Wednesday, October 31, 2018

IBM to buy Redhat.

An interesting deal.  IBM has a strong presence in this area, and of course Redhat is a Raleigh based company.   Details of the deal are here: https://www.marketplace.org/2018/10/29/business/ibm-bets-34-billion-cloud-computing-red-hat-purchase.

A back of the envelope analysis suggests that there's about $7bn in merger gains.


GE cuts dividends

Dividend cuts are quite rare and even rarer for a stallwart stock like GE.  But yesterday, GE cut it's dividend to a penny a share.

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/10/30/general-electric-earnings-q3-2018.html

There wasn't much of a price reaction, the stock had been on a downward trend, but the dividend cut certainly didn't help.


A dividend cut signaled that GE is struggling, but I don't think that was news to anyone.  Even an analyst upgrade didn't help the stock price.
https://www.barrons.com/articles/ge-has-problems-but-analyst-sees-upside-for-the-stock-1540998708

A lower dividend payout means that the company can retain more cash and invest in growth, but as basic finance theory would state, dividend policy should be largely irrelevant in firm value.


What's going on with inflation?

I recently posted an article on the Poole College Thought Leadership page titled: " What's going on with inflation?" .  This w...