>>> DJ Syngenta Investors Deepen Critique of Board -- Market Talk

DJ Syngenta Investors Deepen Critique of Board -- Market Talk
8:35 ET - Group of Syngenta (SYT, SYNN.VX) shareholders say confidence in the Swiss pesticide giant's board has eroded, releasing a survey that the group claims shows nearly 100% of investors they polled, who group says represent about 10% of all Syngenta shares, support changing the board at the upcoming annual meeting. About 80% want a formal auction to sell the company, Alliance of Critical Syngenta Shareholders says, after the board angered some investors by refusing to formally entertain a $46B takeover proposal from Monsanto (MON) last summer. "Given the lack of support for the Board of Directors and the company's strategy, shareholders believe that major changes are needed," says group, whose survey also went to some sell-side analysts. Syngenta spokesman has no immediate comment.

Fwd:(GS) The New Oil Order : Crunch tTime -- > Artcile talking of that note on C

CNBC is talking of this report..

{http://www.cnbc.com/2015/12/17/goldman-sachs-expects-oil-prices-to-fall-further-as-opec-stands-pat.html

From: LAURENT CHEKROUN (MAKOR SECURITIES LO) At: Dec 17 2015 17:26:41
To: LAURENT CHEKROUN (MAKOR SECURITIES LO)
Subject: Fwd:(GS) The New Oil Order : Crunch tTime
* OPEC and storage concerns weighing on oil prices
The decline in oil prices has resumed, driven by the aftermath of the OPEC
meeting, renewed weakness in distillates and exacerbated by positioning.
Although prices are now below our 3-mo $38/bbl WTI forecast, we still see
high risks that prices may decline further, as storage continues to fill.

* Tank tops not our base case, but too close for comfort
Our oil price forecast remains anchored by the view that high producer
financial stress and shut funding markets near $40/bbl can halt the oil
surplus by 4Q16, mainly through declining US production. Our base case
remains that the global oil stock build will on aggregate remain shy of
storage capacity, although the storage buffer has once again narrowed, to
340 kb/d on average for 2016. But this rebalancing is far from achieved: (1)
the US rig count and E&P guidance remain too high to achieve the required
supply decline, (2) we see risks to our OPEC production forecast of 32 mb/d
next year as skewed to the upside (Iran), (3) storage continues to fill with
the odds of hitting storage constraints by the spring rising. As a result, we
reiterate our concern that “financial stress“ may prove too little too late to
prevent the market from having to clear through “operational stress” with
prices near cash costs to force production cuts, likely around $20/bbl.

* European distillates can still push prices lower
For now, storage pressures are localized: European distillate prices are
showing symptoms of stocks nearing capacity with gasoil timespreads,
cracks and cash basis falling sharply. Warm EU and US weather, strong
China diesel exports on weak demand and resilient refining margins on
strong gasoline cracks lead us to expect that EU distillate markets will
reach 99% of storage capacity in January. This represents an even
narrower storage buffer than we previously expected with normal weather
distribution leaving a 40% probability that storage runs out. While
localized, this lack of EU gasoil storage capacity could nonetheless quickly
spillover into further crude oil price declines: a modestly larger distillate
surplus than we forecast would need to push refinery margins lower with
run cuts spilling over into crude inventory builds and weaker crude
timespreads by at least $2/bbl as floating storage would likely become
necessary.

>>> BlackBerry beats by $0.12, beats on revs; guides Q4 revs above consensus; re

BlackBerry beats by $0.12, beats on revs; guides Q4 revs above consensus; reaffirms positive FCF
  • Reports Q3 (Nov) adj. loss of $0.03 per share, $0.12 better than the Capital IQ Consensus of ($0.15); revenues fell 30.9% year/year to $548 mln vs the $487.98 mln Capital IQ Consensus.
  • Co issues upside guidance for Q4, sees sequential Q4 rev growth (from $548 mln) vs. $529.81 mln Capital IQ Consensus Estimate.
  • The company continues to anticipate positive free cash flow and adjusted EBITDA.
  • "To sustain our current direction, we are stepping up investments to drive continued software growth and the additional PRIV launches."

NY Post : Activists weigh proxy battle for Yahoo! board control

NY Post : Activists weigh proxy battle for Yahoo! board control http://bit.ly/1RW2YRz

At least a half dozen Yahoo! suitors are buzzing around the ailing Web portal trying to stoke a sale, The Post has learned.

Yahoo! Chief Financial Officer Ken Goldman has been fielding calls from the wannabe owners over the past two weeks but is telling them the board is sticking to a previously announced plan to spin-off the core business, sources familiar with the situation said.

“Ken Goldman is talking to the private equity guys and they’re being told, ‘It’s not for sale,’ ” said one source close to conversations.

The Goldman stiff-arm is rankling activist shareholders Starboard Value, Canyon Capital Advisors and SpringOwl Asset Management — each of which is pressing for a sale to jack up the stock price that has fallen 34 percent this year.

The activists feel if Yahoo! pursues its plan to spin off its Internet business, the share price will continue to melt.

In a Dec. 14 letter, Canyon called on the Yahoo! board to sell the Internet business — mimicking the position Starboard put forth in November.

SpringOwl this week called for Yahoo! to axe some 9,000 of the Sunnyvale, Calif., company’s 12,000 employees — plus stop its policy of free lunch for all employees.

In fact, one of the three recently went on the offensive, opening conversations with possible new executives, sources said. One person familiar with the situation said the activist is weighing a proxy battle.

Eric Jackson of SpringOwl told The Post that, for him, a proxy battle is “on the table.”

“We hope the Yahoo! board would not waste shareholder money defending themselves,” he said.

A proxy battle would be bad news for Chief Executive Marissa Mayer. Any activist pursuing a proxy battle would have to notify the Yahoo! board by Jan. 31, one source said.

Mayer, who gave birth to twins on Dec. 10 and is out on maternity leave, has taken plenty of heat for her lavish spending, including shelling out  $1.1 billion on Tumblr, $17 million to stream one NFL game, $35 million for one season of NBC’s “Community” and $10 million a year for Katie Couric.

Publicly, the board is behind Mayer. But sources close to the matter describe two of the eight board members being open to a change in management.

“There are two people who are negative [on Mayer], two people who are positive and two — H. Lee Scott and Charles Schwab — who are swing votes,” said a source.

Board members Thomas McInerney and Sue James are “negative” on the current management team, sources said, while Jane Shaw and Chairman Maynard Webb are in Mayer’s corner.

McInerney when reached Thursday said he had “no comment” on any board matter.

The others couldn’t immediately be reached for comment. Yahoo! declined comment.

The position of co-founder David Filo is not known. Mayer rounds out the eight-person board.

As for suitors, Verizon is by consensus the most likely bidder. Among the private equity players sniffing around, Silver Lake has been taking calls, sources said, but it is unclear if they have an interest.

Bob Peck, Internet analyst at SunTrust, suggested the media conglomerates — including Disney, 21st Century Fox and Comcast — would also be in the hunt.

(KeplerCheuvreux) TF1 - Deeper into darkness

After wrongly trying to call the bottom in October, after the false alarm on a return on advertising on public TV, negative feedback from buyers, and the CSA’s U-turn on LCI, we take an axe to our 2016 forecasts. With potential sequential deterioration in 2016, we downgrade to Reduce.

CSA overturning decision on LCI a disaster for 2016 forecasts
French regulatory authority, the CSA, announced after-close that it was reversing its initial decision to block TF1’s bid to convert 24-hour news channel, LCI, into a FTA channel. LCI’s operating losses (currently c. EUR7-8m) should now balloon by EUR20m in 2016 (this is the number TF1 is guiding for) as additional ad revenues from higher audience (vs. pay-TV) fail to compensate for EUR30m or so in lost pay-TV carriage revenues. In an already crowded market for FTA 24 hours news channels, led by NextRadio TV’s BFM and Canal Plus’ iTélé, we have low confidence that this activity will ever generate sufficient audience to break even (TF1 is targeting 2019, no. 2 iTélé loses money) and is more likely to go the way of TF1’s investments in a similarly overcrowded free press market (Metro).