I’ve been pondering the validity of these frequent “town hall” meetings President Obama has been holding for some time.  They’ve effectively become (or maybe they always were) an invitation to a select few, on in the most recent case, thoroughly filtered questions submitted by email, that toss up softball questions for the President to knock out of the park.

Well, it seems the media is catching on, and it’s not just the Fox News folks that are starting to question the transparency of the big show.

Even Helen Thomas got riled up over this…

Check it out.

Category: Politics Tags: Barack Obama, media, Robert Gibbs

Yesterday the Minnesota Supreme Court finally declared Al Franken the winner of the Minnesota Senate seat over incumbent Norm Coleman.

While its frustrating to me to watch a character like Al Franken be elected to the Senate to take a seat next to all the other clowns we already have in Washington (both Republican and Democrat), the drama that’s played out over the last several months reveals one thing to me.

The system we have in place to cast and count votes is broken!

And I don’t just say this because Franken won.

As the voting public, we have this inherent expectation that when we vote, the votes will be counted accurately and the winner will be declared with a high amount of certainty.  Ideally, a recount of the votes would return the exact same results as the initial count, and it’s clear that this doesn’t happen.  Remember, Coleman was declared the winner of a tight race until Franken legitimately demanded a recount that resulted in a very different outcome.

In an age where I can order merchandise over a secure website, access my bank account from anywhere in the world with a feeling of security, it bothers me that many places in our country are still using paper ballots to cast votes and human beings to count them.

In the end, I think Minnesota got the Senate representative they deserve, and maybe Franken will step in and shed some light on how comedic and corrupt our government is.

The only thing we can do now is watch the fallout and hope that technology will lend a hand in our political system.

Category: Politics Tags: Al Franken, Norm Coleman, Senate, voting

I wrote a few days ago about CREE (CREE: chart, web, Y!), a company that makes LED lighting components, including the lights themselves.

I feel that LED lights aren’t too far away from replacing incandescent and mercury containing CFL bulbs, and that products are already showing up on local store shelves, although prices have yet to come in at an economic range.

I’ve been perusing the companies 2008 annual report over the last couple days, and studied the financial numbers from the last several years.

Annual Revenue

As of the end of June, 2008, total revenues were on the rise to a level just shy of $500 million, with a 33.6% gross margin on revenues.

LED products (LED chips, components and lighting solutions) made up a total of 84% of total revenues, materials (SiC wafers, etc) made up just under 6% and power and RF products (power and RF switches) made up 4%.  The rest of the revenues came in the form of contracts with government agencies.

At the end of FY08, the company had $371 million in cash and marketable securities on hand and $408 million in working capital.

Diluted incomer per share was $0.36 at the end of FY08, which was down considerably from previous years, the high of which came in 2005 at $1.38 per share.

The company continued its streak of zero debt, a statistic maintained since as far back as 2004 or earlier.

The Most Recent Quarter

Naturally a lot has changed since the end of FY08 (nearly a year ago) and a FY09 report is due out in the next few months.

For Q3 ‘09, revenues of $131 million were 5% higher than the same quarter of 2008, but not surprisingly, down 11% compared to Q2 ‘09.

Operating cash flow for the third quarter came in at $49.9 million and the company generated $40.5 million of free cash flow.

The company built upon its cash reserves, increasing cash and investments to $404.9 million, and has maintained zero debt through the third quarter of fiscal 2009.

Recent News

On May 26th of this year, CREE announced that they are raising their financial targets for the fourth quarter of 2009, which is a pleasant headline to be reading in this economic environment.

The company says that the increase in targets is due to stronger LED component bookings for lighting-related applications such as laptops, displays, etc.

The company forecasts LED product sales to continue to grow into FY 2010 and will continue to spend money on R&D to make that forecast come true.

Corner Office Comments

I am more intrigued with this company the more I read.  The financial numbers look strong, and revenues have been maintained at healthy levels even in a down economy.  This could be a function of the company offering products that equate to energy savings with long product life cycles, making their products attractive to cities and municipalities (among other entities) trying to cut operating expenses when budgets are shrinking.

The zero debt is a major selling point, and the fact that the company has over $400 million in cash to work with makes the deal even sweeter.

I think this is a strong company with a promising product line.  They already market their LR6 downlight product that will replace 65 Watt flood-type recessed lights in your everyday residential application, and I suspect a replacement for traditional round incandescent bulbs is right around the corner.

I see prices coming down as LED lights gain traction in the market (LED’s have already replaced filament type Christmas lights) and CREE should be well positioned to take advantage of the next big technology shift in such a widely used market as home and business lighting applications.

The stock price has been fluctuating for the last several months, but the trend has been overwhelming positive since the beginning of 2009.

I’ll start buying some shares on the next downswing and I think the long term prospects for the stock is very promising.

Category: Investing, Stock Thoughts, Technology Tags: CREE, LED, LED lighting, Technology