Motley Fool Money - Motley Fool Money: 01.27.2012
Episode Date: January 27, 2012The GDP grows at a 2.8% clip for the 4th quarter. President Obama announces new energy initiatives. Apple reports huge earnings. And JC Penney undergoes a big makeover. Our analysts discuss thos...e stories and share a few stocks on their radar. Plus, we talk with Alex Goldfayn, author of Evangelist Marketing: What Apple, Amazon, and Netflix Understand About Their Customers (That Your Company Probably Doesn't). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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From Fool Global Headquarters, this is Motley Fool Money.
Welcome to Motley Full Money. Thanks for being here. I'm your host, Chris Hill,
and joining me in studio this week from Motley Fool Pro, Jeff Fisher, for Motley Full Income Investor, James Early,
and for a million-dollar portfolio, Ron Gross. Gentlemen, good to see you as always.
Good to see you, Chris. We have got earnings from Apple, Netflix, 3M, and more. We will look at Taco
Bell's foray into the breakfast market. And as always, we've got a few stocks on our radar,
but we begin with the big macro. On Friday, the government reported the economy grew at an annual
rate of 2.8 percent in the fourth quarter. Ron Gross, that is the fastest pace in more than
a year and a half, but it was below expectations.
That is true. Chris, I'm just happy to see it up. Positive territory is good. The expectations
game is a difficult one to play. Look, companies were rebuilding inventories. That was really
why this number looked pretty robust, although, as you said, lower than expectations. That's
probably not going to repeat, because inventories are now built up. So we might see a pullback,
which we have to expect. But consumer spending was good. I like that. Inflation seems no sign
of increasing. That's good. So all in all, a pretty good report.
All right. Let's move on to President Obama. During Tuesday's State of the Union address,
he outlined plans for the energy industry. And on Thursday, he announced the sale of oil and
gas drilling leases for around 38 million acres in the Gulf Coast. And James, he also promoted
the completion of a highway for vehicles that run on liquefied natural gas. There is a lot there
in the energy industry. What's your takeaway from the highway? The highway sounds good because
there'd probably only be like two cars on that road. Obama is very bullish on natural gas,
which is wonderful because as great as renewables are, they're just not likely to be a major
power source in our lifetime or maybe even our children's. But a shift to natural gas is a long
long-term thing. It's not in terms of investing, it's not necessarily going to drive these stock
prices up immediately. The near-term issue is more of, we still have this gas oversupply, actually,
that we have to deal with. Ron, obviously a lot for the energy industry, whether it's oil,
natural gas. Is there an energy stock that, you know, when you think about everything President
Obama's talked about this week, is there an energy stock that's on your radar as a result?
A company that I've spoken about recently as one of my radar, maybe even last week or the week before,
is range resources, ticker symbol RRC, a low-cost provider of natural gas operating in the Appalachian, southwest areas of the U.S.
It could be really interesting.
Has been very volatile list last week.
It has had more than one or two days of up or down 5%, 6%.
So I've got to dig in there, but it could be an interesting play.
James, what about the?
I like Spectra.
The ticker there is SC.
It does have some exploration.
It has a lot of transportation, gathering, processing, distribution.
Basically, it's a full spectrum natural gas company.
And I think that's prudent right now because the drillers often are mandated to keep drilling no matter what the price is.
So that's why you're not seeing the drillers just all pull back and let the price go up because they have these leases that make them drill.
So I think we're going to see low prices for a while, so it's a good time to be in the midstream space here.
Jeff?
So Obama said he's going to open up some 75% of offshore for drilling.
I like Bristow Group. BRS is the ticker. They own about 500 helicopters.
And what they do is bring the...
It's a helicopter place.
It's cool. Yeah, they bring the crews out to the oil rigs and back.
So it's a very stable recurring business where they sign two to five-year contracts for revenue,
and they get paid whether they fly or not.
So BRS, interesting stock, especially around 40. It's in the high 40s right now.
Also, in the big macro, the Fed this week said it expects to keep interest rates, quote,
exceptionally low until late 2014, at least.
Ron, two things. One, what does that mean for investors? And two, is it just me or is that
a pretty long time frame? I mean, to basically project out for two and a half years, we're
going to keep these rates exceptionally low. What does that say to you?
A, it's a long time frame, yes. He reserves the right to probably adjust his estimate.
But what it says to me is that the Fed is concerned about our economy.
Things are not strong.
They need to keep rates low.
Typically, that would be good for stocks.
But if economic growth is anemic, we have to make sure we build those slow growth rates into our valuation models.
James?
I'm going to come out and say this is kind of ridiculous.
This is the cart leading the horse here.
The Fed is supposed to be reacting to the economy and helping sort of to guide it not to make some declaration of what's going to do for years in advance.
regardless of whether that action is still necessary.
I mean, why not announce you're going to do it to 2017 or 2020?
How do they know 2014? They don't. They're just making it up.
Yeah, I agree with James. And there was some dissent within the Fed.
Not everyone agreed to this statement this time for that very reason.
Why are you saying what you're going to do for almost three years
when no one really knows what's going to happen in that time?
And I don't see how supply and demand, just the way markets function actually this will work.
I mean, sometime in 2013, market forces would dictate that interest rates would start to rise
in advance of when the Fed says they will, just by people naturally buying and selling an
anticipation of that rise. So I don't really see how it works in reality.
Right. And that may be why they moved it back to 2014 to keep it from rising sooner.
Could be.
Keep rates from rising.
You can keep pushing it down the road.
A lot of earnings to get to this week. We are going to start with Apple. Obviously, a
a huge quarter. We've all seen the media reports. Just a few of the record numbers. Revenue
of 46 billion, profit of 13 billion. Apple sold more than 37 million iPhones, 15 million
iPads, 5 million max. Apple now has 97 billion in cash. Jeff Fisher, what are they going
to do with that?
What a problem to have. Okay, this is like Warren Buffett's problem. He has so much cash,
and he doesn't know what to buy with it. He has to buy only very large companies.
Now, Buffett has the benefit. He can buy a railroad or he can buy a candy maker or a shoemaker.
Apple, the most successful tech company in the world and the most profitable, has to buy something complementary to its business, obviously.
What do you buy when you own your operating system? You have detailed, say, in everything you produce.
You don't want to let other products interfere with what you produce.
What do you buy to complement such a strong business already?
Do you have an idea?
Well, I think that they have a tiger by the tail, obviously.
Apple TV is still a rumor, but very likely.
And once you have Apple TV, you're locking up all these multimedia, TV, video, audio, music, everything but e-books.
But that's a young niche still.
So what I would do with some of that cash is start to squeeze out Netflix and Amazon and start to buy,
sign multimedia deals to get movies, to get shows that these other companies are,
don't have the money. Netflix does not have the money to buy these things. So not so much spending it on an
acquisition, but more along the lines of just massive content deals? Yeah, I guess on IP in a way or content.
James, what would you do with the cash? I do like the idea of, well, first of all, I'm a dividend guy, so I would pay it out. I would pay $104 special dividend per share.
I'll take it. That's how big they could make this special dividend. That's just massive. But barring that, if they insisted on redeploying, I do like the idea of sort of becoming the iTunes for videos.
except that the video, the movie industry economics is not as good as the music industry economics.
So I would expect that these deals are going to be too expensive.
It wouldn't be a space I would want to compete in myself if I were in Tim Cook's shoes.
One thing I think investors need to just be aware of is that a lot of the cash is overseas.
So for Apple to repatriate that would require them to pay a hefty tax on it.
So for those running valuation models or counting that cash dollar for dollar,
wouldn't necessarily do that. You've got to take a haircut to that cash.
Good point. Ron, when you look at shares of Apple, do you think they are fairly valued? Do
you think they're overvalued? I mean, they had this record monster quarter. And the stock,
you know, there are people out there who say, wow, this stock is a real value. The stock
really only moved about five or six percent up on the news. I would think if it was really
such a steal and they had that blow a quarter, it would have shot up even more.
Well, we own Apple and MDP. We owned it about 380. Up until this latest release, we thought
it was worth about $500.
I would say that these results kind of make us revisit that valuation model, and we're in
the process of doing that now.
So I don't know where we'll end up.
It certainly won't be below the 500.
So it is not overvalued at this point, and in fact, it is most likely undervalued.
Are you a Mac user yourself at home?
We have Macs, iPads, iPhones, and one PC to do some things that Max just can't seem to do.
I agree with Ron.
It looks undervalued, and part of the reason I think.
think, we all know, is the product cycle in electronics is so quick and so vicious that if
they don't hit a home run every year or two, they could stumble. That said, if they do start
a dividend, that could help. That sends a signal to the market. We think our cash flow is
stable, strong, going to keep growing. Whereas without a dividend, they're kind of playing by
the market's rules of where this tech company that's always on the edge.
And it will create this artificial, for lack of a better word, demand from dividend investors
who only buy stocks that have dividends. They'll come rushing in the market.
to the market and create demand for the stock.
Counterbalance by the tech people, though, who will get out.
Who will get out of the stock?
Coming up, it was a huge week for one struggling retailer, but can they keep the momentum?
More after this. You're listening to Motley Full Money.
Welcome back to Motley Full Money. Chris Hill here in the studio with Jeff Fisher, James
Early, and Ron Gross. Guys, more earnings, better than expected earnings for two of the
big Dow stocks. 3M's quarterly profits up 3%. Caterpillar's quarterly profits up 60%.
James, these are also two dividend players.
What do you make of the results?
It's interesting, Chris.
There have always been must-have products.
Elmo Power Rangers.
Recently, heavy equipment seems to be the must-have product.
Caterpillar is just killing it.
It's just amazing.
People just couldn't wait any longer to buy heavy machinery.
Double-digit volume growth.
What is interesting to me is that the U.S. actually did pretty well.
China did not do quite as well in terms of Caterpillar sales.
They are very bullish in their outlooks.
But you would just think that people wouldn't be shelling out big money for this, but they are.
which is great. Ron 3M, what do you think?
Yeah, 3M looks good. They strengthen their industrial and transportation segments.
The display and graphics business continues to struggle.
One thing the market doesn't like is that they haven't put a succession plan in place for the CEO whose retirement is imminent,
and that uncertainty is creating some frustration among investors.
But the company seems to be doing a lot.
That whole plan seems scotch-staped together, if you ask me.
I got to say the one thing I loved about Caterpillar's results, and I'm going to read it, so I don't get it wrong, is they said
They believe global recession can be avoided and they expect the threat of recession in Europe
to ease by the middle of the year.
So people that are worried out there, Caterpillar is seeing something else.
We talked on last week's show about Intel's earnings and IBM's earnings talk that those are
two companies that can be seen as bellwether's.
Caterpillar and 3M doing well, does that generally bode well for the US economy?
You think, Ron?
It does.
3M is definitely an industrial bellwether and cataplellan.
Pillar, my gosh, you know, in terms of industrial production, yeah.
Shares of Netflix up more than 20% on Thursday after the company's latest earnings,
more than 600,000 US subscribers added last quarter.
Jeff, is Netflix back?
Well, it was a step in the right direction, but they still have a long way to go.
The good news is they added 600,000 subscribers, and they're back to above 24 million again.
Plus, they've made some great content deals, like bringing arrested development back to
life in 2013, but these deals are expensive and they're expected to still lose money all
year. And my concern is in the years to follow, they'll become less relevant.
Why do you say that?
Why? Because like AOL back in the day, they are now competing with the internet,
bit by bit. There's no reason you cannot surf the internet for the media you want. And
the content producers, NBC, those are, they all house it on their own sites because they can
then run advertising too. There's no reason most content producers are not going to set up
own stations as you will and you can aggregate them all online however you want but
the point being you don't need a single host like Netflix in the long run is my is my
concern clearly they at least for now have a first mover advantage and have a nice
subscriber base and there are multiple multiple recommendations in in Motley Fool services
and continue to like it very much but there's a lot of competition we're at the
very infancy of the streaming business here earlier this week google announced it is
changing its privacy policy. Starting March 1st, Google will track users across almost all of its
sites, including YouTube, Gmail, and its search engine. Consumers will not be able to opt out.
So, Ron, privacy concerns aside, what does this mean for Google's business?
Well, I think it's probably good for the business, since they can, you know, obviously
target more specifically to everyone's personal tastes. I know people are afraid of Big Brother,
if you will, and don't like being tracked. It's not that much different than, you know,
what's going on now. It's just multiple, across multiple Google services. And, you know, they
still will not sell your personal data to third parties. You know, your information stays within
Google. It might be annoying, but it's annoying now. I mean, I don't. I Google wrong grows before
the show, but there are a lot of you. There are a lot. It's the future. I don't think we can avoid
it. I mean, we can kick it down the road, but the internet is what it is, and our personal
information is not so personal anymore. Shares of Google basically flat over the last two years.
Is this move, I mean, this is a company that you own and you know well, do you look at this
move and think, okay, this is actually going to benefit the stock price?
I don't think this specifically will benefit the stock price. No. The stock's been smacked
around the latest week or so after earnings. People concerned about the cost per click
or a number coming down, even though their paid clicks was up nicely over 30 percent.
And they're spending a lot of money right now for the future, and that has some people a little bit worried.
A million-dollar portfolio, we're willing to give them the benefit of the doubt and say that that spending will be put to good use and will show up in cash flow down the road.
Big changes afoot at JCPenney.
New CEO, Ron Johnson, formerly of Apple, wants to simplify pricing and make it more predictable.
So J.C. Penny is cutting prices permanently.
What do we think? Is this a good strategy?
of J.C. Penny were up big
this week, partly
I think because of that, partly because they
raised their guidance for the year. What do you
think, James? Really, what do you do if you're J.C. Penny?
I mean, the name isn't that cool. The concept
might be a little bit outdated, but, no,
there's still value there. And
so what you want to do is maybe not
invest a ton of money, but try to make the business as
cool as possible. I like this idea.
I think it's innovative. I think
it does bring a little bit of that sort of Apple
thinking in, in terms of
not having a lot of price changes. So,
I think this is a good move.
Jeff, what do you think?
It'll be much more efficient, too.
Last year, they had more than 500 sales over the 12 months.
So they are cranking out a lot of pamphlets, a lot of news.
This is much more efficient.
But they are trying to change their mindchair with the consumer, where they were a place where we have semi-quality, semi-quality products at these.
I like that you're struggling to be polite.
I'm sure they love that categorization.
But look, they're 40% off now.
rush in, you know, it was forced urgency.
And now the mine share is going to be, we're cheap all the time.
And so you compete with other things like Target or Coles.
I was going to say, because Coles and Macy's have really taken market share from JCPenney over the last few years.
If you're them, you're probably a little worried about this.
I applaud Ron Johnson's boldness.
This is not kind of, you know, I'm going to come in and keep things as they were.
He's making a big bet.
And who am I to really second guess, his expertise?
in this area. It looks
like he's got a nice plan.
Some of the details are a little wacky, like the
town center plan in the middle
of the store where people will gather
and congregate and he'll give away free hot dogs
and haircuts. Go hang out of JCPinney's.
You got every Friday, there's
a special sale, too, every other Friday on
paycheck day, so you can come in and spend your paycheck.
That's actually interesting.
I like some of the treasure hunt concepts
that Costco is famous for
being brought in. The town center
specifically, it sounds a little wacky to me.
Sales per year is more than one.
It's one and a half a day or something like that.
That's crazy.
They were done before.
And finally, on Thursday, Taco Bell introduced a breakfast menu at nearly 800 locations.
If all goes well, breakfast burritos and hash browns will be available at 5,600 nationwide
by 2014.
Good move, Ron?
I like it.
It makes sense.
Who doesn't love a rap, which is basically a burrito?
It's a perfect breakfast food.
They're teaming up with Cinnabon.
Tropicana.
It's a relatively inexpensive product.
You know, go in for a buck, 52 bucks, get breakfast.
I like it.
What is worth, a lot of the big breakfast story is international growth
because the rest of the world doesn't necessarily have American breakfast consumption habits yet.
But if these food companies can push these offerings, I think Young Brands is experimenting in China as well.
That could be big business.
All right, Jeff Fisher, James Early, Ron Gross, guys.
We'll see you a little bit later in the program.
You know, you can always drop us an email.
Radio at Fool.com.
Ask us questions.
weigh in on anything we've talked about this week, just drop us a note. That's radio at fool.com.
Big consumer tech companies spend a lot of time in money marketing their products,
so why are most of them so bad at it? Our guest this week has some thoughts on what the best
tech companies can teach the rest of the tech companies. Stay right here. You're listening to Motley Fool Money.
Welcome back to Motley Fool Money. I'm Chris Hill. The iPhone has it, the Kindle has it,
and Netflix streaming has it. The it is consumer evangelist. But our guest this week says that
these are the exceptions and that most tech companies succeed in spite of their marketing,
not because of it. Alex Goldfane is the author of Evangelist Marketing, what Apple, Amazon, and
Netflix understand about their customers that your company probably doesn't. Alex, welcome to Motley
Full Money. Thank you for having me. I want to talk about these companies and some of the
other individual companies that you write about in your book. But I want to start with sort of more
of a big picture because I said, you know, you're saying that there are companies out there
in the tech world that are succeeding in spite of their marketing. When you look at companies like
Microsoft, Dell, AT&T, Hewlett-Packard, what is the problem? What is the problem with their
marketing? They're leaving billions on the table. Problem with the market. Conference room.
think will be interesting to consumers. But what they haven't done is actually we had a one-on-one
qualitatively, which I write about in the book, to understand what language and messaging
fitting out there is, you know, long model numbers, complicated messages, relations is horrendous.
It's really upside down and backward. Exceeding based wide range of their distribution.
And on these two fatology, like rather well. Well, and one of the early surprises in the book for me,
think about companies like Apple and Netflix, I associate them with people who are sort of on the
cutting edge of technology, the early adopters, that sort of thing. But one of the things you
establish early on in the book is that evangelists are, when you're talking about evangelists,
you're talking about mainstream consumers. These are just everyday people.
Mom and dad is that. And I don't think it's a casual mainstream consumers are on different.
with mom and dad, don't even start with them.
Because if you do, you master habits and language and communication.
Let's dig into the first company, and that's Apple.
Obviously, earlier this week, Apple had record quarter in terms of the number of iPhones they're selling in terms of their profits.
What is the secret to Apple's marketing?
unbelievably good. An unparalleled instinct that was corporate because it started with Steve Jobs. It was company-wide. They had an unparalleled instinct to understand precisely what would make consumers go crazy, what marketing and what product features would make consumers wildly excited and passionate.
So when you look at the competitive landscape for Apple, it's clear from your answer that you don't see any legitimate competitors in terms of some of the products that they are churning out.
But one of the other things you hit on in the book is that, you know,
essentially the notion that there are no annuities when it comes to tech companies and their success.
So all that being said, what do you think is Apple's biggest challenge over the next year or two?
iPhone was made.
Then you wouldn't want to have it.
You wouldn't want to be putting it.
I'm guessing this is not a unique phone posing a challenge, but they're so splintered.
You could look at other tablets coming up.
Yeah, they'll push out.
10 to 20 companies.
It's going to be these manufacturing issues.
Probably, you know, I think they're going to motivate anti-Apple people.
And there's a lot of those people, people who simply don't like Apple because people who are Windows people.
Do you think that that issue is going to resonate with a high enough percentage of mainstream consumers to make a meaningful impact on Apple's bottom line?
Are evangelists.
You have evangelists.
They're also forgiving so that if you make a mistake,
they're going to assume it was relatively innocent and that you didn't mean it,
and they're going to give you a chance to make it better.
And if you need an example of this, look at Apple's Antenegate,
you know, about a year ago or so, a year and a half ago,
and not have the call drop out, you know?
That's a problem.
Yeah, it's a small problem.
People, fans were really angry.
And Steve Jobs came out on me and said, look,
we're going to figure 24 hours it was gone from the news.
I don't think they're going to lose customers,
because they have evangelists,
And this is exactly why you want evangelists.
You want to do everything you can.
For this very reason, to develop as many evangelists as possible because they're trusting and forgiving.
And the best of all, they are hyper-repeat customers.
Coming up, more with Alex Goldfein as we try to fix Microsoft and play a round of buy, sell or hold.
You're listening to Motley Full Money.
You're listening to Motley Full Money talking with Alex Goldfane, author of the new book,
evangelist marketing, what Apple, Amazon, and Netflix understand about their customers that your company probably doesn't.
Let's move on to a company that's not on the cover of your book, and that's Microsoft.
Microsoft does have some good products. Windows Phone 7's gotten some positive reviews.
When you hear people talking about when you read reviews of Xbox and the Connect gaming system,
I mean, it's really powerhouse stuff. And yet, there is not that buzz. There does not seem
to be the type of evangelist marketing going on with Microsoft. Why is that and what
is Microsoft need to do to get it? I'm a firm believer. Apple has but and you saw
what Apple stock has done and what their unbelievable earnings were. Microsoft, feelings
about Microsoft between zero and below. I believe that consumer energy translates directly
into Microsoft
simply isn't a good market.
And that begins with the C.
These are engineers.
These are people who
like to create product development.
And for Microsoft,
they've got some really good products
that nobody gets really excited about
because they don't market them.
They're just not good.
I'm a long-time Microsoft shareholder.
When I look at Microsoft,
saying to our producer,
Mac Greer the other day,
that I look at Microsoft
as a dad of teenagers who desperately wants to be cool.
That the teenage kids are just like,
Dad, you're not cool.
And his response is, no, no, no, I'm really cool.
And it's like, first of all, no, you're not cool.
Second of all, your teenagers don't actually need or want you to be cool.
They want you to drive them places.
They want you to, you know, be their wallet.
I mean, does Microsoft, when it comes to their marketing,
do they just need to essentially,
stop trying to be cool, to stop trying to compete with Apple on the cool level?
The consumer, and then they need to start talking. It was widely known. Simply disagreed on who
the customer was. One thought the customer was the business. If you don't know who the customer
is, how are you going to market? You can't. It's impossible. So for Microsoft, first of all,
they need to decide who the customer is. Then they need to go have qualitative conversations
with as many of them as they can. And they need to understand what these people think about
Microsoft, what they love about Microsoft, and how these Microsoft products improve their lives.
You need to get the language of your custom marketing language you can have. You know that's
going to be compelling because it comes from your market. And if it comes from your market,
you simply take it, you slightly repackage it, and then you unleash it back onto your market.
As we said in the beginning of this conversation, if you're not talking to your customers,
your marketing language there, you're simply guessing from a conference room.
When you look at Microsoft's recent campaign, I'm a PC, do you think that is a step in the right direction?
This launched, I believe, in 2010.
They need them nerdy and unnecessarily sort of engineering focused.
And then you don't see the ads for six months, and then suddenly they appear again.
And compare that to apps for years, over and over again.
All right, we will wrap up with a round of buy, seller hold.
Let's start with this one.
they were the hot product at this year's Consumer Electronics Show, Buy, Seller Hold, Ultra
Books.
I would probably hold...
This is someone who is known for his prodigious self-marketing, Buy Seller Hold Donald Trump.
Party that he represents.
And finally, Buy Seller Hold 3D television.
Sell. Not going to catch on.
Really?
Not going to happen.
Because I can buy a 51-inch TV for...
for $499.
A 51-inch 3D TV costs three.
Not only that, nobody wants to wear them.
What about all the people who I wear glasses, right?
Real glasses.
What am I going to do with those glasses?
And there just isn't enough content.
Revenue is three months for itself.
Majority of major...
The book is Evangelist Marketing
what Apple, Amazon, and Netflix
understand about their customers
that your company probably doesn't.
Alex Goldfame, thank you so much for being here.
Thank you so much for having me.
I really appreciate it.
As always, people on the...
program may have interest in the stocks they talk about, and the Motley pool may have formal
recommendations for or against. So don't buy or sell stocks based solely on what you hear.
Joining me once again in the studio, Jeff Fisher, James Early, and Ron Gross.
Guys, it is that time again. Time for the Stock Center on our radar. We'll bring in our man,
Steve Broido from the other side of the glass to hit you with a question. Ron Gross,
you're up first. Chris, I'm going to circle back around to a stock that I've always wanted to
own, but never have, and that's Johnson and Johnson, ticker J&J. The valuation really was
just never where I needed it to be. But the company is a market leader. It's one of only four
companies that still has a triple A credit rating, a 3.5% dividend yield. It's both a core stock
and the best by now over our inside value service. So I'm going to circle back around.
Steve?
Sure. My question is, what is Johnson and Johnson? I know they make a ton of different things,
but have I had to describe in one sentence. Johnson Johnson is what?
Healthcare-related consumer products. Is that fair?
Does that work for you, Steve?
I think so. I know that I'm sure they make a ton of stuff.
James Early?
Chris, I looked at Penn, Virginia.
The ticker is PVR.
It's a coal and midstream natural gas partnership, 7.5% yield, just a six of its revenue from coal.
But coal makes three times the profit of gas.
But I wouldn't touch this company, this partnership, because it leases property for coal mining done via mountaintop removal,
which is kind of a really nasty thing if you're into socially responsible investing.
You clear-cut, then you blast them out on top apart and all these mercury and sulfur compounds.
leak into the water.
So that's when I would avoid arch coal, peabody coal, or some others along these lines, too.
Steve?
My question is, well, my son live in a world without coal.
Coal is about half our electricity now.
It comes from coal.
So I would say not likely, in a global sense, you know, maybe in 50 years we can phase out.
He's three months old, so, you know, he's got a while ago.
I hope, I hope he does.
Jeff Fisher.
CA Technologies, the ticker is CA.
This week, they increased their dividend five-fold from 20 cents to $1.
So these shares now yield 4%.
And they trade it nine times very steady, strong free cash flow.
And it is a information technology software company.
Steve?
Who's its biggest competitor?
I'd put BMC software up there and Oracle as well.
A lot of initials here, BMC, CA.
I like companies.
Does that make you scared?
Does that worry you?
It does a little bit.
I don't know how to distinguish them.
They have a mildly tainted past, right?
That's part of the value play.
Wait, what was that, James?
The C.A. has like a mildly tainted past.
I think that's part of the value play.
Mildly tainted.
Don't we all?
So true.
All right, Jeff Fisher, James Early, Ron Gross.
Guys, thanks for being here.
Thanks, Chris.
Thank you.
Thank you to our special guests this week.
Alex Goldfane.
For video highlights, you can go to fooltiv.com.
You can also check out Market Foolery, our daily podcast.
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You can check it out on iTunes and online at MarketFoeffey.
fullery.com. That's it for this edition of Motley Full Money. Our engineer is Steve Broido. Our
producer is Mac Greer. I'm Chris Hill. Thanks for listening. We'll see you next week.
