>>> OTE: Greek goverment to transfer its 10% to Hellenic Republic Asset Developm

OTE: Greek goverment to transfer its 10% to Hellenic Republic Asset Development Fund

The Greek government will transfer its shares in Hellenic Telecommunications Organisation (OTE) to Hellenic Republic Asset Development Fund (HRADF), the privatisation agency.

The privatisation is part of the latest Greek reform proposals to the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the IMF.

Germany’s Deutsche Telekom currently holds a 40% stake in OTE.

Link to orginal source.

Government Press Release

>>> ABInBev Taps Beer Profit Pools, May Target China M&A

ABInBev Taps Beer Profit Pools, May Target China M&A 

Anheuser-Busch InBev announced a $565 million bond issue in Taipei on July 9. Given the $1 billion share buyback is over and company has a strong balance sheet, speculation may center on Asian M&A. ABInBev has a 20.8% share of the global beer market, with dominant shares in three of the six-largest profit pools -- the U.S., Brazil and Mexico. China is the largest market worldwide, with 50.9 billion liters of beer consumed, more than twice that in the U.S., the next largest market. (Corrects beer consumed in China.)
Impact: Peer Comparison: ABI is No. 3 in the Chinese market, with a 14% share, behind CRE Snow (49%-owned by SABMiller) at 23% and Tsingtao (20% owned by Asahi Group) at 18%. Beijing Yanjing Brewery has 11% and is independent. Local companies make up 29% of China's beer market.

(BArrons) Price of Oil Headed Higher Two Top Investors Say

Price of Oil Headed Higher Two Top Investors Say
The two newsletter writers with the best track record of predicting oil-market moves say the bottom is near.

The price of oil is close to hitting bottom, and should be significantly higher in the next couple of years.

That is the judgment of the select few advisors — out of the several hundreds I monitor — who have a good enough oil-timing track record over the past decade to justify our paying attention to what they are saying today about the price of oil.


The accompanying graph shows that oil’s price today is more or less exactly where it stood 10 years ago. But an oil-market timer could have made a lot of money simply by sidestepping the dramatic bear market in the latter half of 2008, re-entering the market in early 2009, and then exiting again in mid-2014.

Not surprisingly, given the difficulty of successful market timing generally, most of the oil timers I monitor did worse than if they had simply bought and held. That’s because they were trend followers, becoming more bullish as oil rose in price and more bearish as it declined. As a result, they were most bullish when in fact they should have been bearish — and vice versa.

Even among those few advisors whose oil-market timing added value, needless to say, none successfully called — to the day — each of the past decade’s major tops and bottoms. But two advisors emerged when I relaxed my criteria to getting it right two out of three times, and defining “getting it right” to have been net sellers of oil industry stocks in the six months prior to the mid-2008 and mid-2014 tops and/or net buyers at the January 2009 bottom. They are Jim Stack of InvesTech Research and Kelley Wright of Investment Quality Trends.

Significantly, both are bullish now. Furthermore, their rationales for being bullish are entirely different, which increases our confidence in their bullish consensus.

Stack’s approach rests on a combination of technical and fundamental analysis. Technically, he is very impressed with oil’s successful retest in March of its January low. Over the last three decades, he says, there have been only five other occasions in which oil’s price dropped at least 30% during an equity bull market. In all five cases, oil’s bottoming process was short “with only a brief and generally satisfactory retest of the lows.” Oil’s price action earlier this year neatly fits that template.

Stack says that the technical picture will improve even more if oil remains above its March lows for two more months — through August. He arrived at this August threshold by analyzing oil’s bottoming process in 1998, which lasted the longest of any of the five prior oil bottoms that he studied. On that occasion, oil’s final bottom didn’t occur until five months after what initially looked like a successful retest of the lows. Michael Kahn, the technical analyst for Barron’s, also predicts a recovery after a few more months of pain, and sees potential for big gains in oil investments.

The fundamental reason for being bullish on oil, according to Stack, is that global oversupply will lessen in coming months — despite OPEC’s refusal to cut back their production. Stack says that the U.S. is now acting as the swing producer in the global energy market, and drilling rig counts are down by more than half since late last year.

On the assumption that oil’s bottom is in place, Stack anticipates a big increase in oil in coming months — well in excess of the 36% increase oil has turned in since its March lows. The average 12-month gain following those five prior bottoms, he says, was 70.3%. A similarly sized increase off of this past March’s low would propel oil to $73.90 by next March.

Kelley Wright’s approach is based on stocks’ dividend yields. He believes that, so long as one focuses on blue-chip companies with strong financials, the dividend yield is a reliable guide to over- and under-valuation. Specifically, he deems a blue-chip stock to be undervalued whenever its yield is trading near the high end of its historical range, and overvalued when its yield is near the low end.

This approach has acquitted itself admirably. At oil’s mid-2008 top, for example, not one of the numerous blue-chip oil stocks on Wright’s watch list was considered undervalued. At oil’s early 2009 bottom, in contrast, seven were.

Today, according to Wright’s methodology, six oil companies are undervalued. In an interview, he mentioned three in particular as a “Holy Trinity” that are especially worthy of our attention: Chevron (ticker: CVX ), which yields 4.6%, ExxonMobil ( XOM ), which yields 3.6%, and Schlumberger ( SLB ), which sports a 2.4% yield. He emphasizes, however, that his approach is not for short-term traders, since it sometimes can take several years for the rest of the market to fully price today’s undervalued situations.

Stack’s preferred energy investment is an exchange-traded fund: the Energy Select SPDR ( XLE ), which invests in energy stocks within the Standard & Poor’s 500. Interestingly, this ETF’s three biggest holdings are also Chevron, ExxonMobil, and Schlumberger.

>>> US Gapping Up

Gapping up
In reaction to strong earnings/guidance: KONE +39.4%, IMOS +0.8% (monthly revs)

Select China related names showing strength with Shanghai +4.5% overnight: SHI +10.4%, TOUR +8.9%, YOKU +6.9%, JKS +6.9%, CMCM +6.7%, JMEI +6.7%, NQ +6.2%, NOAH +5.7%, WB +5.4%, STV +5.1%, QIHU +4.1%, DANG +3.4%, .

Select EU names trading higher with DAX +2%: ING +6.5%, SAN +6.2%, ALU +5.9%, SNY +5.8%, DB +5.7%, UN +5.6%, NOK +5.4%, TOT +5.3%, NVO +4.7%, ASML +4.5%,

Other news:NBG +14.7% (Greece submits proposal to EU), ICLD +12.2% (awarded a series of contracts from new and existing clients valued at over $1.5 mln; to provide engineering and design services for next gen wireless networks), YGE +9.9% (Reports that it is supplying 240 MW of solar panels for Latin American hybrid solar photovoltaic and concentrated solar power plants), AERI +7.5% (disclosed that Brian Levy, Chief Medical Officer, has left the company, effective July 7, 2015), BUD +5% (Moody's rated Anheuser-Busch InBev bonds at A2; positive outlook), ISNS +2.6% (announced sale of its Automatic Number Plate Recognition business to TagMaster AB for $4.2 mln in cash) CY +1.7% (Soros Fund Management disclosed 5.32% passive stake in 13G filing), UAL +1.6% (still checking), TSM +1.4% (reported June revs), AAL +1.1% (June RPM +2.8%; reaffirms Q2 PRASM, margin guidance)

Analyst comments: UN +5.6% (upgraded to Hold from Underperform at Jefferies), OCAT +4.3% (initiated with an Outperform at Cowen), BHP +3.6% (upgraded to Buy from Neutral at Citigroup ), RIO +3.2% (upgraded to Buy from Neutral at Citigroup ), AMAT +1.8% (upgraded to Neutral from Negative at Susquehanna), COST +1.5% (upgraded to Outperform from Perform at Oppenheimer
)

>>> US Gapping down

Gapping down
In reaction to disappointing earnings/guidance: CUDA -15.3%, ROG -8%, HELE -5.3%, JRJC -4.2%, PTC -1.9%, DOV -1.5%, PSMT -0.5%, (also reports June comps +4% vs. +2.5% Retail Metrics Consensus), VOXX -0.5%, .


Other news: Z -3.5% ( announces CFO Chad Cohen will resign effective Aug. 7, 2015 ), SJM -2.8% (announced offering of ~4.92 mln shares of common stock for a selling shareholder), MIK -2.2% (announced offering of 12.5 mln shares of common stock by selling shareholders), RLJE -1.7% (filed for offering of ~31.05 mln shares of common stock issuable upon the exercise of convertible preferred stock and for offering of ~9.31 mln shares of common stock issuable upon the exercise of warrants), DFRG -1.4% ( reports the resignation of Chief Operating Officer ), PCG -0.9% (still checking), ATRA -0.7% (prices offering of 3,461,538 shares of its common stock at $52.00 per share), .

Analyst comments: IAG -1.6% (downgraded to Underperform from Sector Perform at RBC Capital Mkts
)

>>> Oppenheimer making positive comments on Outperform rated HAL, SLB, WFT, SPN

Oppenheimer making positive comments on Outperform rated HAL, SLB, WFT, SPN 
- Firm believes investors should take advantage of the recent weakness in OFS equities as they stand to benefit from a multi-year improvement in drilling and completion activity and rising commodity prices as oil supply and demand gradually tightens. We believe the bottom is in for the US rig count.
- Reiterates Perform rating on BHI and Underperform rating on FTK