, so it must be purchased.  According to The Wall Street Journal, LINE gained $323 million in 2013. The company even opened up a brick-and-mortar “Line Friends Store” in central Tokyo where users can purchase physical versions of the official seals they send digitally. In Taiwan, many stores carry Line Friends merchandise.
 
The road to IPO was delayed for years since LINE decided the timing was not right.  In August of 2015, Naver's CFO Hwang In-Joon said that the company would put off the IPO of Line until its earnings and market conditions improved. 

Another possible reason for delaying an IPO was whether or not to list together in the U.S. and Japan at the same time, according to the Nikkei.  I think with the high growth of the business and the growing interests among the retail, LINE feels more comfortable doing an IPO this year before the end of summer. We'll see how it turns out.

Here is another article that I published on Seeking Alpha. Groupon has expanded its portfolio outside of "daily deals" and now has shown us a clear roadmap from a payment app, Breadcrumb, to a fuller merchant solution with its own hardware and software for the merchants called Gnome.  This is innovative but at the same time it is a daunting task.  Here are the summary from the article:

• An integrated merchant platform can be a key to secure the future growth.
• Rising operating costs continue to hinder the overall profitability and send  Groupon's stock to 52-week low.
• Groupon can potentially turn its risks into a competitive advantage.

"Don’t leave home without it!" Think it again. Groupon (GRPN) envisions a not-too-distant future where you don't need to carry credit cards with you when you make purchases.  Imagine you can enjoy your Bahamas vacation without the wallet as if you were at home. If you are a small business owner, there is no more frustrated and embarrassing moment in front of your customers when your card reader does not work properly.  This vision may become a reality as Groupon just announced an iPad-based checkout platform called Gnome that can replace merchants' cash registers. 

Click here to continue reading

Google Panda is a program used by Google to do ranking in the search result.  Every time, it releases a new version and it will impact numerous sites on its visibility to the internet. Some may result in higher ranking and some may fall on its ranking.  It is estimated that the change can affect over 10 percent of all search results.  The purpose of Google Panda is to prevent low quality site or pages from ranking well in the search results page.  Recently, Google released its latest version 4.0 on May 21, 2014.  

Either you hate it or you want to applaud, but before you make your decision, think about how Google is impacting everyone's lives.  Google has been controlled our lives tighter and tighter every time it releases so called "Panda" the latest version.  If the Panda or the algorithm likes your sites, then your sites become popular, and if it hates you, you do not exist in the virtual world.  You need to bribe Google by spending more money on Google Advertisement. Now Google has the authority to define what is good quality content and have the ability to rank your site higher. We are all humans and have complex feelings and emotions that machines will never understand.  Sometimes, simple words and phrases can touch our hearts and soul.  Who can really judge the quality of our contents?

When we receive more convenience from Google by just typing a few words on the Google search box, we give our power away to Google.  In turn, it controls our lives tighter until you accept the fact that if you cannot find it from Google, it probably does not exist.  Anyway, I like the good old days where you have various search engines, such as Alta Vista, the old Yahoo [now Yahoo uses Bing's algorithm], Infoseek, and more.  Nowadays, either you use Google or Bing, everyone may see the exact information. What do you think?  Please share your thoughts in the comments below.

Here is an example of how a site being impacted by Panda: eBay.co.uk 

Groupon (GRPN) is more than a company that provides coupons and deals.  It’s making a symbiotic relationship with the local merchants where it helps them from making deal campaigns, processing credit card payment, managing customer-relationship.  Now with Gnome, it will further connect merchants to have a closer relationship than ever by empowering merchants to have the up-to-date technology to be able to capture vast mobile and online user base.  Gnome is a new tablet-based platform that provides sophisticated tools such as Bluetooth Groupon redemption, all-in-one cash register, customer relationship management, and accounting software integration with popular accounting software like Quickbooks.  Best of all, by linking to the central Groupon database, merchants are capable of tailoring their services to known Groupon customers and this helps the merchants to build stronger relationship with their customers. In addition, Genome provides preloaded menus and inventory lists and makes point of sale very simple for the merchants.  Now the small businesses can focus more on their businesses and keep them up-to-date with the technology. For consumers, you don't need to bring your voucher or coupon any more with Gnome.
See for yourself (see videos below)

A Tablet Solution that Helps Merchants Run Their Business and Connect with Customers. It's pretty powerful when everything integrated into one solution.

Gnome is more than a cash register since it also provides CRM, bookkeeping, and customizable point of sale with inventory management. Since it equipped with Bluetooth capability, it can identify Groupon customers upon entering the store and tailor its services to best fit the needs of the customers. In this way, there are no needs for Groupon customers to show credit cards or printed coupons. The concept of Gnome is actually pretty powerful if you think about it. The small business owners can customize coupons, offers, or generate real-time promotions based on Groupon's vast mobile and online user base and enable them to communicate with their customers via Facebook and Twitter and share positive feedback with their potential customers. 

With the integrated CRM in Gnome, many small business owners can now retain information about the customers instead of just redeeming coupons and never seen them again.  This feature not only fills the gap in the relation between retailers and customers, but also helps the small businesses to customize marketing campaign and build customer loyalty.  Once Gnome bundled all essential services such as CRM software and payment processing hardware and software, the small business owners can get rid all other services.  

Here is another article that I published on Seeking Alpha.  ADT is the largest home security company with 25% market share.

• A 140-year company may be worth more than you think.
• Despite the competition heating up, ADT continues to accelerate its growth by adding new customers and new territories.
• ADT is ready to head up the challenges as it strengthens its weaknesses.

The ADT logo is one of the most recognized logos in the world. Normally, a logo is used by the company to give a visual representation of a company brand, but ADT's logo has another special use in which an ADT yard sign has shown some effects on deterring intruders and burglars. The value of the brand alone should worth a lot.
Click here to read the article

Many investors are worried about how the intense price war may squeeze out of Rackspace and was unconvinced about the OpenStack technology, a main value driver for Rackspace. But after the Q2 2014 Results on May 12, 2014, it has shown that the revenue has reaccelerated. According to the recent released report dated May 15, 2014 by Morgan Stanley, the analysts said that Rackspace had a market capitalization of about $4 billion and was the largest company in terms of acquisitions when comparing to SoftLayer, SAVVIS and Terremark, but has the cheapest stock price when valued by EV/EBITDA. Rackspace was trading at a multiple of 6.1 times 2015 estimated EV / EBITDA, and the average multiple "on an LTM EV / EBITDA pre-synergies basis" for the three deals is 15.7 times.

From my previous article, Rackspace: Beyond The Price War, published on May 1, 2014 before the Q2 2012 Results, I have described how I identified values for the company and its future outlook despite numerous articles discussed about losing confidence in it. I think the values that I see are something more tangible than the short-lived stock price. The share price has soared over 30% since Monday. It looks dramatic, but I think this is just beginning since the price was already undervalued even when its quarterly earnings beat expectations. I think the current price is a reflection of fear, not by its performance or value.

I recently published an article titled: "Rackspace: Beyond the Price War" to Seeking Alpha, which is a very well-known finance website thtat ranked 311th in U.S. by Alexa. My article was later syndicated to many business news websites, include Google Finance, CNBC, Yahoo Finance, Bing, Nasdaq, Morningstar, and MarketWatch.

In this article, I discussed the current sentiment towards Rackspace and how it has impact the stock price to become bearish.  I also discussed the possible future outlook for the company.

Here is a summary about the article:

• Rackspace decides not to join the latest price cutting war in the cloud computing market.
  
• There are four strategic plans that give Rackspace the competitive advantages to ensure its future success. 
  
• All competitors in the cloud computing arena are subjects to risks, but Rackspace stands out from the fierce competition.
  
• Focusing on long-term value creation, Rackspace is in a good position to achieve long-term returns and growth.
  

   To read the complete article please visit Seeking Alpha from this link: Rackspace: Beyond the Price War

A TV interview on April 23, 2014 with Frank Stangenberg Haverkamp, Chairman of the Family Board of Merck by a Taiwanese reporter.

This is an interesting chart that I saw the other day.  It summarized the typical psychological events that went through in minds of traders. It shows the mistakes that traders and investors of all skill levels can make.
It could be a viscous journey like this but with a clear plan of why you made decisions and don't let emotion to lead your actions, you will feel better and confident. It takes patience, discipline, and confident executions to make a worth of this journey.   No body knows when it's absolute peak or bottom, but who said that you must selling at peak and buying at bottom in order to make a good investment.  Set greedy asides and find a path in the middle that you feel comfortable.  When most of people become pessimistic, it is the time to shine.

The weekly jobless claims has finally fallen to near 7-year [5/12/2007] low in this month (April 2014).  It looks like we are in a turning point that the economy seems to be picking up.  However, one must also take a look on the number closely.

1. The weekly number itself is not a good representation since according to some economists that the claims are pretty volatile from week to week. 
2. The lower number may be due to the number of people who had become not eligible for filling a claim after a extend period.

The number of claims has been used as one of the most important economic indicators, but the number seems weak at this time.  One can see that many politicians are still worried, especially when we still see that senators want to pass a bill that would extend the federally funded extended emergency unemployment benefits to May 31.

The Federal Reserve chair, Janet Yellen, (4/16/2014) predicts that the economic recovery needs another two years with the conditions that central bank must be strong.  Keeping the rate low for now is crucial because the labor market is still weak and overall, people still have problem of looking for jobs especially for those long-term unemployed and people working part-time since they are no full time jobs available.

In short, stronger labor market is still needed for keeping the inflation low and for long-term stability of the economy.