Harbinger Capital Buys a 9.48% Stake in Palm
Palm Inc. announced today via a Schedule 13G SEC filing that Harbinger Capital Partners has purchased 16 million shares of common stock, representing a 9.48% passive stake in the company. Harbinger is a NYC based private hedge fund run by billionaire investor Philip A. Falcone. The hedge fund also owns large stakes in the New York Times Company, Cleveland-Cliffs and various satellite communications companies.
The investment was noteworthy not only for its size but also because this was made via the open market on already available shares. As such the common stock does not give Harbinger any special voting shares, (unlike Elevations deal) but it does represent nearly 10% of Palm's 168,755,045 shares outstanding as of March 26, 2010. Palm stock was up today on the news, but closed up a modest .16 (~3%) at 5.36.
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Insider deal
By Monday will we see a press release about Intent to Purchase?
RE: Insider deal
Maybe their loading up PUBLICLY while covering on the short side so that when Vampire and the rest see their "footprint" and invest, they will make a mint when the bubble pops. It's a crap shoot already manipulated by the house. Outsiders should avoid IMO.
Pat Horne
RE: Insider deal
A hedge fund with an all-time performance history of -42% and a compared-to-S&P performance of -26% is NOT one I use to value the likelihood of anything interesting other than haircuts.
RE: very strange
Event
"Event – investments in companies where the Harbinger team identifies a significant opportunity to actively engage with a company to unlock value".
Palm is the right enterprise for such thinking. Could a Palm Jewel and Palm Classic unlock some of that value?
It is nice to see Elevation has more support. Palm is a well known brand with a past, present and future. There is an i in innovation not in team. Though put the two together and what an event.
E-T
e-tellurian
Completing the e-com circle with a people driven we-com solution
WiFi & BT? No strings attached
we_tellurian@canada.com
RE: Event
Any thoughts?
E-T
e-tellurian
Completing the e-com circle with a people driven we-com solution
WiFi & BT? No strings attached
we_tellurian@canada.com
RE: Event
Palm has to be managed by people that understand that other are competing with Palm and can afford to bring out low quality products because they have no established brand. The brand is established over many years and customers that support a brand do so because they expect the best quality.
Can a premium Signature Series Palm Classic, made of titanium, and Palm Jewel, made of precious metal, offer the expected quality Palm built its brand on?
Just some thoughts to kick around.
E-T
e-tellurian
Completing the e-com circle with a people driven we-com solution
WiFi & BT? No strings attached
we_tellurian@canada.com
RE: Event
E-T
e-tellurian
Completing the e-com circle with a people driven we-com solution
WiFi & BT? No strings attached
we_tellurian@canada.com
Palm DEADPOOL - taking bets who will buy Palm.
My list (Part 1):
1) Nokia.
Reasons for:
Symbian became a disaster; no North American smartphone presence; need proprietary OS as differentiator; have the money to overpay for Palm; webOS is only a year of development away from being stable; webOS can easily scale up to a Nokia tablet device like the 770; maemo/MeeGo is becoming a disaster.
Reasons against:
Already saw how unfinished webOS was in 2009; paying over $2 billion for a beta OS is a huge gamble; already have 3 other OS options in house; Android is "free"; resistance to using code "not developed here".
2) HTC.
Reasons for:
Want to evolve into being a major hardware seller instead of depending on contracts of the big cell phone/carrier players; want proprietary OS as differentiator; webOS is only a year of development away from being stable; webOS can easily scale up to an iPad-like tablet device which HTC could green light within months; have experience with optimizing UI; could use Palm patents to countersue Apple/negotiate cease fire; capable of making premium hardware needed to overcome the embarassment of Palm's current plasticky Pre.
Reasons against:
Already know how unfinished webOS is in 2010; paying over $2 billion for a beta OS could bankrupt company; Android is "free"; current customers (carriers + cell phone makers) could feel threatened by HTC selling its own hardware/OS and cancel future hardware orders.
3) Dell
Reasons for:
Want to move into smartphones, as computer sales have stagnated and commodity sales have become a dead end; want proprietary OS as differentiator; webOS is only a year of development away from being stable; webOS can easily scale up to an iPad-like tablet device which Dell could green light within minutes; could use Palm patents to prey on competitors; capable of marketing goods effectively to quickly increase market share and mind share; have the money to overpay for Palm.
Reasons against:
Already know how unfinished webOS is in 2010; Android is "free"; have already been burned when trying to expand beyond their core competencies (e.g. Axim Pocket PC devices).
4) Motorola.
Reasons for:
Previous homegrown Linux initiative became a disaster; want proprietary OS as differentiator; webOS is only a year of development away from being stable.
Reasons against:
Already saw how unfinished webOS was in 2009; paying over $2 billion for a beta OS is a huge gamble; Android is "free"; Already spent hundreds of millions of dollars (effectively) marketing Android-based Droid; company is barely recovering stability.
5) Samsung.
Reasons for:
Homegrown OS lacks power; need proprietary OS as differentiator; have the money to overpay for Palm; webOS is only a year of development away from being stable; webOS can easily scale up to a tablet device; capable of making best-in-class hardware needed to showcase webOS and gain market share.
Reasons against:
Already saw how unfinished webOS was in 2009; Android is "free"; resistance to using code "not developed here".
RE: Palm DEADPOOL - taking bets who will buy Palm.
There is no significant value to Palm, INCLUDING webOS.
Free alternatives are available and MUCH more widely accepted.
RE: Palm DEADPOOL - taking bets who will buy Palm.
If Palm's patents have actual value, I could see Apple or Microsoft buying them.
RE: Palm DEADPOOL - taking bets who will buy Palm.
There is no significant value to Palm, INCLUDING webOS.
Free alternatives are available and MUCH more widely accepted."
Wrong. Palm will be sold. Optimal tming would be after its current (disastrous) quarter is announced and stock price heads back south of $2/share.
WebOS is a means of achieving differentiation in a crowded marketplace. If a company comes to market with yet another Android phone, it has little chance of getting attention unless it outfeatures the competition. This is a Zero-Sum game. Android has quickly turned smartphones into commodities. iPhone OS and webOS give manufacturers a way to justify premium pricing, while expanding the potential market.
FJH
- Proud Foleo owner since 2007
RE: Palm DEADPOOL - taking bets who will buy Palm.
Pros?
Cons?
FJH
RE: Palm DEADPOOL - taking bets who will buy Palm.
Samsung? Right. They had to bend to Asus when it came to netbooks. Same for the rest.
Asus dreams. The others don't.
Palm + Asus = perfect fit.
RE: Palm DEADPOOL - taking bets who will buy Palm.
Everyone knows Palm and Palm"s ability to weather storms and develop leading edge solutions.
E-T
e-tellurian
Completing the e-com circle with a people driven we-com solution
WiFi & BT? No strings attached
we_tellurian@canada.com
RE: Palm DEADPOOL - taking bets who will buy Palm.
WTF are you talking about? Other than people doing phones, NO ONE is "heavily Android." They can't afford to be. (Archos is on a doomed path of its own.)
Whatever you might have seen linking Asus to Android was blithe PR. The only thing that matters is what *ships*. webOS can ship where Android cannot.
RE: Palm DEADPOOL - taking bets who will buy Palm.
e-tellurian
Completing the e-com circle with a people driven we-com solution
WiFi & BT? No strings attached
we_tellurian@canada.com
RE: Palm DEADPOOL - taking bets who will buy Palm.
mikecane wrote:
>>>Asus is heavily Android.WTF are you talking about?
http://images.google.com/images?q=asus%20android
RE: Palm DEADPOOL - taking bets who will buy Palm.
RE: Palm DEADPOOL - taking bets who will buy Palm.
Asus WOULD be a good fit in THEORY but it ain't gonna happen. They are in the midst of their own Palm/PalmSource-style "Pegatron" spin-off. I actually could see Acer being a more likely candidate to buy Palm than Asus. They bought (and then brought back from the dead) Gateway and Packard Bell over the past few years, having absorbed TI's laptop biz a few years prior.
FJH;
Of the remaining suitors, I don't see any of the "big" names (Moto, Dell, Google, Nokia et al) buying Palm. To do so would deviate too much from their established plans. I think HTC would LIKE to buy Palm if a sweetheart price offering was available but they don't want to risk bankrupting themselves by biting off more than they can chew. And you bring up some very good points about some of HTC's partners getting spooked if they own their own OS (though Sense is rapidly evolving into a mini OS in its own right!)
Garmin would've been a decent contender if they could've picked up Palm for cheap back in '08 or so and avoid the disasterous Nuvifone. But now they are tied up with Asus. Besdies, the GPS nav biz has become a razor-thin margin (at best) commodity business, Garmin may end up in five years' time being in similar shape to where Palm is now.
I think the contenders right now are Lenovo, Huawei, ZTE or maybe even some darkhorse Asian contender like Foxconn or someone that so desperately wants an immediate North American presence that they will cheerfully overpay . And I would not rule out a purchase by someone like Cisco who, like the bizarre Flip acquisition last year, wants to muscle into the consumer market.
Who are YOU betting on to acquire Palm? Is it the same ****** you predicted two years or so ago?
Pilot 1000->Pilot 5000->PalmPilot Pro->IIIe->Vx->m505->T|T->T|T2->T|C->T|T3->T|T5->Zodiac 2->TX->Verizon Treo 700P->Verizon Treo 755p->Verizon Moto Droid + Verizon Palm Centro
RE: Palm DEADPOOL - taking bets who will buy Palm.
RE: Palm DEADPOOL - taking bets who will buy Palm.
RE: Palm DEADPOOL - taking bets who will buy Palm.
Palm will sell for a premium and i know of know one that will help sell Palm below its true value.
The choices are simple if Palm is too expensive then the development of an offering to compete with Palm, like others have, will have to be the route taken. Others have done well competing with Palm. Palm keeps raising the bar that's good for the industry and more reason why Palm is a premium North American brand worthy of premium value.
Palm will continue to develop new offerings to keep Palm a premium North American brand. North America is not a discount store for innovation. If you want it then you have to pay for it not expect others to help lower the price just to save face or help a totalitarian capitalist dictatorship get assets for nothing.
All the chatter to try and devalue Palm does not seem to be working. More people are investing in Palm more people want Palm. More people want Palm to enhance its value and perhaps to try and keep it an innovative independent North American brand.
Competition is good for Palm and the customer.
Just some thoughts to kick around.
E-T
e-tellurian
Completing the e-com circle with a people driven we-com solution
WiFi & BT? No strings attached
we_tellurian@canada.com
RE: Palm DEADPOOL - taking bets who will buy Palm.
Palm WAS innovative (a decade ago) but have nothing now accept a few palmpilot fanboys with old habits to break
RE: Palm DEADPOOL - taking bets who will buy Palm.
My understanding is China buys North American content and try to control. That is why China want to buy cheap and encourage everyone else to buy cheap. The issue with this type of thinking is it leaves out the quality component of a market place. Some people can afford more than one device and some people want to pay for quality. North America was built on quality not inexpensive. We have been inundated with inexpensive to the point that we do not even consider quality anymore. A Palm Jewel and Palm Classic can continue quality.
North American R&D and marketing is not inexpensive and that seem to be factored out of their value equation. Sure if you do not have to pay for R&D or the marketing costs of branding one can understand why China expects to buy North American innovation at reduced value and some people help China accomplish that.
A lot of content goes into North American innovation. Just as i could know more about China, China should know enough about North America, by now, that they understand our value.
E-T
e-tellurian
Completing the e-com circle with a people driven we-com solution
WiFi & BT? No strings attached
we_tellurian@canada.com
RE: Palm DEADPOOL - taking bets who will buy Palm.
Two that stand out:
So much North American content has left Palm that it is now de-valued
or
The North American content left will hold up the value as the value of North American content is worth that much.
i see the latter. North American content is worth that much.
E-T
e-tellurian
Completing the e-com circle with a people driven we-com solution
WiFi & BT? No strings attached
we_tellurian@canada.com
RE: Palm DEADPOOL - taking bets who will buy Palm.
Fake Jeff Hawkins wrote:
Wrong. Palm will be sold. Optimal tming would be after its current (disastrous) quarter is announced and stock price heads back south of $2/share.WebOS is a means of achieving differentiation in a crowded marketplace. If a company comes to market with yet another Android phone, it has little chance of getting attention unless it outfeatures the competition. This is a Zero-Sum game. Android has quickly turned smartphones into commodities. iPhone OS and webOS give manufacturers a way to justify premium pricing, while expanding the potential market.
I would think that although WebOS could provide differentiation, it comes at a very high cost and a correspondingly very high risk. The risk of jumping on the Android bandwagon is it's quite possible you will end up becoming just another vendor in a low-margin market. The risk of jumping into WebOS is the risk of having to pour money down a hole indefinitely hoping the investment will pay off.
I would think that the cost of acquiring Palm is only the downpayment. After that, you have to update the OS and keep it innovative, or your differentiation is only in being not as good. That sounds hugely risky and expensive to me.
RE: Palm DEADPOOL - taking bets who will buy Palm.
RE: Palm DEADPOOL - taking bets who will buy Palm.
RE: Palm DEADPOOL - taking bets who will buy Palm.
I would think that the cost of acquiring Palm is only the downpayment. After that, you have to update the OS and keep it innovative, or your differentiation is only in being not as good. That sounds hugely risky and expensive to me."
I disagree:
webOS is here. It multitasks. It's scalable. It's functional. It's stable. It's flexible. It's adaptable. It's easy to code for. It's major problems are lack of speed optimization (which will be brute forced into being a moot point as CPU speeds increase - it's reasonably snappy on 800 - 1000 MHz processors) and missing features that Palm ran out of time including in the mad rush to get it to market. Throw 6 more months and another $50 million in development and it's probably the best mobile OS out there along with iPhone OS. That's significant. Mobile phones are becoming people's primary computer these days and whoever can become the dominant OS on cell phones can become the new Microsoft.
Someone wise once said:
"When we started this company in 1992 it was based on a very simple vision: that the future of personal computing would be mobile, that over time more and more of your personal computing needs would be satisfied by a device that fits in your pocket or purse.... We want to make the computer smaller and smaller, and we can do that. We can put more memory in it, we can put more data in it, we can put movies and pictures and so on. So we thought about the future, and we said, well, in the future people are going to have these very powerful portable computers in their pocket.
....We believe [webOS] is really a beginning of a whole new wave of finally and truly making the mobile device that's in your pocket your primary PC."
FJH
The man behind the Foleo. The Legend.
RE: Palm DEADPOOL - taking bets who will buy Palm.
"e_tellurian, I dispute that America is a TRUE democracy. It's a word that's been thrown around too much and has become a cliche. You'll realise that it's all smoke and mirrors if you really are an individual with independent thinking."
Those that work for companies that answer to a totalitarian capitalist dictatorship would agree with you. Independent thinkers do as they agree not as they are told.
"China being a developing country has comparative advantage in cost of production (no it's not due to the abuse of the lowly paid.) It's not that they don't understand value."
China is no longer a developing nation they are developed. To call China developing that is smoke and mirrors. How does a developing nation become the third biggest economy in the world? Trillions of foreign aid has gone to China for their developing infrastructure yet that capital is used to enhance their military and to buy advanced technology. China is able to compete with the world they are no longer developing they are developed. They do not understand democracy and perhaps as a consequence do not understand North American value.
"The fact the US buys from China (a lot of the imports are actually produced by American FDIs) establishes the fact that they do produce goods of high value. Why else would people continue buying them?"
They buy them because they are convinced that people want inexpensive products that lack North American content which is why China wants to buy North American content. They buy our high value goods cheap and we buy their good cheap. It a trade relationship that is not sustainable for North America. Democracy is not cheap it is a very advanced and free flowing environment completely different from a totalitarian capitalist dictatorship.
"When it come to value, it is not the absolute/total value of a product but rather its price/quality ratio... In fact, if you look at the development of Japan and S. Korea, they both went on the same path. Cheap crappy products to start with then moving on to more quality conscious/less-price sensitive exports once export markets are well established. It's the best/only marketing strategy for all new entrants whether you are talking about a product, a firm or a country."
The less we pay the less we have to make philosophy does not work. The less we make the less taxes we pay. Housing does not get less expensive it has gotten more expensive and has driven out North American content as a consequence of the less we pay the less we need to make philosophy.
North America works as a democracy not a totalitarian capitalist dictatorship. We have devalued our region to compete with China. China makes a profit every six months a democracy is too advanced to compete unless we devalue and become a totalitarian capitalist dictatorship.
Just some thoughts to kick around.
E-T
e-tellurian
Completing the e-com circle with a people driven we-com solution
WiFi & BT? No strings attached
we_tellurian@canada.com
RE: Palm DEADPOOL - taking bets who will buy Palm.
You rebel you. It matters not whether you agree with me... it is what is... agreeing has nothing to do with it.
And surely you understand that you shouldn't look at the total GDP as a measurement of development but GDP per capita!? There's a billion people there.
"A democracy is to advanced to compete"
ermmm... yeah whatever mate.
RE: Palm DEADPOOL - taking bets who will buy Palm.
"You rebel you. It matters not whether you agree with me... it is what is... agreeing has nothing to do with it."- Jayy
With out consensus one is dead in the water that is democracy it is about the will of the people. The politicians listens to the people. The people pay politicians salaries to listen. In a totalitarian capitalist dictatorship the people have little freedom of speech. Like you said "agreeing has nothing to do with it" that's the mentality of a totalitarian capitalist dictatorship. Agreeing takes time and and that time is expensive but necessary to assure we do what is best for the people.-E-T
"And surely you understand that you shouldn't look at the total GDP as a measurement of development but GDP per capita!? There's a billion people there."- Jayyy
Look what happened to Google. Their North American business model can not work in China. Yet China's business model is allowed to function unhindered in North America that is democracy that my friend is serious value. - E-T
"A democracy is to advanced to compete"- E-T
ermmm... yeah whatever mate.- Jayy
Well we can agree to disagree. - E-T
That was a nice discussion thanks for your thoughts.
E-T
e-tellurian
Completing the e-com circle with a people driven we-com solution
WiFi & BT? No strings attached
we_tellurian@canada.com
Will Elevation Partners choose the NUCLEAR option?
Will Elevation Partners choose the NUCLEAR option? EP now owns about 1/3 of Palm and essentially controls the Board. Are they BOLD enough to force a semi-hostile takeover of the remaining shares at a discounted rate? For EP to go "all in" they would have to bend the stockkholders over and threaten a "take it or leave it" offer that if refused may leave shareholders with nothing if/when Palm reaches pennystock levels. Then, to complete the end game EP-run Palm would release a couple of perfectly-specced, well-built smartphones to all carriers and sit back and watch their sales skyrocket.
After Bono, Rubes and the boys cash in a few hundred million profit it's time for curtain calls: Bobby Fischer emerges from behind the curtains arm in arm with Jeff, Donna, Ed, Carl, Eric, David and the two craven "bottoms" that Ed is touching here: http://blog.palm.com/.shared/image.html?/photos/uncategorized/2007/10/01/img_00181.jpg all wearing gold threaded Yankowski suits. They all take a bow and exit stage left, giggling like giddy schoolgirls, throwing (used?) condoms and packets of lube to the stockholders. The stockholders have been played and played well. The first time hurts the most...
RE: Will Elevation Partners choose the NUCLEAR option?
Popcorn, Crackerjacks, peanutssssss here! Who wants some fresh roasted peanutsssssssss!
RE: Will Elevation Partners choose the NUCLEAR option?
Palm has weathered many storms. A Palm Jewel and Palm Classic would bring the best of Palm's past, present and future together to continue the tradition of North American innovation excellence. "Together we stand divided we fall" - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_we_stand,_divided_we_fall
Can those hurt by Palm forgive Palm?
E-T
e-tellurian
Completing the e-com circle with a people driven we-com solution
WiFi & BT? No strings attached
we_tellurian@canada.com
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