Injunction against Life Technologies Upheld By Court

Celsis In Vitro Inc today revealed that the Court of Appeals of the United States acting in behalf of the Federal Circuit in Washington DC has upheld a preliminary injunction against Life Technologies Corporation (LIFE) on its violation of a US Patent. Life Technologies is the mother company of co-defendants Invitrogen Corporation and CellzDirect LLC, and the patent from Liverpool deals with methods pertaining to the production of multi-cryopreserved hepatocytes.
Chief Judge Randall Rader, in a precedential opinion, said that the Federal Court found no reversible error in the preliminary injunction penned by Judge Milton Shadur, who presided the US District Court for the Northern District of Illinois in Chicago. The court concluded that Celsis IVT has sufficiently met each of the four factors in determining the preliminary injunction.
The Federal Circuit agreed that Celsis IVT has manifested a responsible level of success of infringement by LTC in its confidential standard process and that the former has successfully thumbed down LTC��s challenge on invalidity with obvious intention. The court also confirmed that Celsis IVT would suffer irreparable damage in the absence of a preliminary injunction.
According to Jay LeCoque, Celsis International CEO, management is pleased with the decision of the Federal Court in its reaffirmation of the company��s Liverpool patent rights and privileges.
LIFE has been a part of NASDAQ since late 2008, rising from the initial $26.10 to the all-time high of $55.71, recorded in May 2011.? Next, the stock dropped to $35.84, but it seems to be back on track, gaining more than since the beginning of 212.

More Plans From Starbucks (SBUX) To Fix It Broken Business

Starbucks (SBUX) seems hell bent on cutting its way to profitability. It may work, but it is also possible that the economy has gone through such an upheaval that the coffee chain no longer has much of a place in the fast food restaurant business.
According to The Wall Street Journal, ?”After years of broadening its customer base and making forays into entertainment, Starbucks has made its top priority retaining its existing patrons.” But, what if those “existing patrons” have left the building?
Most of the moves that Starbucks has made involved firing people and closing stores. The firm does offer cheaper coffee and has a breakfast menu that is less expensive than it used to be, but the chain may not be able to escape the image that it spent years building. Starbucks is perceived as a place which serves the best $4 cup of coffee in the world and charges $3 for donuts. Customers who have turned away from that kind of spending may not have been into a Starbucks for a year. Convincing them that Starbucks coffee?is cheaper than the local deli may be tough.
Starbucks has certainly become more focused on its original business of selling coffee. It does not push?marketing CDs as hard as it used to. The $500 latte and espresso machines that the stores used to try to sell customers have been moved into the back room or are used as paper weights for the copies of The New York Times that the chain still?offers in most stores, but those changes are not likely to bring back enough consumers during a recession to get Starbucks revenue growing as fast as it did for the last decade.
Starbucks may put on a good show about how much it has changed its plans to increase store traffic. But, the recession is deepening and coffee that costs more than $1 a cup is a luxury. The near-term future for the company is about cost cutting and nothing more.
Douglas A. McIntyre

Intuitive Surgical Beats Up on Analysts Yet Again

Intuitive Surgical (Nasdaq: ISRG  ) reported earnings on Jan. 19. Here are the numbers you need to know.
The 10-second takeaway
For the quarter ended Dec. 31 (Q4), Intuitive Surgical beat expectations on revenues and beat expectations on earnings per share.
Compared to the prior-year quarter, revenue increased significantly, and earnings per share increased significantly.
Gross margins improved, operating margins grew, net margins shrank.
Revenue details
Intuitive Surgical logged revenue of $497 million. The 13 analysts polled by S&P Capital IQ looked for sales of $484 million. Sales were 28% higher than the prior-year quarter's $389 million.

Source: S&P Capital IQ. Quarterly periods. Dollar amounts in millions.

EPS details
EPS came in at $3.75. The 14 earnings estimates compiled by S&P Capital IQ averaged $3.35 per share. GAAP EPS of $3.75 for Q4 were 24% higher than the prior-year quarter's $3.02 per share.

Source: S&P Capital IQ. Quarterly periods. Figures may be non-GAAP to maintain comparability with estimates.

Margin details
For the quarter, gross margin was 73.0%, 50 basis points better than the prior-year quarter. Operating margin was 40.2%, 70 basis points better than the prior-year quarter. Net margin was 30.4%, 70 basis points worse than the prior-year quarter.
Looking ahead
Next quarter's average estimate for revenue is $461 million. On the bottom line, the average EPS estimate is $3.16.
Next year's average estimate for revenue is $2 billion. The average EPS estimate is ! $14.18.< /p>
Investor sentiment
The stock has a four-star rating (out of five) at Motley Fool CAPS, with 3,939 members out of 4,144 rating the stock outperform, and 205 members rating it underperform. Among 1,281 CAPS All-Star picks (recommendations by the highest-ranked CAPS members), 1,238 give Intuitive Surgical a green thumbs-up, and 43 give it a red thumbs-down.
Of Wall Street recommendations tracked by S&P Capital IQ, the average opinion on Intuitive Surgical is hold, with an average price target of $433.09.
The healthcare investing landscape is littered with also-rans and a few major winners. Is Intuitive Surgical the right stock for you? Read "Discover the Next Rule-Breaking Multibagger" to learn about a company David Gardner believes will be a phenomenal success over the next few years. Click here for instant access to this free report.

• Add Intuitive Surgical to My Watchlist.

MF Global 'Starting to Smell Like' Fraud: Ex-SEC Accounting Chief

NEW YORK (TheStreet)--MF Global(MFGLQ.PK) is still missing an estimated $600 million more than a week after it filed for bankruptcy, and at least one high-profile accounting expert said Wednesday he is beginning to sense fraud may be the explanation.

"My concern is that at the very end as things got very dire, as liquidity dried up, that you had some people in collusion go in and commit fraud here and I don't know that that did occur, but that's what it's starting to smell like," Lynn Turner, former chief accountant at the Securities and Exchange Commission told Bloomberg Television Wednesday.
A spokesman for the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, one of MF Global's regulators, declined to comment, as did an MF Global spokesman. A call to MF Global's bankruptcy trustee was not returned.
"It's amazing that we're sitting here today trying to find out today what happened with $600 million," Turner said. "It's like it just vanished into thin air and the fact that people today can't tell us where the $600 million went is not a good sign. The fact that they were held in custodial accounts that someone should have been on top of only further complicates the issue and makes it even more concerning."
MF Global's bankruptcy filing on Oct. 31 came after the securities dealer disclosed more than $6 billion in bets on European sovereign debt, prompting a ratings downgrade and a stock plunge of 66% in just four days. The failure has raised investor anxiety about the stability of larger securities dealers including Jefferies(JEF), Morgan Stanley(MS) and Goldman Sachs(GS). Jon Corzine, who resigned as MF Global CEO Nov. 4 and Chris Flowers, a major MF Global investor and close friend of Corzine, previously held top posts at Goldman Sachs.
-- .
>To or! der repr ints of this article, click here: Reprints

Seaspan: Dividend Dynamo or Blowup?

Dividend investing is a tried-and-true strategy for generating strong, steady returns in economies both good and bad. But as corporate America's slew of dividend cuts and suspensions over the past few years has demonstrated, it's not enough simply to buy a high yield. You also need to make sure those payouts are sustainable.
Let's examine how Seaspan (NYSE: SSW  ) stacks up. In this series, we consider four critical factors investors should examine in every dividend stock. We'll then tie it all together to look at whether Seaspan is a dividend dynamo or a disaster in the making.
1. Yield
First and foremost, dividend investors like a large forward yield. But if a yield gets too high, it may reflect investors' doubts about the payout's sustainability. If investors had confidence in the stock, they'd be buying it, driving up the share price and shrinking the yield.
Seaspan yields 5.3%, considerably higher than the S&P 500's 2.1%.
2. Payout ratio
The payout ratio might be the most important metric for judging dividend sustainability. It compares the amount of money a company paid out in dividends last year to the earnings it generated. A ratio that's too high -- say, greater than 80% of earnings -- indicates that the company may be stretching to make payouts it can't afford, even when its dividend yield doesn't seem particularly high.
Seaspan doesn't have a payout ratio because it didn't generate earnings to common shareholders last year.
3. Balance sheet
The best dividend payers have the financial fortitude to fund growth and respond to whatever the economy and competitors throw at them. The interest coverage ratio indicates whether a company is having trouble meeting its interest payments -- any ratio less than five is a warning sign. Meanwhile, the debt-to-equity ratio is a good measure of a company's total debt burden.
Seaspan has a debt-to-! equity r atio of 283% and an interest coverage rate of 5.2 times.
4. Growth
A large dividend is nice; a large growing dividend is even better. To support a growing dividend, we also want to see earnings growth.
Over the past five years, Seaspan's quarterly dividend has fallen from $0.42 to $0.18. After paying preferred dividends, Seaspan's earnings last year were negative.
The Foolish bottom line
Despite its high yield and manageable debt, Seaspan doesn't exactly qualify as a "dividend dynamo" right now due to its earnings losses. Dividend investors will want to keep an eye on the health of the containership business and Seaspan's earnings to see when it'll be able to support -- and hopefully grow -- its dividend. If you're looking for some great dividend stocks, check out "Secure Your Future With 11 Rock-Solid Dividend Stocks," a special report from the Motley Fool about some serious dividend dynamos. I invite you to grab a free copy to discover everything you need to know about the 11 generous dividend payers -- simply click here.

Wall Street Stages Intraday Reversal, S&P Bats At A Thousand

After starting on the defensive once again on further fallout from weakness in global equities markets, Wall Street reversed course near the mid-point of Wednesday’s trading session, as major market averages shot to their highs on the session.
The S&P 500 Index (GSPC), which dipped about 1% lower at its quickly realized lows early in the trading session,wiped out the early deficit.Worries about the persistent weakness inAsian markets influenced the early trading, as stocks followed the lead ofChina, where the Shanghai Composite lost more than 4% Wednesday.
However, after the quick slump, somemeasure of bargain-hunting returned to the market. Bullish investors increasingly have become conditioned to step in whenever the market pulls back, regardless of the modesty of the relative attractiveness of the new entry point. But everytime the bulls step up, the bears are forced to cover short positions, adding to the volatility of the underlying market.
Some mediaaccounts also suggested that talk of a second roundof of stimulus spending has helped mobilize some of the animal spirits on Wall Street. Though, given that the majority of the stimulus capital in the first spending initiative hasn’t been put to work yet, there’s little reason to put much stake in talk of another bill.
Nevertheless, the S&P 500 has improved by about 8 points intraday, and while it hasn’t quite gotten back to the 1000-point mark, it has flirted with short-term technical resistance at about 998.

Whole Foods And Supervalu

Investor sentiment varies considerably between Whole Foods (WFM) and SuperValu (SVU), despite the fact that these two companies operate in the same (or similar) industry. This difference in sentiment is exemplified by the opinion of a one Jim Cramer, who notes that even though SuperValu has a substantially lower P/E, Whole Foods is actually the cheaper stock because of its lower PEG ratio. What's wrong with this surface analysis?

First, a PEG ratio is only as good as its underlying assumptions. In this case, Cramer is assuming Whole Foods will grow at an 18% annual rate. But Whole Foods has only grown its revenue at an 8% annual clip over the last three years, and at 6% year-over-year in its most recent quarter. As such, either revenue has to pick up in a big way, or Cramer is assuming Whole Foods will be able to grow its margins rather significantly every year.

This growth rate assumption is just that - an assumption. And history suggests we humans tend to err in our growth assumptions while at the same time remaining very confident in them - a bad combination. Research by David Dreman illustrates this problem, and helps explain why stocks with low P/E's dramatically outperform those with high P/E's, even with the same industry: because we are pretty poor at predicting the future growth rates of individual companies.

So while Whole Foods is clearly the better performing business as of late, having posted far superior margins and same-store sales increases, it's important not to be over-reliant on a large growth assumption. Comparing the price of the businesses as they stand today (i.e.
removing growth from the equation), SuperValu has ttm operating earnings of $850 million while Whole Foods has ttm operating earnings of $550 million. And yet SuperValu can be purchased for an enterprise value of about $8 billion (for an EV/EBIT ratio of less than 10) while Whole Foods comes at a cost of $11 billion (for an EV/EBIT of 20).

As such, you're paying more! than tw ice as much for Whole Foods as you are for SuperValu. In so doing, you are making an assumption that there will be a consistently large growth rate differential between the two companies. Considering what we know about how good we are at making assumptions about growth rates, you might not want to make that bet.

The second problem is that even if Whole Foods were to achieve such growth rates, that growth is not free. It takes capital to grow, particularly in a business such as this one. Companies in the grocery business need to buy or lease land, pay for construction, finance inventory growth, add or enlarge distribution centres and add staff if they are going to grow. That capital could come from debt, which would increase Whole Foods' enterprise value (thereby giving shareholders a smaller stake in the company's operating earnings), or it could come from retained earnings, which would otherwise accrue to shareholders.

In the last few years, Whole Foods has grown through a combination of both, as it has used non-cancelable leases (a form of debt) and cash from operations (that could otherwise have been paid out to shareholders) to finance its growth.

One manner in which the contrast between the capital requirements of these two companies can be seen is in their respective dividend yields. Whole Foods pays a dividend of less than 1% while SuperValu pays almost 5%. At the same time, a low-growth SuperValu will have (and has had) much more capacity to deploy the cash flow it doesn't pay out to shareholders towards paying down its debt, reducing its enterprise value in the process (thus making it cheaper).

This isn't to say that Whole Foods should stop growing and should instead pay out its earnings. Such a statement is beyond the scope of this article, and would involve a discussion of a number of issues including business risk and returns on equity and capital. It is to say, however, that there is a cost to growth, though the simplistic PEG ratio ignores this im! portant element.

SuperValu is clearly cheaper than Whole Foods, until you start making assumptions about growth. It's important to recognize the drawbacks of this "assumption" approach, however, and realize that growth must be financed with additional capital.